Nor did Butler King, of Georgia, ever manifest any particular interest in the matter.

A committee was named to draft a constitution, which in due time was reported, with the usual clause, then known as the Wilmot Proviso, excluding slavery; and during the debate which ensued very little opposition was made to this clause, which was finally adopted by a large majority, although the convention was made up in large part of men from our Southern States.

This matter of California being a free State, afterward, in the national Congress, gave rise to angry debates, which at one time threatened civil war.

The result of the convention was the election of State officers, and of the Legislature which sat in San Jose in October and November, 1849, and which elected Fremont and Gwin as the first United States Senators in Congress from the Pacific coast.
Shortly after returning from Monterey, I was sent by General Smith up to Sacramento City to instruct Lieutenants Warner and Williamson, of the Engineers, to push their surveys of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, for the purpose of ascertaining the possibility of passing that range by a railroad, a subject that then elicited universal interest.

It was generally assumed that such a road could not be made along any of the immigrant roads then in use, and Warner's orders were to look farther north up the Feather River, or some one of its tributaries.