"To the People of California: A new executive having been elected and installed into office, in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution of the State, the undersigned hereby resigns his powers as Governor of California. In thus dissolving his official connection with the people of this country he would tender to them his heart-felt thanks for their many kind attentions and for the uniform support which they have given to the measures of his administration. The principal object of all his wishes is now accomplished--the people have a government of their own choice, and one which, under the favor of Divine Providence, will secure their own prosperity and happiness and the permanent welfare of the new State." No matter what the legal objections to this course might be, notwithstanding the fact that Congress had as yet passed no bill for the admission of California as a State into the Union, and might never pass one, California broke all precedents by declaring itself a State, and a free State at that, and sent its representatives to Washington to hurry up the passage of the bill which should admit it into the Union. The brilliant audacity of California's method of admission into the Union stands without parallel in the history of the nation. Outside of the original thirteen colonies, she was the only State carved out of the national domain which was admitted into the Union without a previous enabling act or territorial apprenticeship. What was called the State of Deseret tried it and failed, and the annexation of Texas was the annexation of a foreign republic. The so-called State of Transylvania and State of Franklin had been attempted secessions of western counties of the original states of Virginia and North Carolina, respectively, and their abortive attempts at admission addressed to the Continental Congress, and not to the Congress of the United States. With full right, then, did California, by express resolution spreading the explanation upon the minutes of her constitutional convention[7], avowedly place upon her great seal her Minerva--her "robed goddess-in-arms"--not as the goddess of wisdom, not as the goddess of war, but to signify that as Minerva was not born, but sprang full-armed from the brain of Jupiter, so California, without territorial childhood, sprang full-grown into the sisterhood of states. When it is remembered that California was not admitted into the Union till September 9, 1850, and yet that the first session of its State Legislature had met, legislated, and adjourned by April 22, 1850, some appreciation may be had of the speed limit--if there was a limit. The record of the naive self-sufficiency of that Legislature is little short of amazing.