California Republic
Encyclopedia : C : CA : CAL : California Republic
The California Republic, also called the Bear Flag Republic, was the name of an informal revolt on June 14, 1846, in the town of Sonoma, California, that lasted less than a month. As the United States and Mexico verged on war, the California Republic was proclaimed when a group of thirty-three men strode into the Sonoma town center, raised the Bear Flag, and declared independence from Mexico. Ten days later, U.S. Army Captain John C. Frémont took control. The republic's first and only president was William B. Ide, whose term lasted twenty-five days.
On July 7, 1846 a frigate and two sloops of the U.S. Navy, commanded by John D. Sloat, routed the detachment of the Mexican Coast Guard garrisoning the port of Monterey, California in a minor skirmish (the Battle of Monterey), and alerted Frémont and his men that the Mexican-American War had begun. The "Bear Flaggers" joined the war effort and replaced their flag with the Stars and Stripes.
The most noticeable legacy of the California Republic is the State of California's adoption of the flag (which has a grizzly bear, and the words "California Republic" near the bottom) as the State Flag of California. This was the flag created by Frémont and his men; this led their actions to be dubbed the "Bear Flag Revolt." The original flag (there was only one) was destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire.
The Bear Flag was first made by William L. Todd, who was a nephew of Mary Todd, wife of Abraham Lincoln. He painted the flag on a piece of brown cotton, a yard and a half or so in length, with a red star representing Texas, and what he intended to be a representation of a common bear in California.[link]
See also
External links
- [The Bear Flag Revolt] (U.S. National Parks Service)
- John Bidwell, "[Frémont in the Conquest of California]", The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, vol. XLI, no. 4, February, 1891
- [Thomas Edwin Farish. 1915. History of Arizona. State of Arizona.] Chapter VIII. Conquest of California by Fremont and Sloat.
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.