Expeditionary· Mexican-American War
American flag raised at Sonoma
The act that formally ended the Bear Flag Republic and brought northern California under regular American military authority.
Sonoma had been the seat of the settlers' brief rising in June, where the improvised Bear Flag was first hoisted. In July, as the Pacific Squadron moved to occupy the province openly, Lieutenant James Revere of the Portsmouth went up to Sonoma and raised the United States flag in place of the settlers' banner, with Marine elements from the ship supporting the ceremony. The gesture absorbed the short-lived republic into the formal American occupation and tied the northern settlements into the conquest that Sloat had begun at Monterey and that the Yerba Buena landing had advanced the same week. No fighting attended the flag-raising. It completed, in the north, the orderly transfer from settler insurrection to recognized military control under the squadron.
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Record no. 328