Acting on rumors and orders anticipating conflict, Commodore Sloat landed sailors and Marines who seized the customs house at Monterey without firing a shot, proclaiming California part of the United States. The move accelerated American annexation of the Pacific coast and set the stage for California's eventual statehood in 1850.
When Commodore John Drake Sloat sailed into Monterey Bay aboard the USS Savannah, he was acting on both instinct and instruction. Word had reached him that war between the United States and Mexico had already broken out along the Rio Grande, and he feared British interests might swoop in to claim California first. Rather than wait for formal orders, he decided to act.
On the morning of July 7, 1846, some 250 sailors and Marines rowed ashore and marched to the customs house in Monterey, then the capital of Mexican California. They raised the American flag, read a proclamation promising Californians the rights of U.S. citizens, and encountered no resistance. Sloat's bloodless seizure set off a chain reaction: similar flag-raisings followed in San Francisco and elsewhere within days.
The move was militarily unauthorized in its exact timing but politically decisive. It preempted any rival colonial ambitions and placed California firmly on the path to becoming part of the United States, a status formalized less than two years later by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, just as gold was discovered in the region.
Key people: John Sloat