and
10,000 slaves.

Another effort to extend slavery in this section came in the
unsuccessful filibustering expedition of the Tennessee lawyer, William
Walker, who undertook to establish to the south in Sonora, a State
with a constitution like that of Louisiana, basing his advocacy of
slavery on the lofty grounds of civilizing the blacks and liberating
the whites from manual labor. To explain the meaning of this
expedition Bancroft considers it sufficient to point out that
Jefferson Davis was Secretary of War at that time and that the Gadsden
purchase was then under consideration.[35] In 1852 Peachy of San
Joaquin introduced a resolution to allow fifty southern families to
immigrate into California with their slaves. Some of them came without
permission but on finding that they could not legally hold their
slaves, they sent a part of them back while others became free.

In 1852 the Legislature passed a rigid Fugitive Slave Law intending to
bar slavery from the State. The mischievous clause of this measure was
that all slaves who had escaped into or were brought to California
previous to the admission of the State to the Union were held to be
fugitives, and were liable to arrest under the law, although many of
them had been in the State several years, during which they had
accumulated considerable property. The pro-slavery element not only
profited by this, but the interpretation of this law by many of the
Judges enabled them to bring their slaves into the State, work them in
the mines, and return to the south and back to slavery with their
Negroes.[36]

If they did not wish the trouble of their return passage they
auctioned them off to the highest bidder. It also enabled them to
make fortunes by selling to the slaves their freedom, charging them
twice and often thrice the price he could have possibly brought on the
other side of the Rocky Mountains.[37] In certain southern counties of
the State it was unpopular to speak in behalf of the slaves. In 1855
Chase and Day, two Abolitionists of Alameda County, were ridden on a
rail, ducked and otherwise maltreated.[38] That same year expired the
Fugitive Slave Law which had been renewed from year to year to enable
slave-owners to reclaim fugitives who had sought refuge in that State
prior to its admission to the Union. Fearing that this might be
followed by other legislation hostile to their class, the Negroes held
a convention in San Francisco that year to discuss their r