Casey and Cora were hanged on Thursday, May 22d. On Monday, June 2d, a
meeting of the advocates of Law and Order was held in the Plaza.
Thousands of the Committee members and supporters assembled about the
square. Nothing effective came of it. Governor Johnson had meantime been
prevailed upon by prominent citizens, on the side of Law and Order, to
adopt a course calculated to suppress the Committee. It was too late.
The Law and Order element had organized a military force under the State
militia 1 ws. W. T. Sherman was made General. Governor Johnson issued a
proclamation commanding the State militia to hold themselves in
readiness for duty, and to report to General Sherman. In the city a
force of about three hundred mustered. It was totally inadequate, and
not enough could be expected from the country. In the harbor, in front
of the city, the war-ship John Adams, Commander Bontwell, was anchored.
Commodore Farragut, commandant of this naval station, was at Mare
Island. It was rumored that the Adams would support the authorities in
case of conflict with the Committee. Another rumor was that cannons were
to be placed upon the hills and at points which commanded the city, to
be used if necessary. The excitement continued and increased. A
deputation was sent to Washington, at the instance of the Governor, to
represent the condition of affairs to the President, and prevail upon
him to order the services of the military and naval forces to the
suppression of the Committee and the restoration of law and order. The
deputation took the next steamer and proceeded to the national capital.
President Pierce replied that the federal government had no authority to
interfere until the request came from the State government after the
Legislature had assembled, acted upon the matter, and the State
authorities had exhausted every means to put down the Committee and
failed.
While the excitement was heightened by these rumors and proceedings, an
incident occurred which augmented it to frenzied quality. The armory of
the Law and Order forces was in the capacious brick building, northeast
corner of Dupont and Jackson streets. On Jackson street, near by, a
number of its members and sympathizers were standing in groups. Sterling
Hopkins, the volunteer hangman of Casey, of the Vigilance police, came
up and attempted the arrest of Reub. Maloney, a notorious politician,
whose impudence of speech and reckless ways in partisan devices had made
him an unenviable reputation. His bravery was in his mouth; his mouth
beyond his own control. Judge David S. Terry, then of the State Supreme
Court, interposed to prevent the lawless arrest, and in the struggle he
drew a knife and dangerously wounded Hopkins. In a few minutes word had
reached the Committee headquarters, and the alarm was sounded with
unexampled vigor. The Committee forces, marshalled and led by the
Commander-in-chief, Charles Doane, Major General, marched in quick time
to the scene. Judge Terry had gone to the armory, Maloney and others
with him. The Law and Order troops were less than three hundred strong.
The Vigilance force numbered several thousand. A surrender was demanded.
It would have been folly to resist, and with Terry and Maloney as
prisoners, and the Law and Order troops as prisoners of war, so to say,
the Vigilance forces marched back to their fortified quarters. The
arrest of Judge Terry wrought the excitement to its climax. What would
the Committee do with him? was the question asked by every one. His
residence was temporarily in Sacramento, but Stockton was his home place.
Governor Johnson was devoted to him; David S. Douglass, Secretary of
State, was a bosom friend. Hundreds in the capital city were prepared to
go to any length to rescue him. His thousands of friends in San Joaquin,
everywhere in the San Joaquin Valley, were aroused to the extremity of
desperation. All over the State the feeling for Judge Terry was very
strong. Harm to him would have precipitated a domestic row, which would
have caused immense sacrifice of life, and the destruction of San
Francisco. It would have extended into the interior, and raged there in
bloodshed and devastation. The peaceful way out of the difficulty was
thought the better course, if it could be accomplished. The occasion was
extraordinary, and never contemplated--the exigency beyond immediate
solution. As James Dows, one of the coolest in judgment and wisest in
counsel of the Executive Committee, pertinently described the situation
in the pithy remark, "We started in to hunt cayotes, but we've got a
grizzly bear on our hands, and we don't know what to do with him." The
Executive Committee were not themselves masters of the situation. Behind
them, subject to them and ready to obey their commands on ordinary
occasions, were the 5,000 members of the Committee who carried arms, and
felt themselves superior to even the Executive Committee, if occasion
should happen to test the matter. Of their number nearly one-third were
of foreign nationality, and of these a considerable proportion did not
very well speak English--they were of revolutionary, if not
insurrectionary temper--and had participated in uprisings in their
native land against the government. Many of the native born members were
of similar disposition. It had been resolved by this element of the
Committee, that if Hopkins should die, Terry must hang; and the only
alternative of the Executive Committee would be to order the execution
or spirit him away, at the peril of their own lives. To hang a Justice
of the highest judicial tribunal of the State, was a very serious matter
to contemplate--a most hazardous extremity in any event. If spared from
the fury of their troops, by ordering the execution, their death was
certain at the hands of Judge Terry's avengers. In this quandary, the
Executive Committee were as anxious for a safe way out, without blood or
sacrifice, as any of the friends of Terry. Secretary of State Douglass
came to San Francisco. He persuaded ex-Senator Gwin to interpose on
Terry's behalf. Gwin dispatched Sam. J. Bridges, Appraiser-General, to
Mare Island, to request Commodore Farragut to meet him in San Francisco
on Wednesday, June 25th. On the afternoon of that day, Farragut, Gwin
and two others, on behalf of Law and Order, met four members of the
Executive Committee, in a room on the third floor of the Custom House.
Senator Gwin explained the object of the conference--to secure the
release of Judge Terry. Commodore Farragut then made the proposition:
that he would have a boat sent from the John Adams to a stipulated
landing place on Market street wharf, at midnight; that the Executive
Committee should have Judge Terry escorted to the landing place at that
hour; that the Adams should immediately sail for Mare Island; and that
there he (Commodore Farragut) would exact a promise from Judge Terry,
before he left the vessel, that he would go into the interior of the
State, not visit San Francisco inside of six months, and meantime
neither excite nor encourage any popular feeling against the Vigilance
organization. To this James Dows responded on behalf of the Executive
Committee: that the Committee had already submitted to them a
proposition from Judge Terry himself, to the effect that he would resign
his place upon the Supreme Bench, consent to have the Committee put him
on board the next steamer for Panama, and not return to California
within the succeeding six months. He added that, although this
proposition had been before the Executive Committees twenty hours, no
definite action had yet been agreed upon; the recovery or death of
Hopkins was the paramount factor in the case, because of the intense
feeling against Terry among the larger proportion of the Committee
troops. At this juncture, J. D. Farwell, also one of the Executive
Committee, spoke. He was voluble and vehement. He said that the
Vigilance organization acknowledged no authority to be superior to
itself. "We have," he continued in loud tone and gasconading temper,
"proved ourselves the superiors of the City and County, government, and
of the State government; and if the Federal government dares"--He got
no further. Commodore Farragut sprang to his feet, his eyes flashing
fire, as electric sparks in brilliancy; his face betokening his fierce
indignation; his whole frame seeming a prodigy of the grandeur of human
passion highest wrought--the incarnation of the noblest majesty and
sublimest patriotism. "Stop, sir!" he thundered--Farwell had stopped
and sunk into his seat. And then the heroic Commodore went on to declare
what the duty of a citizen was; that which he should do, if occasion
required; and closed his less than five minutes burst of withering
rebuke and eloquent counsel with an impressive appeal to the other
members of the Committee present. The folly and rashness of Farwell had
thwarted the wise intentions of the parties who invited the conference.
It ended with Commodore Farragut's thrilling words. In a week or more
Hopkins was considered past danger from his wound, and Judge Terry was
thereupon set free. The Committee had now accomplished about all that
had been contemplated at its organization. It had put to death four men.
Of these at least two were not guilty of murder, as the law defines that
crime. As to the other two, the course of justice in the Courts at that
time gave no warrant for the presumption or belief that a fair and just
trial would not have, been given them; that their conviction and the
death penalty would not have followed. It is not too much to assert
that, so far as escape from the penalty of murder is involved, there has
been, any time these ten years, and there is now, in San Francisco,
stronger cause for a Vigilance Committee than there was in 1856. The
administration of the law was better then in general criminal procedure
than it is now. There were fewer heinous crimes then, in the ratio of
population, then the record of any year for the past ten years will
show. In the category of crimes, such as forgery, perjury, embezzlement,
frauds by which large sums of money or valuable property is obtained,
were then infrequent; now of daily occurrence. But in crimes of violence
the record is enormously against this period in comparison with that;
the infliction of penalties by the Courts was then more certain than it
is now. And as to ballot-box stuffing and frauds in elections, surely
the worst ever charged against the manipulators of that period, pales
and sinks into insignificance when compared with the colossal fraud
committed in San Francisco, in 1876, by which not only the will of the
people of the State was overborne, but also the will of the people of
the United States. Yet the perpetrators of the unparalleled fraud have
never been called to account or punished; to the contrary they are
recognized as gentlemen of respectability, even by those who, in 1856,
forcibly and lawlessly, as Vigilance Committee members, banishement for
stuffing ballot-boxes to secure merely a local advantage by the success
of a ward ticket. Straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel never had
more conspicuous illustration. And the burning fact remains incredible
that among the members of the Executive Committee were some who had
themselves obtained office by bribery and corruption, by calling into
play the stuffing of ballot-boxes, and by all the wicked and infamous
means which were at that time practiced. Another member was, as I have
stated before, a felon who had served his time in the Ohio State Prison;
another, still living and a highly respectable church member who
professes holy horror of fraud, had in early years colluded with his
brother to get possession of valuable wharf property, of which the
brother was agent and care-taker by appointment of the owner, who had
returned to his home in the East, to be gone a year. The scheme of these
brothers was a fraud of villainous conception, but it was clumsy and
therefore failed. On his return the Courts restored the property to the
rightful owner. I might go on and point out other members of the
Executive Committee who had committed deeds which, had they been duly
brought to answer in the Courts, would have put upon them the felon's
brand and the convict's stripes, in some instances; in others, pilloried
them as rogues and swindlers, unworthy of trust, unfit for respectable
association.
But were one to trace the career of several others of that body, the
tracks would be through the sloughs and conduits of shame and turpitude,
rascality and crime, and finally to self-murder. It was as bad--it
could hardly have been worse, except in numbers, proportioned to the
greater numerical force--in the Vigilance rank and file. It is against
reason and sense to expect that in a body of five thousand men, there
will be none who are not good and honorable; that there will be no base
and disreputable characters, no rogues and scoundrels. Therefore it was
not strange that of the Committee's entire force, so many were of the
vile stamp, notorious gold-dust "operators," who robbed the honest miner
of his "Pile," by bare-faced fraud; mock auction sharpers, high-toned
frauds and swindlers of low degree; and others who neither toiled nor
spun, yet feasted and fattened. All these found in the ranks of the
Committee their own security from the incarceration and banishment
enforced in the case of so many less culpable than themselves. But the
onus rests upon the Executive Committee--they constituted the head and
front of the grave offending of the very laws they usurped; they were
the counselors and administrators, the accusers and arbiters, of the
fate of their powerless victims. Their's was a tribunal organized to
convict--they were the prosecutors, the jurors, the judges, from whose
fiat of condemnation there was no appeal; and defense was not allowed.
Arrest meant death or banishment. The accused were prosecuted by the
promoter or participant with them in the charged offence or crime, and
convicted by the verdict in which some who had been accessories were
most strenuous for conviction. It is a rule of law that the accuser
shall come into Court with clean hands.
Ignoring this just rule and in defiance of law, in usurping the seat of
justice, the Executive Committee gave opportunity to several of its
members to "compound for sins they were inclined to, by damning those
who had no mind to;" to sit in judgment on those whose testimony or
confession in a Court of Justice would have turned the tables and
wrought the conviction of their accusers, prosecutors and judges. But
these strictures do not apply to the greater number of the Executive
Committee--to only about a half dozen of its members. The Committee was
composed mainly of honorable men, deservedly high in the community, in
every walk and relation of life. They doubtless acted from a
conscientious sense of duty, and neither intended usurpation of the law,
violence to justice, nor any wrong whatever. They believed it incumbent
upon them to reform what they regarded as the maladministration of
public affairs, and to cleanse the city of the corruption which
existed--as it has existed and always will exist in populous communities,
agreeably to the sentiment of Jefferson, that "cities are scabs upon the
body politic." And with the best of motives they believed that the
organization of the Vigilance committee was the better and surer
remedial agent to these wholesome and commendable purposes. But their
action was akin to that of the thousands of citizens who refrain from
voting at primary elections, where the seed is planted which will
produce its kind in the fruiting on the day of the final and determining
election, and subsequently complain of the incompetency or dishonesty of
the incumbents whose election is largely attributable to the neglect of
these very citizens, to make it their special care that only good and
qualified and worthy men shall be elected at the primaries.
I shall now pass to the conduct of the Executive Committee in their
arrests, their domiciling visits, and their enforced banishments. Among
their victims in the category, banished from the State with the penalty
of death if they returned to it, were Charles P. Duane, Billy Mulligan,
Billy Carr, Reub. Maloney, Bill Lewis, Martin Gallagher, Woolley
Kearney, Yankee Sullivan the pugilist, and John Crowe. These, with the
exception of Charley Duane, were all Democrats, devoted to Broderick.
Duane had been a Whig, was opposed to the Democrats, yet felt kindly
toward Broderick. On the other side--they could not be called
Republicans, but were always against the Democrats, and had at last
affiliated with the Know-Nothings--were men as notorious as any named
above, and of really worse character; but not one of these did the
Committee molest. They were either received into its military ranks or
were permitted to remain in the city. It was a noticeable
discrimination; no reason for it was apparent or expressed on the part
of the Executive Committee.
Charley Duane was a man of extraordinary character in his line of life.
He had made reputation as a "handy man in a fight" and a very hard one
to master before he came of age, in New York. He came to San Francisco
early in 1850, in company with Tom Hyer, the champion prize-fighter. He
had got the sobriquet of "Dutch Charley" in New York, notwithstanding
his Irish blood. Hyer euphonized this into "German Charles." Hyer
returned to New York, Duane remained here. He was a zealous, very active
Whig, an equally zealous and active fireman; and was once elected Chief
Engineer of the Department, against George Hossefross. Subsequently he
was appointed one of the Sheriff's deputies. He had killed a Frenchman
in a difficulty, was tried for the deed and acquitted. No charge of
dishonest nature--theft, fraud, swindling, embezzlement, or anything of
the kind, was ever brought against him. But he was somewhat prone to
fight, and this was the worst that could be charged upon him. I am not
aware that he was ever accused of crookedness in elections except in his
zeal to secure the election of Delos Lake, Whig, as District Judge, in
1851. When the Vigilance Committee was organized, in 1856, he openly and
boldly denounced it, and was an ardent supporter of the Law and Order
side. On what charge he was arrested and banished I have never been able
to ascertain. The manner of his arrest added no laurels to the parties
who conspired to effect it and the participants in the arrest. It bore
the tokens of jealousy and spite sprung from his election years before
as Chief Engineer, more than of any present cause. He was entrapped,
seized, hauled to the committee cells and banished, nevertheless.
Billy Mulligan was the incarnation of fearlessness, fight and
frolic--dangerous frolic it was sometimes to any he did not like. Of low
stature, slight frame, active as a cat, the expression of a
bull-terrier, and as, quick to an, encounter, Mulligan was not a man to
pick a quarrel with--the other party invariably second best. He had
served under Colonel Jack Hays in his troop of Texan Rangers, and
Colonel Hays gave the praise that he was one of the bravest, pluckiest,
most daring and desperate fighters he had ever had in his command. Billy
had his full share of the vices of drinking, gambling, fighting and a
fast life. He was active in politics and "went in to win." But he had
the virtue not to lie; and he would not betray any confidence reposed in
him, turn faithless to any promise he made. He was bold, frank, manly,
magnanimous except towards those he despised as well as hated, and to
these he was implacable and merciless. The world's wealth couldn't
seduce or bribe him from the support of the men he liked, no matter how
poor they might be; and he would on every occasion interpose to protect
the helpless and defenseless from the violence or maltreatment of
others. Crime of any degree was never alleged to his account. He had
faithfully served as collector of moneys for the County Treasurer two
years, and fully accounted for every dollar that he received. Beyond his
fighting bouts and his conduct in elections--about the same as prevails
now--there was nothing to warrant his arrest and banishment. But the
terrors of Fort Gunny Bags did not intimidate Mulligan. One of the
committee remarked to me, on the occasion of his death by the rifle shot
of a policeman while he was wild with delirium tremens, that he was the
only prisoner ever put in the committee cells who did not "weaken." He
was a character the community could well spare; but he had given the
committee no offence to justify his banishment.
Yankee Sullivan's character is notorious. He was a professional
prize-fighter--ready to try conclusions in the fistic ring with any in
the world; but he feared a pistol or a knife as an ordinary man would
fear a blow from his powerful arm. He had helped Mulligan and Casey in
some of their election operations, and for that he was arrested. There
was no charge of any other nature than this and his fighting quality to
warrant his arrest. His courage or spirit broke down while confined in
the close cell, and one morning his lifeless body was found stiff in the
cell. He had opened a vein in his arm and bled to death. The rumor at
the time was--and it is still believed--that he was driven to the deed
by the remark made by one of the Vigilance guards outside the cell, but
spoken in tone calculated for Sullivan to hear it, that he was to be
hanged the next morning. To escape the ignominy of such a death, he
anticipated it by his own hand.
Martin Gallagher and Billy Carr were boatmen, and active in party
manipulations in the interest of Mr. Broderick in the First Ward. They
were tough men to handle in a fight, and usually forced their own way in
anything they undertook. With Mulligan they often sat as delegates in
city, county and State conventions of the Democracy--together with
several other of their associates and kind, who are still more or less
prominent in city politics--some of them Democrats, some Republicans.
Bill Lewis was sent out of the country none too soon. He was a great,
powerful, terrorizing fellow, desperate and unscrupulous, and one to
beware of. He took active part in politics, and was terrible in a
"scrimmage. Of his redeeming, traits I never obtained information.
Doubtless he had some. Unlest it was on account of Woolley Kearney's
facial configuration, I have never been able to divine why the Committee
banished him. He was the homeliest, ugliess looking mortal I ever saw.
Had the Committee compelled him to go as the Veiled Prophet, with a
gunny sack instead of silver veil, there would have been at least the
essence of justice in their action. His battered, flattened, twisted,
gnarled nose, was at every point of the compass, and more hideous at
every turn. Why he didn't blow it off when he blowed it, blow'd if any
could conjecture. His eyes were squinted, his mouth a monstrous
curiosity. Every feature seemed in revolt at that nose. It would have
struck awe to the spirit of an Ogre, Woolley was no doubt ready and
willing to do any crooked deed, but none who knew him would employ him
on any mission in which skill and fidelity were required. His banishment
had, perhaps, a good effect upon the unborn generation, whose parents
had not then entered the matrimonial state. Whatever other purpose it
subserved, except to show to other communities the "latest novelty" from
California, is the unfathomable conundrum. John Crowe was a noisy,
blatant, meddlesome fellow, the keeper of a livery stable on Kearny
street, and a fierce denouncer of the Committee. There was nothing else
to his discredit, so far as I could learn at the time. Reub. Maloney was
a compound character--a good deal of a knave, something of the man in
his fidelity to his friends, reckless of everything except his own
safety in any transaction calculated to damage the cause to which he was
opposed; indifferent to what might happen to an adversary, He was a most
valiant "brave"--with his mouth; the noble quality had never penetrated
his cuticle. His passion when bloviating was furious and terrible to
look upon; but there was nothing to it more than sound and pretense. His
face would redden to congestive hue, his voice swell to sonorous volume;
but the simple kindly invitation in quiet tone: "Never mind, Reub, come
and take a drink," would unbind him in a moment, and coming up relaxed,
smiling to "smile," he would gulf down the dram, and with stated manner
remark, "Well, boys, I said about the right thing, didn't I?" He was the
faithful henchman of General James A. McDougall; hated Senator Gwin, and
between the two preferred Broderick.
Maloney had been a drummer for a large importing house in New York, his
field of labor in the South. He had also been employed in the western
states, and endowed with good address, portly figure, much volubility,
unfailing check and invincible assurance, he successfully pushed his
way. He came to California during the fall of '47, located in Stockton,
subsequently in San Francisco, and took up "Politics" as his means of
support. To gain his point in a partisan deal, he would do anything that
was not personally dangerous. He cared for ends, and was utterly
regardless of means. He was ceaselessly putting up jobs to promote the
cause he advocated, and to break down that of the antagonists. With the
courage of Babadil he had the honesty of Ancient Pistol, the habits of
Falstaff, and the temptations of Anthony would have been to him as
pastures green to the hungering herd. Poor old Reub, his incarceration
in the Vigilance cells nearly frightened the life out of him, and his
release even under banishment, was as the open door to the caged wild
bird. He never did much harm to any cause or party that he opposed. The
Committee would have better spared him and exiled many who were
worse--some from their own ranks.