The entire Aug. 1, 1863, issue of the Los Angeles Star is available online via the California Digital Newspaper Collection.

Buckley shoots Francisco Cruz.

Aug. 1, 1863: The Star publishes the campaign speech of former Gov. John G. Downey (1860-62), the Democratic nominee for governor, calling it “the most important document which has ever emanated from any public man in the state.”

Downey advocates “the welfare of California — the perpetuity of the Federal Union and the preservation of the Constitution with all its guarantees of liberty.”

This is a long campaign speech and I will leave it to Daily Mirror readers whether they care to read the entire address. Here are some nuggets:

“We denounce and unqualifiedly condemn the Emancipation Proclamation of the President of the United States as tending to protract indefinitely civil war, incite servile insurrection and inevitably close the door forever to a restoration of the union of these States.

“We disapprove of all congressional laws tending to substitute a paper currency in California in place of our own metallic circulating medium.

In other words: “The Constitution as it is and the Union as it was.”

Oh yes. “While duty enjoins us to act with kindness toward those of African descent who are already within our borders, sound judgment teaches that it is impolitic to permit the immigration into our state of a race which must ever remain a separate and inferior caste.”