Days before the treaty that ended the war with Mexico was signed, a carpenter named James Marshall found gold at Sutter's Mill in California (January 24, 1848). By 1849 the news had spread around the world. At the same time, hunger and hard times in Europe sent millions of people to American ports.
Key idea
The California Gold Rush drew an estimated 300,000 people, the "forty-niners," from the eastern states, Latin America, China, Europe and Australia. California became a state in 1850. In the North, Irish immigrants fleeing the potato famine (from 1845) and German immigrants arrived in huge numbers: about 2.9 million between 1845 and 1854. Nativists, who opposed immigrants and Catholics, formed the American Party, nicknamed the "Know-Nothings."
Why it works
Why the backlash? Most Irish immigrants were poor and Catholic, coming into a mostly Protestant country. Many native-born workers feared competition for jobs and wages; many Protestants feared Catholic influence over schools and votes. The Know-Nothings, so called because members were told to answer "I know nothing" about their secret order, wanted a much longer wait before immigrants could become citizens. In 1854 and 1855 they won governorships and dozens of seats in Congress, and in 1856 their candidate, former President Millard Fillmore, won about a fifth of the popular vote.
Worked example: Who paid the cost of the rush?
California's population boomed. Who lost the most?
- California's Native peoples: miners took their land and water, and disease, starvation and violence, including state-funded armed "expeditions" against Native communities, cut their numbers from roughly 150,000 before the rush to under 30,000 by 1870.
- Foreign miners: in 1850 the state taxed non-citizens \$20 a month to mine, which fell hardest on Mexican, Latin American and Chinese miners.
- Californios, the Spanish-speaking families of Mexican California, many of whom lost land in court disputes.
- Most forty-niners did not get rich; many of the steadiest fortunes went to merchants who sold them supplies.
Answer: Native Californians most of all, and foreign and Mexican-American miners and landowners.
Common mistake
Immigration did not begin with Ellis Island (1892). The 1840s and 1850s brought one of the largest waves in the country's history measured against the population: about 2.9 million arrivals in ten years, when the whole country had about 20 to 23 million people. Check the date: Ellis Island opened decades later.