9.3
 Explain the effects of the Mexican-American War on
the United States.
 Trace the causes and effects of the California Gold
Rush.
 Describe the political impact of California’s
application for statehood.
 America Achieves Manifest Destiny
 The California Gold Rush
 Effects of the Gold Rush
 Read section 9.3
 Answer questions 5&6 on page 315.
 In February 1848 the defeated Mexicans made peace
with the Americans.
 The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo forced Mexico to give
up the northern third of their country and added 1.2
million square miles of territory to the United States.
 Later we purchased more land from Mexico called the
Gadsden Purchase of 1853. This gave the United States
another 29,640 square miles in southern Arizona and
New Mexico.
 Close to the end of the Mexican-American War the
government saw that there was an opportunity to gain
more land. (this troubled the Whigs)
 In 1846 the Whig congressman David Wilmot had
proposed a law known as the Wilmot Proviso; this
would ban slavery in any lands won from Mexico.
 The Wilmot Proviso passed the House of
Representatives but failed in the Senate, and this
happened for the next 15 years.
 The Proviso brought the issue of slavery to the
forefront of Congress and this began to further divide
the nation.
 In early 1848 workers at John Sutter’s sawmill found
flecks of gold in the American River east of
Sacramento California.
 The word spread and in a mass migration known as
the California Gold Rush some 80,000 fortune seekers
headed for California in search for easy riches.
 These people who moved for gold were called fortyniners.
 California had a major spike in population starting at a
mere 14,000 in 1847 to a huge 225,000 in 1850.
 At first the miners used cheap metal pan, picks, and
shovels to harvest gold flecks from the sand along the
banks and bottoms of rivers. This was known as placer
mining.
 Methods of mining changed, many began damming or
diverting rivers to expose their beds or using hydraulic
mining by sending jets of water along hillsides to
erode them in to lines of sluice boxes.
 White miners often made life very difficult on Native
American, Mexican, and Chinese miners.
 They would often impose high taxes on them and
harass and kill them.
 The new California wanted quickly to organize a state
and enter the Union.
 This caused another issue on whether California
should enter as a slave state or a free state and the
tensions from this will lead to the Civil War.