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GEN
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01765 1834
12.
GENEALOGY 979.402 SA519WIL
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PUBLICATIONS IN HISTORY
HERBERT E. BOLTON EDITOR
VOLUME XII
ET
ILANCE
2688
SAN FRANCISCO
Medal of the San Francisco Committee of Vigilance of 1856. 'Organ- ized 9th June 1851. Reorganized 14th May, 1856." From the collection of Mr. Charles B. Turrill.
1
HISTORY OF THE SAN FRANCISCO COMMITTEE OF VIGILANCE OF 1851
A STUDY OF SOCIAL CONTROL ON THE CALIFORNIA FRONTIER IN THE DAYS OF THE GOLD RUSH
BY MARY FLOYD WILLIAMS, Ph.D.
APA
NIKAI
Mr
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA
1921
COPYRIGHTED, 1921 BY MARY FLOYD WILLIAMS All rights reserved
TO THE MEMORY OF MY FATHER EDWARDS C. WILLIAMS A LIEUTENANT IN STEVENSON'S REGIMENT AND A LOYAL CITIZEN OF CALIFORNIA FROM 1547 TO 1913
CONTENTS
PAGES
. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.
ix-x
ABBREVIATIONS USED IN FOOTNOTES
xii
INTRODUCTION
1-19
PART THE CALIFORNIA FRONTIER, 1846-1851 CHAPTER I
THE SPANISH INHERITANCE AND THE AMERICAN CONQUEST 23-39
CHAPTER II
COLONEL RICHARD B. MASON, MILITARY GOVERNOR 40-52
CHAPTER III
EL DORADO
53-65
CHAPTER IV
VOX POPULI IN THE MINES OF CALIFORNIA . 66-87
CHAPTER V
THE STRUGGLE FOR ORGANIZATION .. SS-115
CHAPTER VI
THE FABRICATION OF THE COMMONWEALTH ..
116-135
CHAPTER VII
THE FAILURE TO ESTABLISH SOCIAL CONTROL 136-159
PART II THE SAN FRANCISCO COMMITTEE OF VIGILANCE OF 1851
CHAPTER VIII
THE PRELUDE TO THE COMMITTEE OF VIGILANCE 162-185
CHAPTER' 1X
THE ORGANIZATION OF THE COMMITTEE OF VIGILANCE ..
186-207
CHAPTER X
THE COMMITTEE AT WORK .. 208-226
CHAPTER XI
PAGES
THE RECORDS FOR JUNE
227-251
CHAPTER XII
JAMES STUART, OUTLAW 252-274
CHAPTER XIII
ON THE TRAIL OF STUART'S COMPANIONS .... . 275-304
CHAPTER XIV
ADVENTURES IN CRIME
305-322
CHAPTER XV
POLITICS AND REORGANIZATION
323-337
CHAPTER XVI
THE CLOSING MONTHS.
338-355
CHAPTER XVII
A SUMMARY OF METHODS 356-387
CHAPTER XVIII
'5I TO '77 ..
3SS-408
CHAPTER XIX
LYNCH LAW AS A NATIONAL PROBLEM 409-427
CHAPTER XX
IN RETROSPECT ..
428-440
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 441-452
DOCUMENTARY APPENDIX 453-473
BIBLIOGRAPHY . 474-518
INDEX
519-543
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
MEDAL OF COMMITTEE OF VIGILANCE OF 1856 Frontispiece
TO FACE PAGE
PORTRAIT OF WILLIAM T. COLEMAN
190
PORTRAIT OF SAMUEL BRANNAN 212
FACSIMILE OF PROCLAMATION BY GOVERNOR JOHN MCDOUGAL
RELATIVE TO THE COMMITTEE OF VIGILANCE OF 1851 298
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
It is pleasant to work in libraries, and in acknowledging a debt of gratitude that I owe to many friends, I would mention, first, the librarians who have made this work of research pos- sible, Professor Herbert I. Priestley and Mr. Joseph J. Hill, of the Bancroft Library, Miss Eudora Garoutte, of the California State Library, and Dr. George Watson Cole, of the Henry E. Huntington Library, at San Gabriel, California.
I would record, with sincere appreciation, the kindness of President David P. Barrows, of the University of California, and that of Professors William Carey Jones, Walter M. Hart. Thomas H. Reed, Harold L. Brnce, and Charles E. Chapman- busy men who have taken the time to read this volume in advance of publication, and have given me the benefit of their criticisms. Professor Edward Channing, of Harvard University, was also kind enough to read the manuscript in an early form, and to offer me advice that proved exceedingly valuable. Dr. Owen C. Coy, secretary of the California Historical Survey Commission, has directed me to important state records, and Mr. R. S. Kuykendall has placed at my disposal his notes on the history of California newspapers. Mr. Robert E. Cowan, an authority on Californiana, has examined the proof of the bibliography, and suggested some interesting additions to the entries relating to the Committees of Vigilance.
Especial thanks are due to Professor Frederick J. Teggart, who directed my graduate work in its early stages, and to Professor Eugene McCormac, who has given me counsel and encouragement on many occasions when they were sorely needed.
I am much indebted to Professor Herbert E. Bolton for assistance in investigating the frontier problems that developed in California. In addition to this service, Professor Bolton has
ix
devoted careful attention to the many details of form and print- ing that have come to his attention as editor of the University series of Publications in History.
I must name another- Professor Henry Morse Stephens- whose suggestion first led me to undertake this study, and whose unfailing interest in its progress furnished the strongest incen- tive that carried it forward to completion. Professor Stephens died in April, 1919, and it is a cause of infinite regret to me that the book was then only in manuscript, and that my tribute to the inspiration of a remarkable teacher comes too late to fall beneath his eyes.
MARY FLOYD WILLIAMS.
x
ABBREVIATIONS USED IN FOOTNOTES
Ple footmies of tin ve iny eite Congressional Documents in a somewhat 1_4, master. No er stor is made of the title of the session of Congress. mug of the legislative bois Senate or House, that may be considered as do, Ter varlois papers ar cite l solely by the "Serial Number" and Mo . Document Number ' un ler which they appear in the bound series of ments and the ofila check list. This method affords a concise but Worte grille to the or ginal authority, while the expanded entry in the -wwwel List of Material gives full letails of publication.
Owing to the dearth of official documents relating to the early history of California, the dra n vspaper- are of unusual importance, and references To thomy give not only the Onte, but also the exact position of the statement youtell. pag arete doit bemy ideateil by figures separated by an oblique I. Thus. Alla. 181. April 1 -... o fers to page two, column three. of the
The other abbreviations employed are quite obvious, and bibliographical lotornati en on itted from the footnotes will be found in the Classified List Material.
xii
INTRODUCTION
When James Bryce wrote The American Commonwealth he remarked with surprise that little attention had then been paid to the individual histories of the separate states.1 Since that time the neglected subject has received a great deal of careful investigation : there has been much study and writing of local history, and sources of every kind have been carefully collected and published.
For the American period of California, however, little real progress has been made during the last thirty years, for, with the exception of a few students of special subjects, later writers have been content to reassemble material already in print, and to give it fresh vitality by fluency of style or touches of pictur- esque color. Bancroft's works, in particular, have been quoted most freely, and it cannot be denied that his analysis of the sources of California history was extraordinarily minute, and that the references in his voluminous footnotes are invaluable guides for nearly every line of research. But the synthesis of his text is less reliable, and it is dangerous to accept it as an adequate presentation of any specific period or event.
Fortunately nearly all of Bancroft's sources are still accessible to the student, for his large collection of books and manuscripts has remained intact, and in 1905 it became the property of the University of California. The purchase of this important library was due, in great measure, to the efforts of the late Henry Morse Stephens, who was then the head of the Department of History in the University. Professor Stephens had an especial enthusiasm for the publication of documentary sources of his- tory, and he was ambitious that many of the unique treasures
1 James Bryce, American Commonwealth, ed. of 1914, I, 412 (ed. 1, 1888).
2
Vigilance Committee of 1851
of the Baneroft Library should be edited and printed as fast as funds could be procured for the purpose. The Academy of Pacific Coast Ilistory, with its interesting series of publications, has been a practical expression of his efforts in this direction.
One of the items in the Bancroft Library which strongly appealed to Professor Stephens' sense of historical values was the file of the archives of the San Francisco Committee of Vigilance of 1851.
The stories of that remarkable association, and of its successor of 1856, have been told more than once. Probably every reader of these pages already knows that the men who organized them were respectable and influential members of the body politic ; that for brief periods they assumed unlawful control over criminal matters in their city; that they arrested and confined prisoners at their own discretion, hanged whom they would, and banished from the state citizens and aliens whose presence they deemed a menace to public order, while the community not only tolerated their usurpation of power, but supported them in the infliction of the most condign punishments. But it is not so generally known that these societies which defied the law regu- lated their conduet by the ordinary practices of parliamentary procedure, and kept careful records of their daily actions.
When Bancroft was preparing his Popular Tribunals he had access to the papers of both Committees, and those of 1851 were finally given to him outright by the former secretary, Mr. Isaac Bluxome, Jr.2 They include the roll of the signers of the constitution, lists of names proposed for membership, minutes, reports, and financial accounts and vouchers. Professor Stephens was convinced that these archives had great value as a contrib- tion to local history, and as a documentary record of unusual human interest, and as soon as the Bancroft Library was trans- ferred to the University he planned for the publication in full
2 H. H. Bancroft, Literary Industries. 1890, pp. 658-660.
3
Introduction
of the Papers of the Committee of Vigilance. In 1910 the List of Members, edited by Mr. Porter Garnett, appeared as a con- tribution to the first volume of the publications of the Academy of Pacific Coast History. Mr. Garnett also edited Part II of the Papers, the List of Names Approved by the Committee on Qualification, and the pamphlet was included in the second volume published by the Academy. But the labor involved in arranging and annotating the mass of minutes and miscellaneous papers promised to be very great, and it was not definitely commenced until Professor Stephens asked me to undertake it as graduate work in the Department of lIistory. As the plans for publication were first ontlined, it was intended that the documents should be given a preface that would furnish a neces- sary background of local conditions, and that both preface and documents should be printed together in two consecutive volumes of the Academy series.
The task of editing the documents advanced very slowly, and various puzzling questions arose as to the method of arranging them for the press, and of reproducing their characteristic style and atmosphere. The larger portion consists of loose pages of manuscript, and it was decided to group them in accordance with the chronological system adopted by Secretary Bluxome in filing the records committed to his care.3 This necessitated the wide separation of many pages that were closely connected in subject; consequently the doenments, as printed, do not form a coherent history of the events they describe, although they provide a reliable source from which most of that history can be compiled.
It was an important and fascinating part of the editorial work to unravel the separate threads of this tangled skein, to trace the development of official policies, to gather together
3 See San Francisco Committee of Vigilance, Papers, III, 1919, pp. viii-ix. (Hereafter cited as Papers.)
4
Vigilance Committee of 1851
seattered but related references, and to explain obscure allusions by research iu old newspapers and in the reminiseenees of pioneers. This process finally resulted in a very definite recon- struetion of the history of the Committee of Vigilanee of 1851, based upon hundreds of original records, and verified by the testimony of aetors and spectators. And this account differed materially from other narratives of the work of the Committee ; for the sceondary historians had over-emphasized a few melo- dramatie and erueial ineidents, and had praetieally ignored the most distinguishing characteristics of the organization-the sineere conviction on the part of its members that they were justified in usurping temporary jurisdiction over the criminal problems of the eity, and their conscientious and laborious efforts to exercise this self-assumed offiee with justice as well as with eourage. The Vigilantes were never oblivious of the fact that their actions were open to the most serious objections, and the care taken to preserve their papers was largely due to their desire that future criticism should be based on exact knowledge of the course they had pursued.4
As progress was made in arranging the archives, it beeame more and more apparent that a detailed story of the Committee should also be published for the use of those who had neither the inelination nor the time to decipher the confused pages of the vohune of documents. It was therefore decided that the arehives should be bound by themselves for the special convenience of the research worker, and that, in place of the contemplated prefaee, the editor should embody the results of her study of the entire subject in a separate volume.
A most perplexing problem developed in seeking an appro- priate point of departure for the narrative as a whole. It was comparatively simple to name and deseribe the members of the Committee, sinee many of them were distinguished by years of
+ See Papers, 639, 683-684.
5
Introduction
civic and commercial usefulness. It was equally simple to recount their actions during 1851 and 1852, for the records spoke for themselves. But when all that was done, there arose an inevi- table and insistent question : "Why did such men do such things ?" The answer could not be elicited solely from the archives of the Committee, nor did the general histories of California afford an adequate and satisfactory explanation.
As Professor Stephens has said in a brief introduction to the documents of the Committee, the significance of any his- torical event is a matter of interpretation, every generation regards the past from a different angle, and the emphasis in interpretation shifts with the shifting standpoints of historical criticism.5 Seventy years have passed since the organization of the Committee of Vigilance of 1851, and already one can recognize a succession of interpretations of that particular society and of its allied institutions, the miners' courts of California and the other popular tribunals of the entire western area.
The contemporary observer usually formed his judgment on the basis of efficiency. To him the protection of life and property was a matter of vital importance. When he found that erim- inals were terrified into unwilling docility by lynch law and vigi- lance committees, he commended such social expedients, although he might lament their incidental cruelty and deprecate their defiance of the principles of representative government.
The writers of the next generation, comfortably remote from the dangers that confronted the pioneer, showed a marked inclination to discuss the history of the earlier decades in uncom- promising terms of right and wrong. Three important studies of the social life of California during the crisis of the gold fever appeared with singular sequence in three successive years : Charles Howard Shinn's Mining Camps in 1885, Josiah Royce's California in 1886, and Bancroft's Popular Tribunals in 1887.
5 Papers, iii.
6
Vigilance Committee of 1851
In preparing his interesting monograph on the mining camps, Shinn took pains to familiarize himself with books already in print, and with the local records and the newspapers of the period. He also had much conversation and correspondence with surviving Argonauts, who were then, however, removed more than a quarter of a century from the period they were asked to describe. The material thus collected is picturesque, vivid, and of great value, although deficient in exactness of reference. It has been freely quoted by all later writers, but it is evident that the author's wide acquaintance with the makers of California history and his sincere admiration of their sterling qualities led him to adopt their point of view as his own, for his book reflects only the most favorable and optimistic of contemporary impressions.6
Professor Royce, on the other hand, while he used some of the same documentary material as did Shinn, based much of his criticism of early social conditions on the diary and recollections of his mother, and on the letters of "Dame Shirley," a homesick New Englander, who spent some unhappy months in a California mining town. Both these women had keen powers of observa- tion and sernpulous convictions as to righteousness and evil. Their influence no doubt aceentuated the philosopher's tendency to judge the California pioneer by absolute standards of ideal citizenship, to attribute his failures to a sinful negleet of all personal and communal responsibilities, and to describe the resultant confusion as a time of retribution when the "restless and suffering social order" purged itself through struggle and penance.7
When H. 11. Bancroft undertook to cover a part of the same field in his Popular Tribunals he obtained direct access to the archives of the Committees of Vigilance of 1851 and 1856. These
6 See Josiah Royce. California, 1886, pp. 279, 314-316.
" Ibid .. 344-356, 402, 406. "Shirley" was a pseudonym for Mrs. Louise A. K. Clappe.
7
Introduction
afforded a new and reliable source of information on two im- portant incidents that were typical of the spirit of the people of the state in the first decade of the commonwealth. The his- torian also supplemented these official records by obtaining inter- views with some of the more prominent members, and securing from them dictated statements of their personal recollections. But Mr. Bancroft was always an out and out champion of the Vigilantes, and he was so eager to show their lofty ideals and heroic personalities that although his reconstruction of the his- tory of the Committee of 1851 was drawn from original docu- ments and personal reminiscences it neglected all the prosaic groundwork of painstaking detail, and often sacrificed exactness to melodrama.
Different as are these three interpretations in their conclu- sions, they have in common a distinctly moral point of view, and the writers commend or condemn, firm in the conviction of the inherent righteousness or wickedness of their segregated groups of good citizens and bad. The historical student of today is less inclined to pose as a dispenser of halos and of gridirons. He plucks the angels and he dehorns the devils whom he costumes for his historical pageant ; and seeing in them men and women little better and little worse than those he knows in the intimacy of daily life, he seeks to explain their deeds by an understanding of the social conditions that impelled them to action.
The "Days of '49" has become a name to conjure with; in the popular imagination the real significance of the period has largely been obseured by the dominating figure of the bearded miner, with his pickaxe, his pistol, his strange oaths, and his sanguinary device of a rogue pendent. Although that miner was a product of the stout and virile life of the whole American frontier, the historians of 1885 had not awakened to the im- portant influence of the frontier as a constant force in the devel- opment of our nation during the entire period when the tide of
8
Vigilance Committee of 1851
pioneer life was sweeping forward from the fall line of the Atlantic streams towards the placers of the Rio de los Americanos. They wrote of the Californian as of an American in unique eir- cumstanees, who faeed his own peculiar problems with certain racial predispositions. But in 1921 the historian no longer depicts the Californian as a foundling of the gold mines, with the shadow of the Sierra Nevadas east like a bar sinister aeross the escuteheon of his American paternity. The Argonaut is recognized as the legitimate offspring of au honorable raee of pioneers, who were everywhere audacious and conservative, sus- pieious and optimistie, ready to grapple immensity with their naked hands, competent to build in the wilderness states based on the traditions of their Puritan forefathers, jealous of every measure put forth to restrain their arrogant individualism, and sublimely confident that the common sense of the majority would save any community, small or large, from the one unpardonable sin of self-destruetion.
The frontier has ever been the laboratory of American demoeraey, where fearless men lay hold of the elemental forees that construet and destroy human society. After them have come the theorists, lamenting the catastrophes, explaining the triumphs, and formulating from the litter of the workshop gen- eralizations and warnings for artisans of a more cautious régime. The frontiersman in California dealt with conditions and special problems unlike those developed in the Trans-Alleghany valleys and the Mississippi watershed, but his equipment to meet the new environment corresponded very closely with that of American frontiersmen of every generation. As a necessary introduction, therefore, to the study of the California pioneer, we must restate here certain essential characteristies and tendencies of the Amer- ieau national spirit.
9
Introduction
The long succession of social experiments which had accom- panied the extension of the frontier diverged widely in individual features ; but they were all founded on a common acceptance of the theory that the state was created by a voluntary compact between contracting parties who possessed various inherent rights. The theory included the conception of a period when society was still unorganized, and when men lived in simple enjoyment of all their natural rights, subject only to certain laws of God and of Nature. It was conceded that under par- ticular circumstances, such as the violation of the contract by one of the subscribers, or the migration of a special group beyond the area in which an existing compact was binding, the organized people might resolve themselves into their original elements, and in their primary capacity resume the exercise of their natural rights, or form a new compact suited to changed conditions.s
This theory was preached by theologians and expounded by statesmen until it became an integral part of the national thought ; it was the essence of the doctrine of the consent of the governed, it was the underlying force that impelled the Pilgrims of the Mayflower to pledge to each other mutual support and loyalty when they were obliged to establish their colony outside of the territory in which their patent rights were valid. From that day forward covenants of various kinds became the resource of the American settlers whenever they found themselves without the formal bonds and safeguards of constitutional government or in a situation where normal institutions failed to fulfill their legiti- mate functions. Many a New England town inaugurated its
8 The following references are useful in tracing the effect of the theory of the social contract on the establishment of institutions in American com- munities: A. C. MeLaughlin, "Social Compact and Constitutional Con- struction," American Historical Review, V (1900), 467-490; A. B. Hart, "Growth of American Theories of Popular Government," American Political Science Review, I (1907), 531-560; Charles Borgeaud, Rise of Modern Democracy in Old and New England, 1894, pp. 77-90, 105-168; H. L. Osgood, "Political Ideas of the Puritans," Political Science Quarterly. VI (1891), 1-28; C. E. Merriam, History of American Political Theories, 1903, chaps. 2, 4; F. A. Cleveland, Organized Democracy, 1913, pp. 34-45; C. S. Lobingier, The People's Law. 1909, chaps. 5-7.
10
Vigilance Committee of 1851
civic life with a compact modeled on the Mayflower document ;9 the Scotch-Irish of the Alleghanies also understood how to asso- ciate themselves for mutual protection ;10 and as the frontier pushed westward there was eonstant illustration of the tendency to erystallize the public opinion of the scattered communities into a practical medium of government under the form of compacts, especially as to the preservation of order and the occupation of land.
Such agreements were written and signed in pre-Revolution- ary times by the people of North and South Carolina, who formed societies of "Regulators" to punish crime and to check the extortion practiced by dishonest officials. In South Carolina, where the associations appeared as early as 1764, they were suppressed with difficulty. In North Carolina the Regulation was active from 1768 to 1771, and persisted until the tragic battle of the Alamance dispersed the insurgents, and subsequent trials resulted in the execution of some of the leaders.11 In 1772 the settlers at Watauga, beyond the pale of colonial organiza- tion, signed the first written constitution adopted by men of American birth, a compact which made the will of the majority practically supreme, and which remained in force for the six
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