During all these years and long after, San Francisco suffered greatly from disputed land titles. Conflicting claims led to labyrinthine legislation, and increasing hardship, one crisis being the Squatter Riots. The treaty of Guadaloupe Hidalgo had decreed that all property rights should be respected by the new government. So property rights founded on cloudy and ill-understood laws and customs of Spain and Mexico had now to be adjudicated in the Californian courts. San Francisco was entangled in the mazes of two rival Spanish claims, embracing well-nigh all her territory except the "made" land. There was much dispute as to whether or not the city had ever been made a pueblo proper. On this depended the holding or forfeiting of four square leagues of land. Though the city petitioned the Land Commission in 1852 for confirmation of her public grants, the controversy was pending through wearying legislation, with repeated surveys and delays and continual jeopardy of property, until finally settled by the decision of Secretary Lamar in 1887. The decline of the gold output brought to the front the agricultural resources of the State, and San Francisco came to be the centre of distribution for wheat, wines, and fruits. The Central Pacific Railroad was completed in 1867, with San Francisco as the Western terminus, and as by a magic stroke the city was only three thousand miles instead of nineteen thousand miles from Eastern markets. Since then three other transcontinental lines and numerous local lines have brought trade and travel into this emporium of the Pacific, while the ships of all nations fetch and carry through her Golden Gate. The war of secession found California wavering between the Stars and Stripes and the Stars and Bars. A large Southern element, much to the front in politics, had maintained a strong Democratic influence in the State. The celebrated duel, just outside the city limits between Broderick and Terry--the Terry of Vigilance Committee memory--turned the tide toward Republicanism and sympathy for the North. The duel grew out of the Broderick and Gwin senatorial contest. Terry stood for Southern chivalry; Broderick stood for free labor and progressive politics. Not essentially great or noble, Broderick was made heroic by his tragic death. During war times he was a colossal figure in men's minds, and his anti-slavery sentiments echoed through city and State, a slogan and a cleaving sword for freedom and the North. [Illustration UNION DEPOT.]