For More Information:
The National Park Service's Network to Freedom website is implementing a national Underground Railroad program to promote education and preservation of this valuable history.
Their page provides a very educational page on the issue of slavery and anti-slavery.
"Civil Rights, Racial Protest and Anti-Slavery Activism in San Francisco, 1850-1865" by Albert S. Broussard (PDF file, 250 KB)
Visit the San Francisco Bay Seacoast Fortification page to learn how the Spanish, then Mexico and then the United States Army defended this valuable land.
Additional Readings:
The Golden State in the Civil War: Thomas Starr King, the Republican party, and the Birth of Modern California by Glenna Mathews; Cambridge University Press, New York, 2012
The California Gold Rush and the Coming of the War by Leonard L. Richards
The Civil War in the American West by Alvin M. Josephy; Alfred P. Knopff, New York, 1991
"The Velvet Glove: The Army During the Secession Crisis in California, 1860-1861," by Robert J. Chandler in the Journal of the West, Vol. 20, No. 4 (October, 1981)
"An Uncertain Influence: The Role of the Federal Government in California, 1846-1880," by Robert J. Chandler in California History, Vol. 81, No. 3/4 (2003)
"The Chivalry and the Shovelry" by Sandra Hansen in Civil War Times, Vol. 23, No. 8 (December 1984)