While stopping at La Paz, on the southeast corner of Baja California, and San José del Cabo, at the southern tip of the peninsula, Commander Samuel F. Du Pont, commander of the second-class sloop-of-war Cyane secured a promise of neutrality from Colonel Miranda.
Receiving this report of weakness from Du Pont, returning to San Francisco from the blockade in October, Stockton on February 2, 1847, ordered Commander John B. Montgomery on the first-class sloop-of-war Portsmouth to reestablish the blockade at Mazatlán and to raise the United States flag at San José del Cabo, La Paz, Pichilinque and Loreto.
On April 14, Colonel Miranda surrendered La Paz and in effect all of Baja California to the Americans.
A committee of residents soon afterward signed articles of capitulation which granted them United States citizen rights and the retention of their own officials and laws, as had been offered by the Americans before in Alta California.
[3] On November 16, 1847, Mexican forces under Manuel Pineda, made a sudden assault on the U.S. Army garrison at La Paz but failed to take the town.