Debt Solve

[harrisdaniel]

Peter Hardeman Burnett (November 15, 1807– May 17, 1895) was an American politician and the first state Governor of California, serving from December 20, 1849 to January 9, 1851. He was also the first California governor to resign from office. Burnett previously served briefly during December 1849 as the territorial civilian governor of California.

 

[harrisdaniel]

Peter Burnett's legacy is largely mixed. While regarded as one of the fathers of modern California in the state's early days, Burnett's openly racist attitudes towards Blacks, Chinese, and Native Americans have blackened his name today. Burnett's period in the Oregon Provisional Legislature helped facilitate the exclusion of Blacks from the state until 1926. Also, his open hostility to foreign laborers influenced a number of federal and state California legislators to push future xenophobic legislation, such as the Chinese Exclusion Act thirty years after his departure from the governorship.

 

[harrisdaniel]

Burnett was also an open advocate of exterminating local California Indian tribes, a policy that continued with successive state governmental administrations for several decades, where the state offered US$25 to US$50 for evidence of dead Natives.

San Francisco's Burnett Avenue near the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood is named after him.

 

[harrisdaniel]

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[harrisdaniel]

I appreciate the concern which is been rose. The things need to be sorted out because it is about the individual but it can be with everyone.

 

[harrisdaniel]

From Burnett's Inaugural Address, December 20, 1849:[10]" That a war of extermination will continue to be waged between the two races until the Indian race becomes extinct, must be expected... "
" For some years past I have given this subject [slavery] my most serious and candid attention; and I most cheerfully lay before you the result of my own reflections. There is, in my opinion, but one of two consistent courses to take in reference to this class of population; either to admit [Blacks] to the full and free enjoyment of all the privileges guaranteed by the Constitution to others, or exclude them from the State. If we permit them to settle in our State, under existing circumstances, we consign them, by our own institutions, and the usages of our own society, to a subordinate and degraded position, which is in itself but a species of slavery. They would be placed in a situation where they would have no efficient motives for moral or intellectual improvement, but must remain in our midst, sensible of their degradation, unhappy themselves, enemies to the institutions and the society whose usages have placed them there, and for ever fit teachers in all the schools of ignorance, vice, and idleness. "
" We have certainly the right to prevent any class of population from settling in our State, that we may deem injurious to our society.

 

[harrisdaniel]

In the first days of the Burnett Administration, the governor and the California Legislature set out to create the organs of a state government, creating state cabinet posts, archives, executive posts and departments, subdividing the state into 27 counties and appointing John C. Fremont and William M. Gwin as California's senators to the federal U.S. Senate. Despite home proclamations and bureaucratic reorganizations that recognized California now as a U.S. state, the U.S. Congress and President Zachary Taylor had in fact not even signed authorization of statehood for California. Part of this miscommunication was due to California's relative remoteness to the rest of the U.S. during the time, but also to over-enthusiastic attitudes by politicians and the public alike to get California into the Union as quickly as possible. Following long contentious debates in the U.S. Senate, California was admitted as a state on September 9, 1850 as part of the Compromise of 1850. Californians did not learn of their official statehood until one month later, when on October 18,

 

[harrisdaniel]

During these advancements into statehood, Governor Burnett's popularity among the State Legislature, the press and the public plummeted. Relations between the Legislature and Burnett began to immediately sour in early 1850, when bills pressing for the incorporation of Sacramento and Los Angeles as city municipalities, with Los Angeles being a special incorporation due to its earlier pueblo status during the previous Spanish and Mexican rule, passed the State Assembly and Senate. Burnett vetoed both bills, citing special incorporation bills as unconstitutional, and that reviews for municipal incorporation were best left to county courts. While the Legislature failed to override Burnett's veto of the Los Angeles bill, it did however successfully override the Sacramento bill, making Sacramento California's first incorporated city.

 

[harrisdaniel]

As in Oregon, Burnett pushed for the exclusion of Blacks from California, raising the ire of pro-slavery supporters who wanted to import the Southern slave system to the West Coast. His proposals were defeated in the Legislature. Similarly, Burnett also pushed for heavy taxation on foreign immigrants. An 1850 Foreign Miners Tax Act, signed into law by Burnett, required every miner of non-American origin to pay US$20. In addition to these proposals and laws, Burnett also argued heavily for increased taxation and for the expansion of capital punishment to include larceny.

 

[harrisdaniel]

Characterized as an aloof politician with little support from the Legislature by the San Francisco, Sacramento and Los Angeles press, Burnett grew frustrated as his agenda ground to a halt, and his governance style increasingly criticized. He became a regular fixture of ridicule in the state's newspapers and on the floor of the Legislature. With little over a year in office, Burnett, the first governor of the state, became the first to resign, announcing his resignation in January 1851. Burnett cited personal matters for his departure. Lieutenant Governor John McDougall replaced Burnett as the Governor of California on 9 January.
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