The Vigilantes of California--_The Greatest Vigilante Movement of the
World_--_History of the California "Stranglers" and Their Methods_.
The world will never see another California. Great gold stampedes there
may be, but under conditions far different from those of 1849.
Transportation has been so developed, travel has become so swift and
easy, that no section can now long remain segregated from the rest of
the world. There is no corner of the earth which may not now be reached
with a celerity impossible in the days of the great rush to the Pacific
Coast. The whole structure of civilization, itself based upon
transportation, goes swiftly forward with that transportation, and the
tent of the miner or adventurer finds immediately erected by its side
the temple of the law.
It was not thus in those early days of our Western history. The law was
left far behind by reason of the exigencies of geography and of
wilderness travel. Thousands of honest men pressed on across the plains
and mountains inflamed, it is true, by the madness of the lust for gold,
but carrying at the outset no wish to escape from the watch-care of the
law. With them went equal numbers of those eager to escape all
restraints of society and law, men intending never to aid in the
uprearing of the social system in new wild lands. Both these elements,
the law-loving and the law-hating, as they advanced _pari-passu_ farther
and farther from the staid world which they had known, noticed the
development of a strange phenomenon: that law, which they had left
behind them, waned in importance with each passing day. The standards of
the old home changed, even as customs changed. A week's journey from the
settlements showed the argonaut a new world. A month hedged it about to
itself, alone, apart, with ideas and values of its own and independent
of all others. A year sufficed to leave that world as distinct as though
it occupied a planet all its own. For that world the divine fire of the
law must be re-discovered, evolved, nay, evoked fresh from chaos even as
the savage calls forth fire from the dry and sapless twigs of the
wilderness.
In the gold country all ideas and principles were based upon new
conditions. Precedents did not exist. Man had gone savage again, and it
was the beginning. Yet this savage, willing to live as a savage in a
land which was one vast encampment, was the Anglo-Saxon savage, and
therefore carried with him that chief trait of the American character,
the principle that what a man earns--not what he steals, but what he
earns--is his and his alone. This principle sowed in ground forbidding
and unpromising was the seed of the law out of which has sprung the
growth of a mighty civilization fit to be called an empire of its own.
The growth and development of law under such conditions offered
phenomena not recorded in the history of any other land or time.
In the first place, and even while in transit, men organized for the
purpose of self-protection, and in this necessary act law-abiding and
criminal elements united. After arriving at the scenes of the gold
fields, such organization was forgotten; even the parties that had
banded together in the Eastern states as partners rarely kept together
for a month after reaching the region where luck, hazard and
opportunity, inextricably blended, appealed to each man to act for
himself and with small reference to others. The first organizations of
the mining camps were those of the criminal element. They were presently
met by the organization of the law and order men. Hard upon the miners'
law came the regularly organized legal machinery of the older states,
modified by local conditions, and irretrievably blended with a politics
more corrupt than any known before or since. Men were busy in picking up
raw gold from the earth, and they paid small attention to courts and
government. The law became an unbridled instrument of evil. Judges of
the courts openly confiscated the property of their enemies, or
sentenced them with no reference to the principles of justice, with as
great disregard for life and liberty as was ever known in the
Revolutionary days of France. Against this manner of government
presently arose the organizations of the law-abiding, the
justice-loving, and these took the law into their own stern hands. The
executive officers of the law, the sheriffs and constables, were in
league to kill and confiscate; and against these the new agency of the
actual law made war, constituting themselves into an arm of essential
government, and openly called themselves Vigilantes. In turn criminals
used the cloak of the Vigilantes to cover their own deeds of lawlessness
and violence. The Vigilantes purged themselves of the false members, and
carried their own title of opprobrium, the "stranglers," with unconcern
or pride. They grew in numbers, the love of justice their lodestone,
until at one time they numbered more than five thousand in the city of
San Francisco alone, and held that community in a grip of lawlessness,
or law, as you shall choose to term it. They set at defiance the chief
executive of the state, erected an armed castle of their own, seized
upon the arms of the militia, defied the government of the United States
and even the United States army! They were, as you shall choose to call
them, criminals, or great and noble men. Seek as you may to-day, you
will never know the full roster of their names, although they made no
concealment of their identity; and no one, to this day, has ever been
able to determine who took the first step in their organization. They
began their labors in California at a time when there had been more than
two thousand murders--five hundred in one year--and not five legal
executions. Their task included the erection of a fit structure of the
law, and, incidentally, the destruction of a corrupt and unworthy
structure claiming the title of the law. In this strange, swift panorama
there is all the story of the social system, all the picture of the
building of that temple of the law which, as Americans, we now revere,
or, at times, still despise and desecrate.
At first the average gold seeker concerned himself little with law,
because he intended to make his fortune quickly and then hasten back
East to his former home; yet, as early as the winter of 1849, there was
elected a legislature which met at San José, a Senate of sixteen members
and an Assembly of thirty-six. In this election the new American vote
was in evidence. The miners had already tired of the semi-military phase
of their government, and had met and adopted a state constitution. The
legislature enacted one hundred and forty new laws in two months, and
abolished all former laws; and then, satisfied with its labors, it left
the enforcement of the laws, in the good old American fashion, to
whomsoever might take an interest in the matter.[D] This is our custom
even to-day. Our great cities of the East are practically all governed,
so far as they are governed at all, by civic leagues, civic federations,
citizens' leagues, business men's associations--all protests at
non-enforcement of the law. This protest in '49 and on the Pacific coast
took a sterner form.
[Footnote D: Tuthill: "History of California."]
At one time the city of San Francisco had three separate and distinct
city councils, each claiming to be the only legal one. In spite of the
new state organization, the law was much a matter of go as you please.
Under such conditions it was no wonder that outlawry began to show its
head in bold and well-organized forms. A party of ruffians, who called
themselves the "Hounds," banded together to run all foreigners out of
the rich camps, and to take their diggings over for themselves. A number
of Chileans were beaten or shot, and their property was confiscated or
destroyed. This was not in accordance with the saving grace of American
justice, which devoted to a man that which he had earned. A counter
organization was promptly formed, and the "Hounds" found themselves
confronted with two hundred "special constables," each with a good
rifle. A mass meeting sat as a court, and twenty of the "Hounds" were
tried, ten of them receiving sentences that never were enforced, but
which had the desired effect. So now, while far to the eastward the
Congress was hotly arguing the question of the admission of California
as a state, she was beginning to show an interest in law and justice
when aroused thereto.
It was difficult material out of which to build a civilized community.
The hardest population of the entire world was there; men savage or
civilized by tradition, heathen or Christian once at least, but now all
Californian. Wealth was the one common thing. The average daily return
in the work of mining ranged from twenty to thirty dollars, and no man
might tell when his fortune might be made by a blow of a pick. Some
nuggets of gold weighing twenty-five pounds were discovered. In certain
diggings men picked pure gold from the rock crevices with a spoon or a
knife point. As to values, they were guessed at, the only currency being
gold dust or nuggets. Prodigality was universal. All the gamblers of the
world met in vulture concourse. There was little in the way of home; of
women almost none. Life was as cheap as gold dust. Let those who liked
bother about statehood and government and politics; the average man was
too busy digging and spending gold to trouble over such matters. The
most shameless men were those found in public office. Wealth and
commerce waxed great, but law and civilization languished. The times
were ripening for the growth of some system of law which would offer
proper protection to life and property. The measure of this need may be
seen from the figures of the production of gold. From 1848 to 1856
California produced between five hundred and six hundred million dollars
in virgin gold. What wonder the courts were weak; and what wonder the
Vigilantes became strong!
There were in California three distinct Vigilante movements, those of
1849, 1851, and 1856, the earliest applying rather to the outlying
mining camps than to the city of San Francisco. In 1851, seeing that the
courts made no attempt to punish criminals, a committee was formed which
did much toward enforcing respect for the principles of justice, if not
of law. On June 11 they hanged John Jenkins for robbing a store. A month
later they hanged James Stuart for murdering a sheriff. In August of the
same summer they took out of jail and hanged Whittaker and McKenzie,
Australian ex-convicts, whom they had tried and sentenced, but who had
been rescued by the officers of the law. Two weeks later this committee
disbanded. They paid no attention to the many killings that were going
on over land titles and the like, but confined themselves to punishing
men who had committed intolerable crimes. Theft was as serious as
murder, perhaps more so, in the creed of the time and place. The list of
murders reached appalling dimensions. The times were sadly out of joint.
The legislature was corrupt, graft was rampant--though then unknown by
that name--and the entire social body was restless, discontented, and
uneasy. Politics had become a fine art. The judiciary, lazy and corrupt,
was held in contempt. The dockets of the courts were full, and little
was done to clear them effectively. Criminals did as they liked and went
unwhipped of justice. It was truly a day of violence and license.
Once more the sober and law-loving men of California sent abroad word,
and again the Vigilantes assembled. In 1853 they hanged two Mexicans for
horse stealing, and also a bartender who had shot a citizen near Shasta.
At Jackson they hanged another Mexican for horse stealing, and at
Volcano, in 1854, they hanged a man named Macy for stabbing an old and
helpless man. In this instance vengeance was very swift, for the
murderer was executed within half an hour after his deed. The haste
caused certain criticism when, in the same month one Johnson was hanged
for stabbing a man named Montgomery, at Iowa Hill, who later recovered.
At Los Angeles three men were sentenced to death by the local court, but
the Supreme Court issued a stay for two of them, Brown and Lee. The
people asserted that all must die together, and the mayor of the city
was of the same mind. The third man, Alvitre, was hanged legally on
January 12, 1855. On that day the mayor resigned his office to join the
Vigilantes. Brown was taken out of jail and hanged in spite of the
decision of the Supreme Court. The people were out-running the law. That
same month they hanged another murderer for killing the treasurer of
Tuolumne county. In the following month they hanged three more cattle
thieves in Contra Costa county, and followed this by hanging a horse
thief in Oakland. A larger affair threatened in the following summer,
when thirty-six Mexicans were arrested for killing a party of Americans.
For a time it was proposed to hang all thirty-six, but sober counsel
prevailed and only three were hanged; this after formal jury trial.
Unknown bandits waylaid and killed Isaac B. Wall and T. S. Williamson of
Monterey, and, that same month U. S. Marshal William H. Richardson was
shot by Charles Cora in the streets of San Francisco. The people
grumbled. There was no certainty that justice would ever reach these
offenders. The reputation of the state was ruined, not by the acts of
the Vigilantes, but by those of unscrupulous and unprincipled men in
office and upon the bench. The government was run by gamblers, ruffians,
and thugs. The good men of the state began to prepare for a general
movement of purification and the installation of an actual law. The
great Vigilante movement of 1856 was the result.
The immediate cause of this last organization was the murder of James
King, editor of the _Bulletin_, by James P. Casey. Casey, after shooting
King, was hurried off to jail by his own friends, and there was
protected by a display of military force. King lingered for six days
after he was shot, and the state of public opinion was ominous. Cora,
who had killed Marshal Richardson, had never been punished, and there
seemed no likelihood that Casey would be. The local press was divided.
The religious papers, the _Pacific_ and the _Christian Advocate_, both
openly declared that Casey ought to be hanged. The clergy took up the
matter sternly, and one minister of the Gospel, Rev. J. A. Benton, of
Sacramento, gave utterance to this remarkable but well-grounded
statement: "_A people can be justified in recalling delegated power and
resuming its exercise._" Before we hasten to criticize sweepingly under
the term "mob law" such work as this of the Vigilantes, it will be well
for us to weigh that utterance, and to apply it to conditions of our own
times; to-day is well-nigh as dangerous to American liberties as were
the wilder days of California.
Now, summoned by some unknown command, armed men appeared in the streets
of San Francisco, twenty-four companies in all, with perhaps fifty men
in each company. The Vigilantes had organized again. They brought a
cannon and placed it against the jail gate, and demanded that Casey be
surrendered to them. There was no help for it, and Casey went away
handcuffed, to face a court where political influence would mean
nothing. An hour later the murderer Cora was taken from his cell, and
was hastened away to join Casey in the headquarters building of the
Vigilantes. A company of armed and silent men marched on each side of
the carriage containing the prisoner. The two men were tried in formal
session of the Committee, each having counsel, and all evidence being
carefully weighed.
King died on May 20, 1856, and on May 22d was buried with popular
honors, a long procession of citizens following the body to the
cemetery. A popular subscription was started, and in a brief time over
thirty thousand dollars was raised for the benefit of his widow and
children. When the long procession filed back into the city, it was to
witness, swinging from a beam projecting from a window of Committee
headquarters, the bodies of Casey and Cora.
The Committee now arrested two more men, not for a capital crime, but
for one which lay back of a long series of capital crimes--the stuffing
of ballot-boxes and other election frauds. These men were Billy Mulligan
and the prize-fighter known as Yankee Sullivan. Although advised that he
would have a fair trial and that the death penalty would not be passed
upon him, Yankee Sullivan committed suicide in his cell. The entire
party of lawyers and judges were arrayed against the Committee,
naturally enough. Judge Terry, of the Supreme Court, issued a writ of
_habeas corpus_ for Mulligan. The Committee ignored the sheriff who was
sent to serve the writ. They cleared the streets in front of
headquarters, established six cannon in front of their rooms, put loaded
swivels on top of the roof and mounted a guard of a hundred riflemen.
They brought bedding and provisions to their quarters, mounted a huge
triangle on the roof for a signal to their men all over the city,
arranged the interior of their rooms in the form of a court and, in
short, set themselves up as the law, openly defying their own Supreme
Court of the state. So far from being afraid of the vengeance of the
law, they arrested two more men for election frauds, Chas. P. Duane and
"Woolly" Kearney. All their prisoners were guarded in cells within the
headquarters building.
The opposition to the Committee now organized in turn under the name of
the "Law and Order Men," and held a public meeting. This was numerously
attended by members of the Vigilante Committee, whose books were now
open for enrollment. Not even the criticism of their own friends stayed
these men in their resolution. They went even further. Governor Johnson
issued a proclamation to them to disband and disperse. They paid no more
attention to this than they had to Judge Terry's writ of _habeas
corpus_. The governor threatened them with the militia, but it was not
enough to frighten them. General Sherman resigned his command in the
state militia, and counseled moderation at so dangerous a time. Many of
the militia turned in their rifles to the Committee, which got other
arms from vessels in the harbor, and from carelessly guarded armories.
Halting at no responsibility, a band of the Committee even boarded a
schooner which was carrying down a cargo of rifles from the governor to
General Howard at San Francisco, and seized the entire lot. Shortly
after this they confiscated a second shipment which the governor was
sending down from Sacramento in the same way; thus seizing property of
the federal government. If there was such a crime as high treason, they
committed it, and did so openly and without hesitation. Governor
Johnson contented himself with drawing up a statement of the situation,
which was sent down to President Pierce at Washington, with the request
that he instruct naval officers on the Pacific station to supply arms to
the State of California, which had been despoiled by certain of its
citizens. President Pierce turned over the matter to his
attorney-general, Caleb Cushing, who rendered an opinion saying that
Governor Johnson had not yet exhausted the state remedies, and that the
United States government could not interfere.
Little remained for the Committee to do to show its resolution to act as
the State _pro tempore_. That little it now proceeded to do by
practically suspending the Supreme Court of California. In making an
arrest of a witness wanted by the Committee, Sterling A. Hopkins, one of
the policemen retained for work by the Committee, was stabbed in the
throat by Judge Terry, of the Supreme Bench, who was very bitter against
all members of the Committee. It was supposed that the wound would prove
fatal, and at once the Committee sounded the call for general assembly.
The city went into two hostile camps, Terry and his friend, Dr. Ashe,
taking refuge in the armory where the "Law and Order" faction kept
their arms. The members of the Vigilante Committee besieged this place,
and presently took charge of Terry and Ashe, as prisoners. Then the
scouts of the Committee went out after the arms of all the armories
belonging to the governor and the "Law and Order" men who supported him,
the lawyers and politicians who felt that their functions were being
usurped. Two thousand rifles were taken, and the opposing party was left
without arms. The entire state, so to speak, was now in the hands of the
"Committee of Vigilance," a body of men, quiet, law-loving,
law-enforcing, but of course technically traitors and criminals. The
parallel of this situation has never existed elsewhere in American
history.
Had Hopkins died the probability is that Judge Terry would have been
hanged by the Committee, but fortunately he did not die. Terry lay a
prisoner in the cell assigned him at the Committee's rooms for seven
weeks, by which time Hopkins had recovered from the wound given him by
Terry. The case became one of national interest, and tirades against
"the Stranglers" were not lacking; but the Committee went on enrolling
men. And it did not open its doors for its prisoners, although appeal
was made to Congress in Terry's behalf--an appeal which was referred to
the Committee on Judiciary, and so buried.
Terry was finally released, much to the regret of many of the Committee,
who thought he should have been punished. The executive committee called
together the board of delegates, and issued a statement showing that
death and banishment were the only penalties optional with them. Death
they could not inflict, because Hopkins had recovered; and banishment
they thought impractical at that time, as it might prolong discussion
indefinitely, and enforce a longer term in service than the Committee
cared for. It was the earnest wish of all to disband at the first moment
that they considered their state and city fit to take care of
themselves, and the sacredness of the ballot-box again insured. To
assure this latter fact, they had arrayed themselves against the federal
government, as certainly they had against the state government.
The Committee now hanged two more murderers--Hetherington and Brace--the
former a gambler from St. Louis, the latter a youth of New York
parentage, twenty-one years of age, but hardened enough to curse
volubly upon the scaffold. By the middle of August, 1856, they had no
more prisoners in charge, and were ready to turn the city over to its
own system of government. Their report, published in the following fall,
showed they had hanged four men and banished many others, besides
frightening out of the country a large criminal population that did not
tarry for arrest and trial.
If opinion was divided to some extent in San Francisco, where those
stirring deeds occurred, the sentiment of the outlying communities of
California was almost a unit in favor of the Vigilantes, and their
action received the sincere flattery of imitation, as half a score of
criminals learned to their sorrow on impromptu scaffolds. There was no
large general organization in any other community, however. After a time
some of the banished men came back, and many damage suits were argued
later in the courts; but small satisfaction came to those claimants, and
few men who knew of the deeds of the "Committee of Vigilance" ever cared
to discuss them. Indeed it was practically certain that any man who ever
served on a Western vigilance committee finished his life with sealed
lips. Had he ventured to talk of what he knew he would have met
contempt or something harsher.
A political capital was made out of the situation in San Francisco. The
"Committee of Vigilance" felt that it had now concluded its work and was
ready to go back to civil life. On August 18, 1856, the Committee
marched openly in review through the streets of the city, five thousand
one hundred and thirty-seven men in line, with three companies of
artillery, eighteen cannon, a company of dragoons, and a medical staff
of forty odd physicians. There were in this body one hundred and fifty
men who had served in the old Committee in 1851. After the parade the
men halted, the assemblage broke up into companies, the companies into
groups; and thus, quietly, with no vaunting of themselves and no
concealment of their acts, there passed away one of the most singular
and significant organizations of American citizens ever known. They did
this with the quiet assertion that if their services were again needed,
they would again assemble; and they printed a statement covering their
actions in detail, showing to any fair-minded man that what they had
done was indeed for the good of the whole community, which had been
wronged by those whom it had elected to power, those who had set
themselves up as masters where they had been chosen as servants.
The "Committee of Vigilance" of San Francisco was made up of men from
all walks of life and all political parties. It had any amount of money
at its command that it required, for its members were of the best and
most influential citizens. It maintained, during its existence, quarters
unique in their way, serving as arms-room, trial court, fortress, and
prison. It was not a mob, but a grave and orderly band of men, and its
deliberations were formal and exact, its labors being divided among
proper sub-committees and boards. The quarters were kept open day and
night, always ready for swift action, if necessary. It had an executive
committee, which upon occasion conferred with a board of delegates
composed of three men from each subdivision of the general body. The
executive committee consisted of thirty-three members, and its decision
was final; but it could not enforce a death penalty except on a
two-thirds vote of those present. It had a prosecuting attorney, and it
tried no prisoner without assigning to him competent counsel. It had
also a police force, with a chief of police and a sheriff with several
deputies. In short, it took over the government, and was indeed the
government, municipal and state in one. Recent as was its life, its
deeds to-day are well-nigh forgotten. Though opinion may be still
divided in certain quarters, California need not be ashamed of this
"Committee of Vigilance." She should be proud of it, for it was largely
through its unthanked and dangerous safeguarding of the public interests
that California gained her social system of to-day.
In all the history of American desperadoism and of the movements which
have checked it, there is no page more worth study than this from the
story of the great Golden State. The moral is a sane, clean, and strong
one. The creed of the "Committee of Vigilance" is one which we might
well learn to-day; and its practice would leave us with more dignity of
character than we can claim, so long as we content ourselves merely with
outcry and criticism, with sweeping accusation of our unfaithful public
servants, and without seeing that they are punished. There is nothing
but manhood and freedom and justice in the covenant of the Committee.
That covenant all American citizens should be ready to sign and live up
to: "We do bind ourselves each unto the other by a solemn oath to do and
perform every just and lawful act for the maintenance of law and order,
_and to sustain the laws when faithfully and properly administered_. But
we are determined that no thief, burglar, incendiary, assassin,
_ballot-box stuffer or other disturber of the peace_, shall escape
punishment, either by quibbles of the law, the carelessness of the
police or a laxity of those who pretend to administer justice."
What a man earns, that is his--such was the lesson of California.
Self-government is our right as a people--that is what the Vigilantes
said. When the laws failed of execution, then it was the people's right
to resume the power that they had delegated, or which had been usurped
from them--that is their statement as quoted by one of the ablest of
many historians of this movement. The people might withdraw authority
when faithless servants used it to thwart justice--that was what the
Vigilantes preached. It is good doctrine to-day.