A rush to newly discovered gold fields bring in view every trait of
human character. The more vicious standing out in bold relief, and
stamping their impress upon the locality. This phase and most primitive
situation can be accounted for partly by the cupidity of mankind, but
mainly that the first arrivals are chiefly adventurers. Single men,
untrammeled by family cares, traders, saloonists, gamblers, and that
unknown quantity of indefinite quality, ever present, content to allow
others to fix a status of society, provided they do not touch on their
own special interests, and that other, the unscrupulous but active
professional politician, having been dishonored at home, still astute
and determined, seeks new fields for booty, obtain positions of trust
and then consummate peculation and outrage under the forms of law. But
the necessity for the honest administration of the law eventually
asserts itself for the enforcement of order.
It was quaintly said by a governor of Arkansas, that he believed that a
public official should be "reasonably honest." Even should that limited
standard of official integrity be invaded the people with an honest
ballot need not be long in rectifying the evil by legal means. But
cannot something be said in palliation of summary punishment by illegal
means, when it is notorious and indisputable that all machinery for the
execution of the law and the maintenance of order, the judges,
prosecuting attorneys, sheriff and drawers of jurors, and every other of
court of law are in the hands of a despotic cabal who excessively tax,
and whose courts convict all those who oppose them, and exonerate by
trial the most farcical, the vilest criminal, rob and murder in broad
day light, often at the bidding of their protectors. Such a status for a
people claiming to be civilized seems difficult to conceive, yet the
above was not an hypothesis of condition, but the actual one that
existed in California and San Francisco, especially from 1849 to 1855.
Gamblers and dishonest politicians from other States held the
government, and there was no legal redress. Every attempt of the friends
of law and order to elect honest men to office was met at the polls by
vituperation and assault.
One of the means for thinning out the ranks of their opponents at the
polls they found very efficient. It was to scatter their "thugs" along
the line of waiting voters and known opposers, and quickly and covertly
inject the metal part of a shoemaker's awl in the rear but most fleshy
part of his adversary's anatomy, making sitting unpleasant for a time.
There was usually uncertainty as to the point of compass from which the
hint came to leave, but none as to the fact of its arrival. Hence the
reformer did not stand on the order of his going, but generally left the
line. These votes, of course, were not thrown out, for the reason they
never got in. It diminished, but did not abolish the necessity of
stuffing ballot boxes. In the West I once knew an old magistrate named
Scott, noted for his impartiality, but only called Judge Scott by
non-patrons of his court, who had never came within the purview of his
administration, to others he was known as "old Necessity," for it was
said he knew no law. Revolutions, the beneficial results of which will
ever live in the history of mankind, founded as they were on the rights
of human nature and desire for the establishment and conservation of
just government, have ever been the outgrowth of necessity.
Patient in protest of misgovernment, men are prone to "bear the ill they
have" until, like the accumulation of rills on mountain side,
indignation leaps the bounds of legal form and prostrate law to find
their essence and purpose in reconstruction. At the time of which I
write, there seemed nothing left for the friends of law, bereft as they
were of all statutary means for its enforcement, but making a virtue of
this necessity by organizing a "vigilance committee" to wrench by
physical strength that unobtainable by moral right. There had been no
flourish of trumpets, no herald of the impending storm, but the pent up
forces of revolution in inertion, now fierce for action, discarded
restraint. Stern, but quiet had been the preparation for a revolution
which had come, as come it ever will, with such inviting environments.
It was not that normal status, the usual frailties of human nature
described by Hooker as "stains and blemishes that will remain till the
end of the world, what form of government, soever, may take place, they
grow out of man's nature." But in this event the stains and blemishes
were effaced by a common atrocity.
Sitting at the back of my store on Clay street a beautiful Sunday
morning, one of those mornings peculiar to San Francisco, with its balmy
breezes and Italian skies, there seemed an unusual stillness, such a
quiet as precedes the cyclone in tropical climes, only broken
occasionally by silvery peals of the church bells. When suddenly I heard
the plank street resound with the tramp of a multitude. No voice or
other sound was heard but the tramp of soldiery, whose rhythm of sound
and motion is ever a proclamation that thrills by its intensity, whether
conquest or conservation be its mission. I hastened to the door and was
appalled at the sight. In marching column, six or eight abreast, five
thousand men carrying arms with head erect, a resolute determination
born of conviction depicted in linament of feature and expression.
Hastily improvised barracks in large storehouses east of Montgomery
street, fortified by hundreds of gunny sacks filled with sand,
designated "Fort Gunney," was the quarters for committee and soldiers.
The committee immediately dispatched deputies to arrest and bring to the
Fort the leaders of this cabal of misgovernment. The effort to do so
gave striking evidence of the cowardice of assassins. Men whose very
name had inspired terror, and whose appearance in the corridors of
hotels or barrooms hushed into silence the free or merry expression of
their patrons, now fled and hid away "like damned ghosts at the smell of
day" from the popular uprising of the people. The event which
precipitated the movement--the last and crowning act of this
oligarchy--was the shooting of James King, of William, a banker and
publisher of a paper dedicated to the exposure and denunciation of this
ring of dishonest officials and assassins. It was done in broad daylight
on Montgomery Street, the main thoroughfare of the city. Mr. King, of
William County, Maryland, was a terse writer, a gentleman highly
esteemed for integrity and devotion to the best interests of his adopted
State. Many of the gang who had time and opportunity hid on steamers
and sailing vessels to facilitate escape, but quite a number were
arrested and taken to Fort Gunny for trial. One or two of the most
prominent took refuge in the jail--a strong and well-appointed brick
building--where, under the protection of their own hirelings in fancied
security considered themselves safe. A deputation of the committee from
the fort placed a cannon at proper distance from the entrance to the
jail. With a watch in his hand, the captain of the squad gave the
keepers ten minutes to open the doors and deliver the culprits. I well
remember the excitement that increased in intensity as the allotted
period diminished; the fuse lighted, and two minutes to spare; the door
opened; the delivery was made, and the march to Fort Gunny began. A
trial court had been organized at which the testimony was taken, verdict
rendered, and judgment passed. From a beam projecting over an upper
story window, used for hoisting merchandise, the convicted criminals
were executed.
The means resorted to for the purification of the municipality were
drastic, but the ensuing feeling of personal safety and confidence in a
new administration appeared to be ample justification. Much has been
said and written in defense and in condemnation of revolutionary methods
for the reformation of government. It cannot but be apparent that when
it is impossible to execute the virtuous purposes of government, the
machinery having passed to notorious violators, who use it solely for
vicious purpose, there seems nothing left for the votaries of order than
to seize the reins with strong right arm and restore a status of justice
that should be the pride and glory of all civilized people.
But what a paradox is presented in the disregard for law and life today
in our common country, including much in our Southland! It is a sad
commentary on the weakness and inconsistencies of human nature and often
starts the inquiry in many honest minds, as a remedial agency, is a
republican form of government the most conducive in securing the
blessings of liberty of which protection to human life is the chief?
For the actual reverse of conditions that existed in California in those
early days are present in others of our States today. All the machinery
and ability for the just administration of the law are in the hands of
those appointed mainly by the ballot of the intelligence and virtue of
these States, who, if not participants, are quite as censurable for
their "masterly inactivity" in having allowed thousands of the most
defenceless to be lynched by hanging or burning at the stake. That there
have been cases of assault on women by Negroes for which they have been
lynched, it is needless to deny. That they have been lynched for
threatening to do bodily harm to white men for actual assaults on the
Negro wife and daughter is equally true. The first should be denounced
and arrested (escape being impossible) and by forms of law suffer its
extreme penalty. The other for the cause they were murdered should have
the highest admiration and the most sincere plaudits from every honest
man. Is it true that "he is a slave most base whose love of right is for
himself and not for all the race," and that the measure you mete out to
others--the same shall be your portion. All human history verifies these
aphorisms; and that the perpetrators and silent abettors of this
barbarism have sowed to the winds a dire penalty, already being reaped,
is evidenced by disregard of race or color of the victim when mob law is
in the ascendant. And further, as a salvo for their own acts, white men
are allowing bad Negroes to lynch others of their kind without enforcing
the law.
The Negro, apish in his affinity to his prototype in a "lynching bee,"
is beneath contempt.
[Illustration: HON. GEORGE H. WHITE.
Born at Rosedale, North Carolina--Graduate from Howard University in
1877--Practiced Law in all the Courts of his State--Member of House of
Representatives in 1880 and of Senate in 1884--Eight Years Prosecuting
Attorney--Elected Member of the Fifty-fifth Congress as a Republican.
With a Record Unimpeachable.]