Bear Flag Revolt

Bear Flag Revolt, an 1846 uprising by Anglo-American settlers against Mexico. On 14 June 1846 a group of thirty-three Anglo-American California settlers led by a trapper named Ezekiel Merritt took control of the plaza in the town of Sonoma north of San Francisco and proclaimed a California Republic. When the Mexican garrison in Sonoma capitulated without a fight, the Bear Flaggers took Colonel Mariano G. Vallejo, commander of the garrison, and his brother Salvador to Captain John C. Frémont's camp near the confluence of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers. Frémont, on a topographical mission for the U.S. government, covertly encouraged the proclamation of the California republic but remained officially aloof.

The Bear Flaggers controlled Sonoma until July 1846, when U.S. forces began the occupation of Alta California. Although rumors of war between Mexico and the United States had been circulating through the U.S. naval force off the California coast, the Bear Flag proclamation was the immediate catalyst for the U.S. conquest of the province. Commodore John D. Sloat, commander of the U.S. Pacific squadron, assuming that Frémont had already received news of the Mexican-American War, calculated that blame could be shifted to Frémont if the occupation of California proved premature. Thus, on 7 July 1846, Sloat landed a force of marines at Monterey, initiating the conquest of California.

See alsoCalifornia .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Robert S. Smilie, The Sonoma Mission (1975).

David J. Weber, The Mexican Frontier, 1821–1846: The American Southwest Under Mexico (1982).

Additional Bibliography

Papp, Richard Paul. Bear Flag Country: Legacy of the Revolt: A History of the Towns and Post Offices of Sonoma County, California. Forestville, CA: Analecta, 1996.

Phelps, William Dane. Frémont's Private Navy: The 1846 Journal of Captain William Dane Phelps. Glendale, CA: A.H. Clark Co., 1987.

Walker, Dale L. Bear Flag Rising: The Conquest of California, 1846. New York: Forge, 2000.

Warner, Barbara R. The Men of the California Bear Flag Revolt and Their Heritage. Spokane: Sonoma Valley Historical Society, 1996.

                                    Robert H. Jackson