![lynching-of-casey-and-cora](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d3/Lynching-of-casey-and-cora.jpg)
The San Francisco Committee of Vigilance was a
vigilante
Vigilantism () is the act of preventing, investigating and punishing perceived offenses and crimes without Right, legal authority.
A vigilante (from Spanish, Italian and Portuguese “vigilante”, which means "sentinel" or "watcher") is a pers ...
group formed in 1851. The catalyst for its formation was the criminality of the
Sydney Ducks
The Sydney Ducks was the name given to a gang of criminal immigrants from Australia in San Francisco, during the mid-19th century. Because many of these criminals came from the well-known British penal colonies in Australia, and were known to co ...
gang. It was revived in 1856 in response to rampant crime and corruption in the municipal government of
San Francisco, California
San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...
. The need for extralegal intervention was apparent with the explosive population growth following the discovery of gold in 1848. The small town of about 900 individuals grew to a booming city of over 20,000 very rapidly. This overwhelming growth in population made it nearly impossible for the previously established law enforcement to regulate any longer which resulted in the organization of vigilantes.
These militias hanged eight people and forced several elected officials to resign. Each Committee of Vigilance formally relinquished power after three months.
1851
![Whittaker andMcKenzie hanging Barber 1865p644](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a7/Whittaker_andMcKenzie_hanging_Barber_1865p644.jpg)
The 1851 Committee of Vigilance was inaugurated on June 9 with the promulgation of a written doctrine declaring its aims and hanged John Jenkins of
Sydney, Australia
Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the States and territories of Australia, state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and List of cities in Oceania by population, Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metro ...
, on June 10 after he was convicted of stealing a safe from an office in a trial organized by the committee:
grand larceny
Larceny is a crime involving the unlawful taking or theft of the personal property of another person or business. It was an offence under the common law of England and became an offence in jurisdictions which incorporated the common law of Engla ...
was punishable by death under California law at the time. The June 13 ''
Daily Alta California
The ''Alta California'' or ''Daily Alta California'' (often miswritten ''Alta Californian'' or ''Daily Alta Californian'') was a 19th-century San Francisco newspaper.
''California Star''
The ''Daily Alta California'' descended from the first ...
'' printed this statement:
It boasted a membership of 700 and claimed to operate in parallel to, and in defiance of, the duly constituted city government. Committee members used its headquarters for the interrogation and incarceration of suspects who were denied the benefits of due process. The committee engaged in policing, investigating disreputable boarding houses and vessels, deporting immigrants, and parading its militia. Four people were hanged by the committee; one was whipped (a common punishment at that time); fourteen were
deported to Australia; fourteen were informally ordered to leave California; fifteen were handed over to public authorities; and forty-one were discharged. The 1851 Committee of Vigilance was dissolved during the September elections, but its executive members continued to meet into 1853.
A total of four were executed: John Jenkins, an Australian from Sydney accused of burglary, who was hanged on June 10, 1851; James Stuart, also from Sydney and accused of murder, who was hanged on July 11, 1851; and Samuel Whittaker and Robert McKenzie, associates of Stuart accused of "various heinous crimes", who were hanged on August 24, 1851. The lynching of Whittaker and McKenzie occurred three days after a standoff between the committee and the nascent police force trying to protect the prisoners; the committee nabbed Whittaker and McKenzie after storming the jail during Sunday church services.
The committee also tried to punish arsonists.
1856
![Committee of Vigilance medallion](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/40/Committee_of_Vigilance_medallion.jpg)
The Committee of Vigilance was reorganized on 14 May 1856 by many of the leaders from the first one and adopted an amended version of the 1851 constitution.
Unlike the earlier committee, and the vigilante tradition generally, the 1856 committee was concerned with not only civil crimes but also politics and political corruption.
The catalyst for the committee was a murder, in the guise of a political duel in which James P. Casey shot opposition newspaper editor
James King of William
James King of William (January 28, 1822 – May 20, 1856) was a crusading San Francisco, California, newspaper editor whose assassination by James P. Casey, a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1856 resulted in the establishment ...
. King, along with many San Francisco residents, was outraged by Casey's appointment to the city board of supervisors and believed that the election had been rigged. The motivation behind this murder came from King's publishing an article in the ''Daily Evening Bulletin'' accusing Casey of illegal activities, and serving a prison term for Grand Larceny in New York. The combination of the political unrest surrounding the election and the article resulted in Casey's shooting of James King.
The 1856 committee was also much larger than the committee of 1851, claiming 6,000 in its ranks. The committee worked very closely with the formal government of San Francisco. The president of the Vigilance Committee, William T. Coleman, was a close friend of Governor
J. Neely Johnson
John Neely Johnson (August 2, 1825 – August 31, 1872) was an American lawyer and politician. He was elected as the fourth governor of California from 1856 to 1858, and later appointed justice to the Nevada Supreme Court from 1867 to 1871. As a ...
and the two men met on several occasions working towards the shared goal of stabilizing the town. Another important figure at this time who would later come to make a name for himself in the Civil War is
William T. Sherman
William is a male given name of Germanic origin.Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 276. It became very popular in the English language after the Norman conquest of Engl ...
. Sherman was running a bank when Governor Johnson requested he become the commander of the San Francisco branch of the state militia. Sherman accepted the position two days before the murder of King by Casey.
The 1856 Committee of Vigilance dissolved on 11 August 1856, and marked the occasion with a "Grand Parade."
Political power in San Francisco was transferred to a new political party established by the vigilantes, the
People's Party, which ruled until 1867 and was eventually absorbed into the
Republican Party. The vigilantes had thus succeeded in their objective of usurping power from the
Democratic Party Democratic Party most often refers to:
*Democratic Party (United States)
Democratic Party and similar terms may also refer to:
Active parties Africa
*Botswana Democratic Party
*Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea
*Gabonese Democratic Party
*Demo ...
machine
A machine is a physical system using Power (physics), power to apply Force, forces and control Motion, movement to perform an action. The term is commonly applied to artificial devices, such as those employing engines or motors, but also to na ...
that hitherto dominated civic politics in the city. Notable people included
William Tell Coleman
William Tell Coleman (1824–1893) was an American pioneer in the settlement of California.
Early life
William Tell Coleman was born in Cynthiana in Harrison County, Kentucky on February 29, 1824. He was educated at St. Louis University in Mis ...
,
Martin J. Burke, San Francisco mayor
Henry F. Teschemacher, and San Francisco's first chief of police
James F. Curtis
James Freeman Curtis II (December 19, 1825 – March 1, 1914), participant in the 1849 California Gold Rush, Chief of Police of San Francisco, officer in the California state militia and volunteer in the American Civil War.
Biography
James Fr ...
.
Vigilante headquarters in 1856 consisted of assembly halls, meeting rooms, a military kitchen and armory, an infirmary, and prison cells, all of which were fortified with gunny sacks and cannons.
Four people were officially executed again in 1856, but the death toll also includes
James "Yankee" Sullivan, an
Irish
Irish may refer to:
Common meanings
* Someone or something of, from, or related to:
** Ireland, an island situated off the north-western coast of continental Europe
***Éire, Irish language name for the isle
** Northern Ireland, a constituent unit ...
immigrant and professional boxer who killed himself after being terrorized and detained in a Vigilante cell.
The 1856 committee also engaged in policing, investigations, and secret trials, but it far exceeded its predecessor in audacity and rebelliousness. Most notably, it seized three shipments of armaments intended for the state militia and tried the chief justice of the
California Supreme Court
The Supreme Court of California is the highest and final court of appeals in the courts of the U.S. state of California. It is headquartered in San Francisco at the Earl Warren Building, but it regularly holds sessions in Los Angeles and Sacra ...
.
The committee's authority, however, was bolstered by almost all militia units in the city, including the California Guards.
Controversy
From the ''Daily Evening Bulletin'', James King of William, Editor. May 14, 1856:
![Hanging-James P Casey and Charles Cora](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1a/Hanging-James_P_Casey_and_Charles_Cora.jpg)
There remains historical
controversy
Controversy is a state of prolonged public dispute or debate, usually concerning a matter of conflicting opinion or point of view. The word was coined from the Latin ''controversia'', as a composite of ''controversus'' – "turned in an opposite d ...
about the
vigilance
Vigilance may refer to:
* Alertness
* Vigilance, a creature ability in the ''Magic: The Gathering'' collectible card game
* ''Vigilance'' (album), by Threat Signal
* Vigilance (behavioural ecology), the watchfulness of prey for nearby predator ...
movements. For example, both Charles Cora and James Casey were hanged in 1856 as murderers by the Committee of Vigilance: Cora shot and killed
U.S. Marshal
The United States Marshals Service (USMS) is a federal law enforcement agency in the United States. The USMS is a bureau within the U.S. Department of Justice, operating under the direction of the Attorney General, but serves as the enforce ...
William H. Richardson who had drunkenly insulted Cora's mistress, Belle Cora, while Casey shot James King of William, editor of rival newspaper ''The Evening Bulletin'', for publishing an editorial that exposed Casey's criminal record in
New York
New York most commonly refers to:
* New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York
* New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States
New York may also refer to:
Film and television
* '' ...
.
King had also denounced the corruption of City Officials who he believed had let Cora off the hook for Richardson's murder: Cora's first trial had ended in a
hung jury
A hung jury, also called a deadlocked jury, is a judicial jury that cannot agree upon a verdict after extended deliberation and is unable to reach the required unanimity or supermajority. Hung jury usually results in the case being tried again.
...
, and there were rumors that the jury had been bribed. Casey's friends sneaked him into the jail precisely because they were afraid that he would be hanged. This
hanging
Hanging is the suspension of a person by a noose or ligature around the neck.Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed. Hanging as method of execution is unknown, as method of suicide from 1325. The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' states that hanging i ...
may have been a response by frustrated citizens to ineffectual law enforcement, or a belief that due process would result in acquittals. Popular histories have accepted the former view: that the illegality and brutality of the vigilantes was justified by the need to establish law and order in the city.
One prominent critic of the San Francisco vigilantes was
General W. T. Sherman, who resigned from his position as Major-general of the Second Division of Militia in San Francisco. In his memoirs, Sherman wrote:
As he vigilantes/nowiki> controlled the press, they wrote their own history, and the world generally gives them the credit of having purged San Francisco of rowdies and roughs; but their success has given great stimulus to a dangerous principle, that would at any time justify the mob in seizing all the power of government; and who is to say that the Vigilance Committee may not be composed of the worst, instead of the best, elements of a community? Indeed, in San Francisco, as soon as it was demonstrated that the real power had passed from the City Hall to the committee room, the same set of bailiffs, constables, and rowdies that had infested the City Hall were found in the employment of the "Vigilantes."
Influence in British Columbian affairs
A former member of the San Francisco Committee of Vigilance, physician Max Fifer, moved to
Yale, British Columbia
Yale is an unincorporated town in the Canadian province of British Columbia, which grew in importance during the gold rush era.
Located on the Fraser River, it is generally considered to be on the dividing line between the Coast and the Inter ...
at the time of the
Fraser Canyon Gold Rush
The Fraser Canyon Gold Rush, (also Fraser Gold Rush and Fraser River Gold Rush) began in 1858 after gold was discovered on the Thompson River in British Columbia at its confluence with the Nicoamen River a few miles upstream from the Thompson's c ...
, and participated in the organization of a Vigilance Committee on the
Fraser River
The Fraser River is the longest river within British Columbia, Canada, rising at Fraser Pass near Blackrock Mountain in the Rocky Mountains and flowing for , into the Strait of Georgia just south of the City of Vancouver. The river's annual d ...
in 1858 to address issues of lawlessness and a vacuum of effective governmental authority created by the sudden influx of prospectors to the new British colony. The Vigilance Committee, which in San Francisco had persecuted disgraced Philadelphia lawyer
Ned McGowan, played a role in the bloodless
McGowan's War on the lower Fraser in 1858–1859. At the end of the so-called "War", McGowan was convicted by Judge
Matthew Baillie Begbie
Sir Matthew Baillie Begbie (9 May 1819 – 11 June 1894) was a British lawyer, politician, and judge. In 1858, Begbie became the first Chief Justice of the Crown Colony of British Columbia in colonial times and in the first decades after Bri ...
of an assault against Fifer in British Columbia but McGowan's defense statement, which described some of the activities of the San Francisco vigilantes and his own personal experience of vigilantism, impressed and disturbed Begbie who, like
Colonial Governor James Douglas was determined to prevent conditions in the goldfields of British Columbia from deteriorating into mob rule.
[Hauka, p. 182]
In popular culture
*''
The Californians''
*''
Death Valley Days
''Death Valley Days'' is an American old-time radio and television anthology series featuring true accounts of the American Old West, particularly the Death Valley country of southeastern California. Created in 1930 by Ruth Woodman, the program ...
'': Episode: "The Battle of San Francisco Bay"
See also
*
Sydney Ducks
The Sydney Ducks was the name given to a gang of criminal immigrants from Australia in San Francisco, during the mid-19th century. Because many of these criminals came from the well-known British penal colonies in Australia, and were known to co ...
*
Samuel Brannan
Samuel Brannan (March 2, 1819 – May 5, 1889) was an American settler, businessman, journalist, and prominent Mormon who founded the '' California Star'', the first newspaper in San Francisco, California. He is considered the first to publici ...
*
William Tell Coleman
William Tell Coleman (1824–1893) was an American pioneer in the settlement of California.
Early life
William Tell Coleman was born in Cynthiana in Harrison County, Kentucky on February 29, 1824. He was educated at St. Louis University in Mis ...
*
McGowan's War
*
List of incidents of civil unrest in the United States
Listed are major episodes of civil unrest in the United States. This list does not include the numerous incidents of destruction and violence associated with various sporting events.
18th century
*1783 – Pennsylvania Mutiny of 1783, June 20 ...
References
Bibliography
*
John Boessenecker
John Boessenecker ( John Edward Boessenecker; born 27 February 1953) is an American historian and author, and a lawyer specializing in trust and estate litigation. He is based in San Francisco, California.
Fascinated by frontier history, he publ ...
br>
ed
''Against the Vigilantes: The Recollections of Dutch Charley Duane'' Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999.
Review
* Hauka, Donald J.
''McGowan's War'' Vancouver: New Start Books, 2003.
excerpt
* Hittell, T.H. ''History of California'', Vol. 3, 1897
* Kelly, Joseph M. "Shifting Interpretation of the San-Francisco Vigilantes." ''Journal of the West'' 24.1 (1985): 39–46.
* Mullen, Kevin J. ''Let Justice Be Done: Crime and Politics in Early San Francisco'' (1990) on 1849-51
*
John Myers Myers, Myers, John Myers, ''San Francisco's Reign of Terror''. Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday, 1966
* Quinn, Arthur, ''The Rivals: William Gwin, David Broderick, and the Birth of California'', Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1997,
* Senkewicz, Robert M. ''Vigilantes in Gold Rush San Francisco'' (Stanford University Press, 1985)
*
Stewart, George R., ''Committee of Vigilance; Revolution in San Francisco, 1851''. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1964.
* Nancy J. Taniguchi
Land, Violence, and the 1856 San Francisco Vigilance Committee 2016.
External links
*
William Tecumseh Sherman
William Tecumseh Sherman ( ; February 8, 1820February 14, 1891) was an American soldier, businessman, educator, and author. He served as a general in the Union Army during the American Civil War (1861–1865), achieving recognition for his com ...
Memoirs of General William T. Sherman, Volume 1reprinted 1917. (Discussion of 1856 vigilante activities)
books.googletufts.edu
* Edward McGowan
''Narrative of Edward McGowan, including a full account of the author's adventures and perils while persecuted by the San Francisco vigilance committee of 1856, together with a report of his trial, which resulted in his acquittal'' San Francisco, CA: self-published, 1857, reprinted 1917.
* Frank Meriweather Smith,
''San Francisco vigilance committee of '56 : with some interesting sketches of events succeeding 1846.'' San Francisco, CA: Barry, Baird & Co., 1883.
* Kevin Mullen
"Malachi Fallon: First Chief of Police"from the ''Encyclopedia of San Francisco''.
from the ''Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco''.
*
Mary Floyd Williams''History of the San Francisco Committee of Vigilance: A Study of Social Control on the California Frontier in the Days of the Gold Rush,''Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1921. (Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of California, 1919)
* Mary Floyd Williams
''History of the San Francisco Committee of Vigilance: A Study of Social Control on the California Frontier in the Days of the Gold Rush,''Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1921.
* James O'Meara
''The Vigilance Committee of 1856''San Francisco : James H. Barry, 1887.
* Royce, Josiah, (1855-1916
''California, from the conquest of 1846 to the second vigilance committee in San Francisco - A study of American character'' 1892.
* Charles James King
NEW YORK : THE LEWIS PUBLISHING COMPANY 1905.
* George H. Tinkham
from ''California Men and Events 1769-1890'' Panama-Pacific Exposition Edition. 1915.
* Hubert Howe Bancroft
''Popular Tribunals'' Volume Ian
''Popular Tribunals'' Volume II San Francisco: The History Company, 1887.
Guide to the San Francisco Committee of Vigilance of 1851 Papersat
The Bancroft Library
The Bancroft Library in the center of the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, is the university's primary special-collections library. It was acquired from its founder, Hubert Howe Bancroft, in 1905, with the proviso that it retai ...
Guide to the San Francisco Committee of Vigilance of 1856 Papersat
The Bancroft Library
The Bancroft Library in the center of the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, is the university's primary special-collections library. It was acquired from its founder, Hubert Howe Bancroft, in 1905, with the proviso that it retai ...
Papers of the San Francisco Committee of Vigilance of 1851, Volume IUniversity of California, 1910
* Papers of the San Francisco Committee of Vigilance of 1851, Volume II University of California
Papers of the San Francisco Committee of Vigilance of 1851, Volume IIIUniversity of California, 1919.
San Francisco Committee of Vigilance of 1851- WorldCat Identities
San Francisco Committee of Vigilance of 1856- WorldCat Identities
{{DEFAULTSORT:San Francisco Committee Of Vigilance
Australian American
Crimes in San Francisco
Vigilantism in the United States
California Gold Rush
Organizations based in San Francisco
1851 establishments in California
Crime in San Francisco
Anti-Australian sentiment