A SURPRISING FATHER OF SAN FRANCISCO
President James K. Polk’s journal entry of Jan. 20, 1849, describes how during a Cabinet meeting earlier that day members read dispatches sent east by U.S. officials in the unorganized territory of California. “Several communications represent the increased richness of the gold region recently discovered in California,” the president noted. One dispatch Polk mentions came from a “Mr. Larkin, formerly U.S. consul at Monterey.” When acting as U.S. consul to Mexico prior to the Mexican War, Thomas O. Larkin had instructions from the Polk administration to support insurrection against the Mexican government but not provoke any such activity.
Prior to the war the president had made
