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How Did The California Gold Rush Change American History

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America has changed for the better and the worst over its time and many times events have been the main thing that has changed and one of the most important events in American history is the California Gold Rush which had changed the different races that lived there and changed the way ‘White Americans’ saw foreign people.
The gold rush of 1849 was in Sacramento Valley, California. James W. Marshall found flakes of gold when he was trying to build a water-powered sawmill, he was the first one to go there and he got most of the gold. One newspaper was reporting that large quantities of gold were being turned up at Sutter’s Mill some of the people came to california by boat all the way from Chile, Mexico, and China everyone tried to get their share of it. Miners extracted more than 750,000 pounds of gold during the rush. A total of $2 billion worth of gold was extracted from the area during the Gold Rush. A lot of people put down their life savings and made the journey all the way to California. Just days after the great discovery they found out that the treaty of Guadalupe was signed and ending the Mexican- American war. When the war with Mexico ended the goldfields were lawless so …show more content…
As this heterogeneous population evolved conflicts over gold and jobs collided with issues of race and ethnicity. California was a very turbulent place. There was pressure on the national government to create a more stable and effective government. The gold rush therefore, forced the national government to deal with the status of the territories. The United States saw the need to establish government in the territories like California. It also forced the nation to deal with the issue of slavery in those territories. Slavery was already a big issue on the East coast. The admission of California into the union would upset the balance of free versus slave

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