The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 30, July 1926 - April, 1927 Page: 112
330 p. : maps ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
interests succeeded in getting passed a specific contract act.66 This
act recognized both the paper and the metallic currency as legal
tender, but it gave creditors the right to stipulate, before every
transaction, in which kind of money the payment should be made.
The courts were to enforce the contract. In spite of the strong
opposition to the act on the part of various groups of people, and
the argument that it nullified an act of Congress, the supreme court
of the state declared the law constitutional. Strong efforts were
made, supported by Secretaries Chase and McCulloch," to have
the act repealed, but they were not successful. California insisted
upon a gold currency, and stubbornly clung to it. So far as Cali-
fornia was concerned, the law giving legal tender value to the
treasury notes was of little effect.
SUMMARY
I have attempted in this paper to summarize the federal relations
of California during its frontier era. Peculiar to itself though it
was, however, with respect to many problems, California was,
nevertheless, typical with respect to the essential problems of the
American frontier, the problem of establishing an American civil-
ization. An American form of government had to be established;
policies adopted for the handling of natural resources; adequate
means of communication had to be provided to connect the new
communities with the centers of trade and population. In this
program the interests of a paternalistic government were deeply
involved. And so our study of the individual case of California
has really been also a study, in general outline, of the federal rela-
tions of the whole American frontier, whether in the Far West or
on the Trans-Alleghany border. In California, and on the Trans-
Alleghany, we find a common attitude toward the federal govern-
ment; a common attitude toward the East; on both, the same self-
confident, self-assertive, "dissatisfied frontier." Both dreamed of
independent existence whenever they believed their rights were not
being duly recognized. To be sure, the country was more closely
welded in the middle of the nineteenth century than it had been
when the Trans-Alleghany frontier talked of independence. But
the Pacific coast, severed from the central government by a line of
"6Chase's letter was printed in the Cal., Sen. Jour., 1863, 4, 287; Mc-
Culloch's letter was printed in the Bulletin, May 26, 1865.112
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 30, July 1926 - April, 1927, periodical, 1927; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth117142/m1/126/: accessed April 24, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.