1855 was a time of tremendous change in Stockton California. The political scene in California at this time was a mess. There was an emergence of two political parties, The Republican party and the Know Nothing or the American Party. The Whig party was beginning to become completely irrelevant and would soon cease to exist. The Democratic party that dominated the politics of California up to this point was experiencing a fractionalizing into two or three parties throughout the state that competed with one another for the same voting base. Many historians agree that this fracturing of the democratic party in the state of California was due to the splitting over issues at a national scale. California was compromised of recent emigrants and
