USA > California > A history of California: the American period > Part 25
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four square leagues in the heart of San Francisco. The grants were signed by Governor Micheltorena, to whom Limantour had furnished aid in the early forties, and seemed on their face to be unmistakably genuine.
So far at least as the San Francisco claims were concerned, they were upheld by the Land Commission. But after months of litigation, during which Limantour collected over $300,000 from property holders for quiet title, the United States District Court adjudged them fraudulent and ordered Limantour's arrest. The latter, after giving bond for $30,000, forfeited his bond and fled to Mexico.
Another spurious claim to three square leagues in the San Francisco limits was also brought forward about the time of the Limantour excitement, and served still further to cloud the titles of property holders and cause a semi- panic. This was known as the Santillan grant, so-called from the name of a priest, José Santillan, who produced a grant to the property in question, purporting to have been signed by Governor Pío Pico in 1846. The claim was sold by Santillan; and after passing into the hands of a company known as the Philadelphia Association, was approved by the Land Commission. Subsequent court proceedings, however, as in the case of the Limantour scheme, invalidated the claim and declared the grant a forgery.
Though the Limantour and Santillan claims were re- pudiated, the mere fact that frauds could be attempted on so large a scale and come so near of success, showed plainly enough the uncertainty and confusion surrounding the land titles of early San Francisco. Even an act of the State Legislature in 1851, recognizing the city's right to certain beach and water lots and confirming previous sales of such property, failed to clear away the difficulties. Court deci- sions for a long time were too conflicting to furnish any basis of adjustment. Squatters disputed the rights of legitimate owners; and for many years rival claimants settled the respective merits of their claims by resort to force, as often as by appeal to law.
In addition to these private disputes over land titles,
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there was much juggling of the city's property by corrupt officials. All sorts of fraudulent practices were resorted to by which the municipality's valuable real estate, in- herited from the old Spanish days or ceded to it by the government, was transferred to private individuals, many of whom thus became rich and infamous at the same time. So, through the first decade of San Francisco's history as an American municipality, along with all its splendid virility and optimism, ran the scandal of a city robbed of its heri- tage by conniving officials and unprincipled citizens.
Whatever its government might be doing, however, year after year the city continued its surprising growth, and added to its wealth by leaps and bounds. Misfortunes however, were not lacking to test the real metal of the new community. Chief of these were the six great fires, which, one after the other, swept over the city in eighteen months, beginning with December, 1849. The total loss entailed by these fires, most of which were thought to be of incendiary origin, was close to $25,000,000, none of which was covered by insurance. But with the spirit of courage and deter- mination that showed itself again to the admiration of the world after the great disaster of 1906, the citizens each time rebuilt their devasted city, making it more sub- stantial and desirable after every catastrophe.
The last of the six great fires started June 22, 1851, on the north side of Pacific near Powell, and destroyed, wholly or in part, some sixteen blocks, causing a loss of over $3,000,000. This, and the previous conflagrations, changed completely the San Francisco of tents and flimsy structures which had sprung up in the first months of 1849. Docks, wharves, sewers, sidewalks, paved streets, commodious and fire proof business houses, attractive and substantial homes took the place of the rude buildings and primitive structures of an earlier day. Business still continued to rely upon the mines for much of its prosperity; but a more widely diversified interest in shipping, lumber, agriculture, and other lines of productive activity, promised a broader and more secure foundation for the city's future.
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Gold dust ceased to be the chief circulating medium, but gave place to ten and twenty dollar gold pieces privately coined, and to the fifty dollars "slugs" issued by the assay office in San Francisco. A motley list of silver coins, drawn from almost every country under the sun, served for small change and readily passed from hand to hand with only a rough attempt to fix approximate values. The smallest coin in use was a bit, or Spanish real, supposed to be equal to twelve and a half cents in American money; but as a matter of fact, nearly every small silver coin, whatever its face value, was classed as a bit and so accepted; for the San Franciscan still refused to think in terms of nickels and cents.
The year 1853 was marked by a feverish business activity and inflation of real estate values such as even the boom of 1849 had scarcely known; but in the midst of this hectic prosperity, were signs of coming trouble. The mining industry, though still producing many millions annually, was not able to support the thousands of persons who had made it their livelihood in previous years. Consequently, men were coming back from the mountains in large numbers and seeking employment in other lines, or turning to other occupations, especially to agriculture, for a livelihood.
This transition could not be accomplished without con- siderable strain upon the machinery of business. Merchants found their sales curtailed and ready money far more diffi- cult to obtain. Goods had to be sold in the interior largely on credit; and gold continued to flow out of the state to meet bills already contracted with eastern merchants. The season of 1854 was unusually dry, bringing ruin not only to many ranchers, but also seriously reducing mining operations through lack of water. This and other difficulties led to nearly three hundred business failures in one year. In addition there occurred the very serious defalcation of Henry Meiggs, ex-councilman, public benefactor, and leading citizen of San Francisco, whose unpaid debts and fraudulent treasury warrants cost his creditors fully $800,000.
In spite of these adverse factors, however, San Francisco
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experienced no actual crisis until the sudden collapse of several leading banking houses at the beginning of 1855. The crash happened shortly after the middle of February, when the firm of Page, Bacon and Company, probably the leading banking institution of California, became insolvent through the embarrassment of its parent company in St. Louis. This precipitated a run on the great banking and express house of Adams and Company, whose branch offices were in every mining center of California, and forced that institution to close its doors.
At the time of this failure, Adams and Company owed nearly $2,000,000 to depositors; and as there was then no national bankrupt law, the assets still on hand were success- fully manipulated by means of receivers, attachments, and other legal devices to the great benefit of a few favored creditors and the complete disappointment of the rest. Litigation over the spoils lasted for seven years; but most of the depositors gained little or nothing from the proceedings. The law's failure to remedy the situation; or to punish those responsible for the disappearance of more than $200,000 of the company's assets, aroused public opinion to the danger point, and served as one of the contributing motives for the creation of the Vigilance Committee in 1856.
The financial panic did not confine itself to the two firms already mentioned. Three other leading houses, including those of Wells-Fargo, and Robinson and Company closed their doors on the same day that Adams and Company announced its failure. A run was also started on the re- maining banks of the city; but either through good fortune or wiser management these were able to meet the demands of their excited depositors. These bank failures also forced many mercantile houses into bankruptcy, so that a general and very acute business depression followed the fat years of prosperity and speculation from 1849 to 1854.
The activity and feverish energy which characterized the material development of San Francisco between 1849 and 1855, also showed itself in the social side of the people's life. The amusements, or perhaps one should say, forms of relax-
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ation, were generally strenuous and most unconventional, if judged by modern standards. They were of a nature, too, that inevitably fostered lawlessness, where a community tolerated them too long; and in the end became the source of viciousness and evil of the worst sort.
Though even from the beginning harmless pleasures were common enough, and year by year the better class of San Francisco turned with increasing eagerness to amusements of moral worth, patronizing concert, lecture, and drama with true liberality, establishing gardens and parks, and seeking in many ways to encourage culture and refinement; yet the characteristic amusements of those early days were not of the uplifting type.
Men found their chief delight in drinking, gambling, and association with loose women. The saloons and gambling houses, which stood open day and night, were indeed the recognized centers of the city's social life. Their furnishings were tawdry and vulgar, but of a kind to appeal to unrefined masculine taste, and provided an enticing contrast to the bare, cheerless rooms in which most of the people lived. Entertainment of various sorts was also supplied by most resorts, such as the Bella Union, the El Dorado, or the Ver- anda, to serve as an additional attraction to the crowds. To these features were added light, warmth, the opportunity for companionship, and an atmosphere surcharged with excitement. Stronger than all, however, was the appeal of bar and gambling table.
As was to be expected, women of an undesirable charac- ter began to make their appearance very early in San Fran- cisco society. Many of these were first brought in from Mazatlan or similar west coast Latin American cities; and others came from the sea ports of Asia. Later, the under- world of Paris, London and New York added to the stream; until the prostitute became a familiar figure on every San Francisco street. Here again, as in the other aspects of social life, the old restraints and conventionalities were cast utterly aside. Men of prominence and eminent standing in the community appeared openly in the company of these
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daughters of Rahab, without exciting unfavorable comment or even attracting much attention. Few condemned them, because few thought evil of what they did. Old standards were temporarily abandoned. San Francisco had for the time being adopted a new code of ethics and behavior.
In this society, with its lack of restraint and emphasis upon the individual, the maintenance of one's rights became largely a personal matter with which the common place law had little to do. As a matter of course nearly every man went armed, choosing knife or revolver according to individ- ual taste. Disputes were settled "on sight," or made the subject of formal duels. The five hundred odd saloons, with which the city was blessed by 1855, did not tend to a condition of quietness and peace; nor did the excitement bred in gambling houses, or the influence of immoral women prove of much assistance in this regard.
Homicide was too common to excite much comment, and as almost no attempt was made to enforce the law by reg- ularly appointed officials, men almost ceased to take it into consideration. Principals in a quarrel were shot or stabbed to death, (and by-standers who failed to get out of the way quickly enough accidentally killed), without society holding any one responsible. The law could not keep pace with the hurried rush of life, so that each man became his own pro- tector-and not infrequently another man's judge and executioner as well.
Such conditions inevitably gave the vicious elements of society free rein for their activities. And there were enough of these lawless characters and to spare before the city had long outgrown its village stage. A criminal community, known as Sydney Town, in honor of the ex-Australian convicts who founded it, had sprung up between Broadway and Pacific near the water front, to which all manner of evil characters resorted. But this community, bad as it was, did not have a monopoly of the undesirables, for they were too numerous to be confined to any one quarter of the city. Like most criminal classes, that of San Francisco was very cosmopolitan in its make-up. The riffraff of
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Europe, Asia, and South America, which followed in the wake of the gold rush, were continually augmented by Amer- ican rowdies from the eastern cities, or scoundrels from the southern and western states. To these was added a steady stream of weak or desperate characters with whom life in California had dealt too hard-failures from the mines, men who had lost fortune and self-respect through gambling or drink, and all the unpleasant by-products which California, inter pocula, necessarily produced.
Another factor in the creation of lawlessness was the lax administration of the municipal government. From the American occupation down to May 1, 1850, the city was governed for the most part under the primitive Mexican institutions of alcalde and ayuntamiento. During much of this period there was considerable waste of public funds and something akin to chaos in municipal affairs. The status of the government in 1849 was thus described by one of the early alcaldes:
"At this time we are without a dollar in the public treasury, and it is to be feared the city is greatly in debt. You have neither an office for your magistrate, nor any other public edifice. You are without a single police officer or watchman, and have not the means of confining a prisoner for an hour; neither have you a place to shelter, while living, sick and unfortunate strangers who may be cast upon our shores, or to bury them when dead. Public improve- ments are unknown in San Francisco. In short, you are without a single requisite necessary for the promotion of prosperity, for the protection of property, or for the maintenance of order." 1
The change from Mexican to American institutions brought about by the first city charter, effected no per- manent improvement in the city's government. Except for an occasional attempt at reform, conditions in fact grew worse instead of better. Elections became a farce. Contractors and officials grew rich at public expense. Crimi- nals caught red-handed were almost never convicted. The whole machinery of law enforcement and the right of the
1 Quoted in Williams, The vigilance committee of 1851.
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city's inhabitants to be secure in their persons and property were surrendered to the worst element of the population. Lawyers, politicians, shrewd business men, with much to gain from the control of city government, furnished the leadership for this evil domination; and under them were petty grafters, lawless bullies, and criminals of every kind.
So long as the city remained under such control it was utterly impossible to bring men to justice in the ordinary courts of law. The statement of a recent author that be- tween 1849 and 1856 one thousand murders were committed, with only a single legal conviction, will scarcely be challenged by those conversant with the times. Yet it is obvious that a community essentially Anglo-Saxon will not tolerate such conditions beyond a certain point. The first outburst of public opinion, which amounted to something more than talk, came in July, 1849, and resulted in the overthrow of a lawless group known as the Hounds or Regulators-a semi- political organization whose activities bore an indistinguish- able resemblance to robbery, especially when applied to inoffensive foreigners. A particularly brutal attack one Sunday afternoon, upon the settlement known as Little Chile, led the better element in San Francisco to unite for the suppression of the organization. The leaders of the Hounds were accordingly seized, tried by a citizen's court, and driven from the community. The rest of the gang never again attempted to reorganize.
It was not until 1851, however, that the first of the actual Vigilance Committees came into being. Lawlessness had been on the increase for months, expressing itself not only in robbery and murder, but also (or at least so it was sus- pected), in starting the great fires which swept the city from time to time. Arrests of even the most notorious criminals were seldom made and never accompanied by conviction. At last, with a sound common sense that placed the wel- fare of society above the sanctity of unenforced law, some two hundred of the best citizens effected an organization, known as the Committee of Vigilance, to rid the city of criminals and assist in the enforcement of law. Sam Bran-
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nan, former leader of a Mormon contingent that came to California in the ship Brooklyn, was elected president, and Isaac Bluxome, Jr., secretary of the organization. A few of the many other influential members were William T. Cole- man, James King of William, Selin and Frederick Wood- worth, and Colonel J. D. Stevenson of the New York Volun- teers. A constitution was adopted on June 9th, and the Vigilance Committee entered upon its difficult and dangerous task. It should be borne in mind that this Committee, even though self-constituted, was not a mob, but a carefully organized body of respectable men who openly avowed responsibility for what they did, and acted only after careful investigation of each case.
Until its work was accomplished, some of the Committee constantly remained on duty. The rest could be summoned at any time day or night by the tolling of the Monumental Engine Company's bell. Beginning with the execution of John Jenkins, an Australian ex-convict of evil notoriety who was caught while attempting a daylight robbery, the Committee continued its careful, methodical work, making arrests with its own police, holding trials under an established procedure, placarding the city with warnings for the criminal classes to leave, and watching incoming ships to prevent the landing of desperate characters, until, for a time at least, San Francisco could boast a law-abiding population. In this first purification of the body politic, ninety-one persons were taken into custody. Of these,
" the Committee hanged four; whipped one; deported fourteen under direct supervision; ordered fourteen more to leave California at their own expense . . . ; delivered fifteen to the authorities for legal trial; and discharged forty-one."
The good accomplished by the first Vigilance Committee could be made permanent, however, only by continued interest in the city's welfare on the part of its better citizens. This, unfortunately, was not forthcoming; for like too many reform movements, that of 1851 was merely a spasmodic outburst of indignation instead of a sustained effort at civic
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improvement. So, almost as soon as conditions became endurable, the good people of San Francisco turned again to their own affairs; and the city's control slipped back into the hands of evil men.
Lawlessness once more became the order of the day. The criminal class, augmented by the hard times of 1854 and '55, began a reign of robbery and murder such as the community had not known even in the worst days of 1851. More than ever, the law was made a mockery by corrupt or inefficient officials and dishonest lawyers; and thoughtful men de- spaired of finding in it any relief from the conditions with which they found themselves surrounded. The vicious circle was rendered complete by a union of wealth and respectabil- ity, in the person of certain business and financial leaders who needed to control municipal elections and the city's treasury, with the rowdy element. Altogether, therefore, the state of San Francisco in 1856 was worse than in 1851, and drastic measures were again required to bring about a restora- of law and order.
Public opinion was quickened to this new task by the death of James King of William. This man's character, like his name, had about it a certain individuality that set him apart from his companions; and near the close of his career, especially, made him a sort of gadfly in San Fran- cisco to arouse the city from its moral apathy. John Randolph of Roanoke occupied a place no more unique in the Senate of the United States than James King of William held in the San Francisco of the middle fifties.
King began his California career in the Sierras. After- wards he came to San Francisco, where he established a private bank, and later entered the employ of Adams and Company. The failure of this house thrust him into the editorial profession, and on October 8, 1855, he issued the first number of the Daily Evening Bulletin. Almost im- mediately this paper set the city by the ears. With a directness, which must have delighted the heart of a society still very much in the pioneer stage, King attacked those whom he considered guilty of corrupting the city's morals
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or of defrauding the people through political power. He dealt in personalities rather than in general charges, and published the names of offenders with a boldness that made the victims of graft and crooked politics rejoice and take heart. Palmer, Cook and Company, whom he called the "Uriah Heaps of San Francisco bankers," and many other epithets no less complimentary, furnished King his first target. But his tastes were catholic, and evil doers great and small soon took their places in the Bulletin's gallery of rogues beside the arch enemies to all good society- Palmer, Cook and Company.
King's attacks did not of course immediately dethrone vice; but he gradually taught the people where the sources of corruption lay, and steadily developed a strong under- current of public opinion against the prevalent abuses. The shooting of William Richardson, a United States Marshal, by a notorious gambler named Charles Cora, who escaped the consequences of his act through a split jury, nearly precipitated a mob uprising in the early part of 1856.2 But it was not until the following May that the cold-blooded murder of James King himself, by a detestable politician named Casey, brought back the old Vigilante days of 1851 and restored to the city its self-respect.
King was shot about five o'clock on the evening of May 14th as he was walking homeward from the office of the Bulletin. Casey immediately gave himself up to his friends at the police station, where he thought he would be secure. But the tolling of the old Monumental Fire bell brought together so great a crowd that the assassin's confederates thought it best to move him to the county jail for safe keep- ing. Here, protected by a large force of armed deputies and a considerable body of militia, he was temporarily safe; but the city was aroused to too high a pitch to quiet down. Matters, indeed, had come to such a pass that as Dempster, one of the advocates of a new Vigilance Committee, truly said in his appeal to the better class of citizens, "we must either have vigilance with order or a mob with anarchy."
2 Cora was known to have killed at least six men besides Richardson.
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Members of the Committee of 1851, led by one of its active members, W. T. Coleman, served as a nucleus for the new organization. The old Know-Nothing hall at 10512 Sacramento Street was used as temporary headquarters, and notices in the newspapers announced the reassembling of the Committee. Before nightfall a thorough, swiftly working organization had been perfected, hundreds of persons had been enrolled, sworn to an oath of secrecy, and given a number by which they were henceforth to be designated instead of by name. Arms were later provided in sufficient number to equip some two thousand men.
The volunteers were organized into regular military com- panies, each with its own officers, but the actual direction of affairs rested with a Central Executive Committee of thirty- three members. The purpose of the organization can best be expressed in the Committee's language:
"We do bind ourselves," read their declaration, "to 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, assassin, ballot stuffer, or other disturber of the peace shall escape punishment either by quibbles of the law, the carelessness or the corruption of the police, or a laxity of those who pretend to administer justice."
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