1849—Gold Rush madness threatened to destroy California. Congress could not decide if the western territory should be admitted as a slave state or a free state. Something had to be done, and newly-appointed Military Governor Bennet C. Riley had the guts to do it: call a constitutional convention. Of the seventy-two men elected, forty-eight delegates left their homes and businesses to come to Monterey and draft a constitution. Their socio-economic backgrounds were as varied as their ages. Yet, they all believed that what they were doing was critical to the future of California. From this six-weeks meeting, a constitution was drafted that declared California a free state and established its boundary, work Congress should have done. The Gold Rush and Civil War have obscured what happened in Monterey. The Delegates of 1849 brings to light for the first time the life stories of those forty-eight men who could be considered as California’s “founding fathers.”
