Commentary: Early California lawmakers also preached #resistance — but against immigration

When it became law 150 years ago in July 1868, the 14th Amendment was as controversial as it was transformative. Over night, the amendment turned 4 million former slaves into citizens and, just as quickly, drew howls of protest from their old masters in the South, who made opposition to the new law part of a broader campaign against the federal government. Resistance to the amendment also came from a seemingly unlikely source at the far end of the continent.

California was the only former free state to refuse to ratify the amendment in the 1860s. Although three