Gold!!!
The California Gold Rush (1848–1855) began on January 24, 1848, when gold was discovered by James Marshall. News of the discovery soon spread, resulting in some 300,000 men, women, and children coming to California from the rest of the United States and abroad.
These early gold-seekers, called "forty-niners," traveled to California by sailing ship and in covered wagons across the continent, often facing substantial hardships on the trip. At first, the prospectors retrieved the gold from streams and riverbeds using simple techniques, such as panning, and later developed more sophisticated methods of gold recovery that were adopted around the world. Gold, worth billions of today's dollars, was recovered, which lead to great wealth for a few; many, however, earned very little more than they started with.
Freedom from Slavery
The 1865 Freedman's Bureau Act recognized the need of free blacks for land ownership. However, the Southern legislatures during the "Redemption" period passed laws forbidding black land ownership. As a result of white oppression, blacks formed self-help groups. Whites, who feared a possible insurrection and "payback" for years of slavery, formed hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, making already bad conditions even worse for black southerners.
Some began to feel that true freedom could be gained only through emigration out of the South. The exodus had no leader, no Moses who urged them to emigrate westward. There were two men however who were important to the general emigration of blacks westward from the Louisiana and Tennessee regions. They were Henry Adams and Pap Singleton.