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CHAPTER XXVII. CRIME, CRIMINALS AND VIGILANCE COMMITTEES.
T HERE was but little crime in California among its white inhabitants during the Spanish and Mexican eras of its history. The conditions were not conducive to the de- velopment of a criminal element. The inhabit- ants were a pastoral people, pursuing an out- door vocation, and there were no large towns or cities where the viciously inclined could con-
gregate and find a place of refuge from justice. "From 1819 to 1846, that is, during the entire period of Mexican domination under the Repub- lic," says Bancroft, "there were but six murders among the whites in all California." There were no lynchings, no mobs, unless some of the rev- olutionary uprisings might be called such, and but one vigilance committee.
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San Francisco is credited with the origin of that form of popular tribunal known as the vigi- lance committee. The name "vigilance com- mittee" originated with the uprising, in 1851, of the people of that city against the criminal ele- ment; but, years before there was a city of San Francisco, Los Angeles had originated a tri- bunal of the people, had taken criminals from the lawfully constituted authorities and had tried and executed them. The causes which called into existence the first vigilance committee in California were similar to those that created the later ones, namely, laxity in the administration of the laws and distrust in the integrity of those chosen to administer them. During the "decade of revolutions," that is, between 1830 and 1840, the frequent change of rulers and the struggles of the different factions for power en- gendered in the masses a disregard, not only for their rulers, but for law and order as well. Criminals escaped punishment through the law's delays. No court in California had power to pass sentence of death on a civilian until its findings had been approved by the superior tri- bunal of Mexico. In the slow and tedions proc- esses of the different courts, a criminal stood a good show of dying of old age before his case reached final adjudication. The first committee of vigilance in California was organized at Los Angeles, in the house of Juan Temple, April 7, 1836. It was called "Junta Defensora de La Seguridad Publica," United Defenders of the Public Security (or safety). Its motto, which ap- pears in the heading of its "acta," and is there credited as a quotation from Montesquieu's Ex- position of the Laws, Book 26, Chapter 23, was, "Salus populi suprema lex est" (The safety of the people is the supreme law). There is a marked similarity between the proceedings of the Junta Defensora of 1836 and the San Fran- cisco vigilance committee of 1856; it is not probable, however, that any of the actors in the latter committee participated in the former. Although there is quite a full account of the proceedings of the Junta Defensora in the Los Angeles city archives, no historian heretofore except Bancroft seems to have found it.
The circumstances which brought about the organization of the Junta Defensora are as fol-
lows: The wife of Domingo Feliz (part owner of the Los Feliz Rancho), who bore the poet- ical name of Maria del Rosario Villa, became infatuated with a handsome but disreputable Sonoran vaquero, Gervacio Alispaz by name. She abandoned her husband and lived with Alis- paz as his mistress at San Gabriel. Feliz songht to reclaim his erring wife, but was met by in- sults and abuse from her paramour, whom he once wounded in a personal altercation. Feliz finally invoked the aid of the authorities. The woman was arrested and brought to town. A reconciliation was effected between the husband and wife. Two days later they left town for the rancho, both riding one horse. On the way they were met by Alispaz, and in a personal en- counter Feliz was stabbed to death by the wife's paramour. The body was dragged into a ra- vine and covered with brush and leaves. Next day, March 29, the body was found and brought to the city. The murderer and the woman were arrested and imprisoned. The people were filled with horror and indignation, and there were threats of summary vengeance, but better conn- sel prevailed.
On the 30th the funeral of Feliz took place, and, like that of James King of William, twenty years later, was the occasion for the renewal of the ontcry for vengeance. The attitude of the people became so threatening that on the Ist of April an extraordinary session of the ayun- tamiento was held. A call was made upon the citizens to form an organization to preserve the peace. A considerable number responded and were formed into military patrols under the command of Don Juan B. Leandry. The illns- trious ayuntamiento resolved "that whomsoever shall disturb the public tranquillity shall be pun- ished according to law." The excitement ap- parently died out, but it was only the calm that precedes the storm. The beginning of the Easter ceremonies was at hand, and it was deemed a sacrilege to execute the assassins in holy week, so all further attempts at punishment were deferred until April 7, the Monday after Easter, when at dawn, by previous understand- ing, a number of the better class of citizens gathered at the house of Juan Temple, which stood on the site of the new postoffice. An or-
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ganization was effected. Victor Prudon, a na- tive of Breton, France, but a naturalized citizen of California, was elected president; Manuel Arzaga, a native of California, was elected sec- retary, and Francisco Araujo, a retired army officer, was placed in command of the armed force. Speeches were made by Prudon, and by the military commandant and others, setting forth the necessity of their organization and jus- tifying their actions. It was unanimously de- cided that both the man and the woman should be shot; their guilt being evident, no trial was deemed necessary.
An address to the authorities and the people was formulated. A copy of this is preserved in the city archives. It abounds in metaphors. It is too long for insertion here. I make a few extracts: "* * Believing that immorality has reached such an extreme that public secur- ity is menaced and will be lost if the dike of a solemn example is not opposed to the torrent of atrocious perfidy, we demand of you that you execute or deliver to us for immediate execution the assassin, Gervacio Alispaz, and the unfaith- ful Maria del Rosario Villa, his accomplice. * Nature trembles at the sight of these venomous reptiles and the soil turns barren in its refusal to support their detestable existence. Let the infernal pair perish! It is the will of the people. We will not lay down our arms until our petition is granted and the murderers are exe- cuted. The proof of their guilt is so clear that justice needs no investigation. Public vengeance demands an example and it must be given. The blood of the Alvarez, of the Patinos, of the Jenkins, is not yet cold-they, too, being the unfortunate victims of the brutal passions of their murderers. Their bloody ghosts shriek for vengeance. Their terrible voices re-echo from their graves. The afflicted widow, the for- saken orphan, the aged father, the brother in mourning, the inconsolable mother, the public -all demand speedy punishment of the guilty. We swear that outraged justice shall be avenged to-day or we shall die in the attempt. The blood of the murderers shall be shed to-day or ours will be to the last drop. It will be published throughout the world that judges in Los An- geles tolerate murderers, but that there are
virtuous citizens who sacrifice their lives in order to preserve those of their countrymen."
"A committee will deliver to the First Consti- tutional Alcalde a copy of these resolutions, that he may decide whatever he finds most con- venient, and one hour's time will be given him in which to do so. If in that time no answer has been received, then the judge will be responsible before God and man for what will follow. Death to the murderers!
"God and liberty. Angeles, April 7, 1836."
Fifty-five signatures are attached to this doc- ument; fourteen of these are those of natural- ized foreigners and the remainder those of na- tive Californians. The junta was made up of the best citizens, native and foreign. An extraor- dinary session of the ayuntamiento was called. The members of the junta, fully armed, marched to the city hall to await the decision of the authorities. The petition was discussed in the council, and, in the language of the archives: "This Illustrious Body decided to call said Breton Prudon to appear before it and to com- pel him to retire with the armed citizens so that this Illustrious Body may deliberate at liberty."
"This was done, but he declined to appear before this body, as he and the armed citizens were determined to obtain Gervacio Alispaz and Maria del Rosario Villa. The ayuntamiento decided that as it had not sufficient force to compel the armed citizens to disband, they being in large numbers and composed of the best and most respectable men of the town, to send an answer saying that the judges could not accede to the demand of the armed citi- zens."
The members of the Junta Defensora then marched in a body to the jail and demanded the keys of the guard. These were refused. The keys were secured by force and Gervacio Alispaz taken out and shot. The following demand was then sent to the first alcalde, Manuel Requena:
"It is absolutely necessary that you deliver to this junta the key of the apartment where Maria del Rosario Villa is kept.
"God and liberty.
"VICTOR PRUDON, President.
"MANUEL ARZAGA, Secretary."
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To this the alcalde replied: "Maria del Rosa- rio Villa is incarcerated at a private dwelling, whose owner has the key, with instructions not to deliver the same to any one. The prisoner is left there at the disposition of the law only.
"God and liberty.
"MANUEL REQUENA, Alcalde."
The key was obtained. The wretched Maria was taken to the place of execution on a car- réta and shot. The bodies of the guilty pair were brought back to the jail and the following communication sent to the alcalde:
"Junta of the Defenders of Public Safety. "To the Ist Constitutional Alcalde:
"The dead bodies of Gervacio Alispaz and Maria del Rosario Villa are at your disposal. We also forward you the jail keys that you may deliver them to whomsoever is on guard. In case you are in need of men to serve as guards, we are all at your disposal.
"God and liberty. Angeles, April 7, 1836. "VICTOR PRUDON, Pres. "MANUEL ARZAGA, Sec."
A few days later the Junta Defensora de La Seguridad Publica disbanded; and so ended the only instance in the seventy-five years of Span- ish and Mexican rule in California, of the people, by popular tribunal, taking the administration of justice out of the hands of the legally consti- tuted authorities.
The tales of the fabulous richness of the gold fields of California were quickly spread through- out the world and drew to the territory all classes and conditions of men, the bad as well as the good, the vicious as well as the virtuous; the indolent, the profligate and the criminal came to prey upon the industrious. These con- glomerate elements of society found the Land of Gold practically without law, and the vicious among them were not long in making it a land without order. With that inherent trait, which makes the Anglo-Saxon wherever he may be an organizer, the American element of the gold seekers soon adjusted a form of government to suit the exigencies of the land and the people. There may have been too much lynching, too much vigilance committee in it and too little
respect for lawfully constituted authorities, but it was effective and was suited to the social conditions existing.
In 1851 the criminal element became so dom- inant as to seriously threaten the existence of the chief city, San Francisco. Terrible conflagra- tions had swept over the city in May and June of that year and destroyed the greater part of the business portion. The fires were known to be of incendiary origin. The bold and defiant attitude of the vicious classes led to the or- ganization by the better element, of that form of popular tribunal called a committee of vigi- lance. The law abiding element among the cit- izens disregarding the legally constituted authorities, who were either too weak or too corrupt to control the law-defying, took the power in their own hands, organized a vigilance committee and tried and executed by hanging four notorious criminals, namely: Jenkins, Stuart, Whitaker and Mckenzie.
During the proceedings of the vigilance com- mittee a case of mistaken identity came near costing an innocent man his life. About 8 o'clock in the evening of February 18, two men entered the store of a Mr. Jansen on Mont- gomery street and asked to see some blankets. As the merchant stooped to get the blankets one of the men struck him with a sling shot and both of them beat him into insensibility. They then opened his desk and carried away all the gold they could find, about $2,000. The police arrested two men on suspicion of being the rob- bers. One of the men was identified as James Stuart, a noted criminal, who had murdered Sheriff Moore at Auburn. He gave the name of Thomas Burdue, but this was believed to be one of Stuart's numerous aliases. The men were identified by Mr. Jansen as his assailants. They were put on trial. When the court adjourned over to the next day a determined effort was made by the crowd to seize the men and hang them. They were finally taken out of the hands of the officers and given a trial by a jury selected by a committee of citizens. The jury failed to agree, three of the jury being convinced that the men were not Jansen's assailants. Then the mob made a rush to hang the jury, but were kept back by a show of revolvers. The prison-
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ers were turned over to the court. One of them, Wildred, broke jail and escaped. Burdue was tried, convicted and sentenced to fourteen years' imprisonment. Before the sentence of the court was executed he was taken to Marys- ville and arraigned for the murder of Sheriff Moore. A number of witnesses swore positively that the man was Stuart; others swore even more positively that he was not. A close examination revealed that the prisoner bore every distin- guishing mark on his person by which Stuart could be identified. He was convicted and sen- tenced to be hanged in thirty days. In the mean- time the vigilance committee of 1856 was or- ganized and the real Stuart accidentally fell into the hands of the vigilantes at San Francisco. He was arrested for a theft he had not com- mitted and recognized by one of the committee's guards that he had formerly employed in the mines. By adroit questioning he was forced to confess that he was the real Stuart, the murderer of Sheriff Moore and the assailant of Jansen. His confederate in the robbery was Whitaker, one of the four hanged by the committee. Bur- due was finally released, after having twice stood under the shadow of the gallows for the crimes of his double. The confessions of Stuart and Whitaker implicated a number of their pals. Some of these were convicted and sent to prison and others fled the country; about thirty were banished. Nearly all of the criminals were ex- convicts from Australia and Tasmania.
The vigorous measures adopted by the com- mittee purified the city of the vicious class that had preyed upon it. Several of the smaller towns and some of the mining camps organized vigilance committees and a number of the knaves who had fled from San Francisco met a deserved fate in other places.
In the early '50s the better elements of San Francisco's population were so engrossed in business that they had no time to spare to look after its political affairs; and its government gradually drifted into the hands of vicious and corrupt men. Many of the city authorities had obtained their offices by fraud and ballot stuf- fing and "instead of protecting the community against scoundrels they protected the scoundrels against the community." James King of Will-
iam, an ex-banker and a man of great courage and persistence, started a small paper called the Daily Evening Bulletin. He vigorously as- sailed the criminal elements and the city and county officials. His denunciations aroused pub- lic sentiment. The murder of United States Marshal Richardson by a gambler named Cora still further inflamed the public mind. It was feared that by the connivance of some of the corrupt county officials Cora would escape pun- ' ishment. His trial resulted in a hung jury. " There was a suspicion that some of the jury- men were bribed. King continued through the Bulletin to hurl his most bitter invectives against the corrupt officials. They determined to silence him. He published the fact that James Casey, a supervisor from the twelfth ward, was an ex- convict of Sing Sing prison. Casey waylaid King at the corner of Montgomery and Wash- ington streets and in a cowardly manner shot him down. The shooting occurred on the 14th of May, 1856. Casey immediately surrendered himself to a deputy sheriff, Lafayete M. Byrne, who was near. King was not killed, but an ex- amination of the wound by the physicians de- cided that there was no hopes of his recovery. Casey was conducted to the city prison and as a mob began to gather, for greater safety he was taken to the county jail. A crowd pursued him crying, "Hang him," "kill him." At the jail the mob was stopped by an array of deputy sheriffs, police officers and a number of Casey's friends, all armed. The excitement spread throughout the city. The old vigilance com- mittee of 1851, or rather a new organization out of the remnant of the old, was formed. Five thousand men were enrolled in a few days. Arms were procured and headquarters estab- lished on Sacramento street between Davis and Front. The men were divided into companies. William T. Coleman, chairman of the vigilance committee of 1851, was made president or No. I, and Isaac Bluxome, Jr., the secretary, was No. 33. Each man was known by number. Charles Doane was elected chief marshal of the military division.
The San Francisco Herald (edited by John Nugent), then the leading paper of the city, came out with a scathing editorial denouncing the
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vigilance committee. The merchants at once withdrew their advertising patronage. Next morning the paper appeared reduced from forty columns to a single page, but still hostile to the committee. It finally died for want of patron- age.
On Sunday, May 18, 1856, the military di- vision was ready to storm the jail if necessary to obtain possession of the prisoners, Casey and Cora. The different companies, marching from their headquarters by certain prescribed routes, all reached the jail at the same time and com- pletely invested it. They had with them two pieces of artillery. One of these guns was planted so as to command the door of the jail. There were fifteen hundred vigilantes under arms. A demand was made on Sheriff Scannell for the prisoners, Cora and Casey. The prison guard made no resistance, the prisoners were surrendered and taken at once to the vigilantes' headquarters.
On the 20th of May the murderers were put on trial; while the trial was in progress the death of King was announced. Both men were convicted and sentenced to be hanged. King's funeral, the largest and most imposing ever seen in San Francisco, took place on the 23d. While the funeral cortege was passing through the streets Casey and Cora were hanged in front of the windows of the vigilance headquarters. About an hour before his execution Cora was married to a notorious courtesan, Arabella Ryan, but commonly called Belle Cora. A Catholic priest, Father Accolti, performed the ceremony.
Governor J. Neely Johnson, who at first seemed inclined not to interfere with the vig- ilantes, afterwards acting under the advice of David S. Terry, Volney E. Howard and others of "the law and order faction," issued a proc- lamation commanding the committee to disband, to which no attention was paid. The governor then appointed William T. Sherman major-gen- eral. Sherman called for recruits to suppress the uprising. Seventy-five or a hundred, mostly gamblers, responded to his call. General Wool, in command of the troops in the department of the Pacific, refused to loan Governor Johnson arms to equip his "law and order" recruits and
General Sherman resigned. Volney E. Howard was then appointed major-general. His princi- pal military service consisted in proclaiming what he would do to the "pork merchants" who constituted the committee. He did nothing ex- cept to bluster. A squad of the vigilance po- lice attempted to arrest a man named Maloney. Maloney was at the time in the company of David S. Terry (then chief justice of the state) and several other members of the "law and or- der" party. They resisted the police and in the melee Terry stabbed the sergeant of the squad, Sterling A. Hopkins, and then he and his as- sociates made their escape to the armory of the San Francisco Blues, one of their strongholds.
When the report of the stabbing reached headquarters the great bell sounded the alarm and the vigilantes in a very brief space of time surrounded the armory building and had their cannon planted to batter it down. Terry, Ma- loney, and the others of their party in the build- ing, considering discretion the better part of valor, surrendered and were at once taken to Fort Gunnybags,* the vigilantes' headquarters. The arms of the "law and order" party at their various rendezvous were surrendered to the vig- ilantes and the companies disbanded.
Terry was closely confined in a cell at the headquarters of the committee; Hopkins, after lingering some time between life and death, finally recovered. Terry was tried for assault on Hopkins and upon several other persons, was found guilty, but, after being held as a prisoner for some time, was finally released. He at once joined Johnson and Howard at Sacramento, where he felt much safer than in San Francisco. He gave the vigilantes no more trouble.
On the 29th of July, Hethrington and Brace were hanged from a gallows erected on Davis street, between Sacramento and Commercial. Both of these men had committed murder. These were the last executions by the commit- tee. The committee transported from the state thirty disreputable characters and a number de- ported themselves. A few, and among them the
*The vigilantes built around the building which they used for headquarters a breastwork made of gunny- sacks filled with sand. Cannon were planted at the corners of the redout.
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notorious Ned McGowan, managed to keep con- cealed until the storm was over. A few of the expatriated returned after the committee dis- solved and brought suit for damages, but failed to recover anything. The committee had paid the fare of the exiles. It was only the high toned rascals who were given a cabin passage that brought the suits. The committee finished its labors and dissolved with a grand parade on the 18th of August (1856). It did a good work. For several years after, San Francisco from be- ing one of the worst, became one of the best governed cities in the United States. The com- mittee was made up of men from the northern and western states. The so-called "law and order" party was mostly composed of the pro- slavery office-holding faction that ruled the state at that time.
When the vigilance committees between 1851 and 1856 drove disreputable characters from San Francisco and the northern mines, many of them drifted southward and found a lodgment for a time in the southern cities and towns. Los Angeles was not far from the Mexican line, and any one who desired to escape from justice, fleet mounted, could speedily put himself be- yond the reach of his pursuers. All these causes and influences combined to produce a saturnalia of crime that disgraced that city in the early '50s.
Gen. J. H. Bean, a prominent citizen of Southern California, while returning to Los An- geles from his place of business at San Gabriel late one evening in November, 1852, was at- tacked by two men, who had been lying in wait for him. One seized the bridle of his horse and jerked the animal back on his haunches; the other seized the general and pulled him from the saddle. Bean made a desperate resistance, but was overpowered and stabbed to death. The assassination of General Bean resulted in the organization of a vigilance committee and an effort was made to rid the country of desper- adoes. A number of arrests were made. Three suspects were tried by the committee for various crimes. One, Cipiano Sandoval, a poor cob- bler of San Gabriel, was charged with complicity in the murder of General Bean. He strenuously maintained that he was innocent. He, with the
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