The discovery of gold in California made the territory an immediate focus of migration upon its entry into the United States in 1848. Like all the new territories added with the end of the U.S. War with Mexico, California was a focus of congressional and intellectual arguments over the spread of slavery into the new territory. The Compromise of 1850 eventually allowed California into the union as a free state in return for the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, which enforced the return of self-emancipated slaves to their slaveowners and penalized those who harbored fugitives. The constitution written for the new state asserted specifically that “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, unless for punishment of a crime, shall ever be tolerated.” Yet migrants to the new state in search of riches came from the South as well as the North, and they brought their slaves with them too. Native Americans were enslaved as well, and numerous politicians—including five out of seven of the state’s first supreme court justices—were southerners determined to ignore their own state constitution and allow slavery to thrive in California. Numerous free Blacks saw opportunity in the state and tried their hand at panning for gold as well, but they then faced the possibility of being accused of being runaway slaves and returned to bondage under federal law, particularly if they struck gold.