USA > California > San Francisco County > San Francisco > 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 > Part 35
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59 See San Francisco papers, 1877, July 24 et seq .; Popular Tribunals, II, 696 et seq .; Bancroft, Chronicles of the Builders, I, 349-379; Hittell, California, IV, 594-599; Coleman, "San Francisco Vigilance Committees," Century, XLIII (1891), 145-148; Bryce, American Commonwealth, II, 432; San Francisco Chronicle, 1896, Jan. 12 91.
CHAPTER XIX LYNCH LAW AS A NATIONAL PROBLEM
Sneh is the story of the San Francisco Committee of Vigi- lance : a brief, vivid, and significant episode in the history of the American people. Its significance, as Henry Morse Stephens said, will always be interpreted in accordance with the shifting interests of successive generations and the personal vision of successive historians.
The contemporary discussions that arose in 1851 have already been indicated in the references to press reports cited in pre- vious chapters. Extracts from other comments in local and Eastern papers may be found in Popular Tribunals.1 Where objection to the work of the Committee was made, its basis was almost invariably impersonal argument relative to the danger of undermining the foundations of law and order, since there were few advocates particularly interested in the fate of the thieves and murderers summoned to the bar of the Committee.
When one tries to estimate the weight of commendation or condemnation made in a later period it is necessary to consider as one the two associations of '51 and '56, which were usually grouped together by friends and foes. An immediate difference in the attitude of the publie is discernible after '56. Then the Committee pitted itself against men of influence. It struck at the very existence of the powerful clique that controlled political patronage, and its menace to organized society was greatly enhanced in the eyes of some of its erities by its menace to their
1 Popular Tribunals, I, 402-426. Bancroft quoted less freely from the objectors, who were represented in San Francisco chiefly by the Morning Post, although many Eastern papers severely condemned the Committees.
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individual importance and prosperity.2 Current discussion in the papers was bitter and prejudiced on both sides: the Alta stoutly defended the course adopted by the Committee, the Herald nearly ruined itself by outspoken and violent objection.3 The views of the personal antagonists of the Vigilantes were vividly set forth in two anonymous pamphlets which described their work as illegal, brutal, vindictive, and under the control of many members who were as guilty of political corruption as were the men they prosecuted.4
More permanent value may be attached to the criticisms of contemporaries who were neither active members nor active traducers of the Committees. Bancroft in a sweeping general- ization grouped their enemies as including "besides the lower class of evil-minded persons, ... all licentious judges, stabbing jurists, duelling editors and fighting lawyers."5 But opponents with higher standards should not be vilified or ignored. Peter Burnett viewed the movement as "incipient rebellion and a fatal precedent."6 Frank Marryat, whose observations deserve con- sideration, wrote that no one would defend the acts of the Com- mittee and that they met with much opposition from the better
2 This difference between the opponents of the first and second Com- mittees was emphasized by Dempster in his MS Statement, 27-28.
3 John Nugent was editor in 1851 and 1856. He was so violently opposed to the reorganization of the Committee in 1856 that hundreds of patrons terminated their subscriptions, the auctioneers withdrew their advertise- ments, and the Herald was greatly reduced in size. It never recovered its lost prestige (see Popular Tribunals, II, 78-83, 217-223; Hittell, Califor- nia, III, 489-492). It is said that the policy of approval adopted by the Alta was due in part to the desire to retain advertising patronage (San Francisco Call, 1868, Jan. 1 1/1).
4 Judges and Criminals . .. History of the Vigilance Committee of San Francisco, 1858, ascribed to Dr. Henry M. Gray; The Vigilance Committee of 1856 [by O'Meara]. The Narrative of Edward McGowan should be mentioned with anti-Vigilante literature, as may be "The Lost Journals of a Pioneer"' attributed to C. E. Montgomery a Southern lawyer of some prominence (Overland Monthly, ser. 2, VII (1886), 75-90, 173-181, 276-287).
5 Bancroft, California Inter Pocula, 589.
6 Burnett, Recollections, 398.
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class of citizens, but he admitted, nevertheless, that San Fran- cisco conditions were improved by their efforts.7 Judge John Currey said plainly that popular accusations exaggerated the corruption of the courts and that in spite of ballot box stuffing and organized crime, existing evils could have been corrected without resort to violence if the time and money devoted to the work of the Committee had been expended in a faithful per- formance of the legitimate duties of citizenship.8
The early historian, E. S. Capron, closed a brief and in- accurate report of the work of the Committee of 1851 by ex- pressing sentiments akin to those of Judge Currey, asserting that its organization and actions were unjustifiable .? William F. White, who concealed his identity under the pseudonym of William Grey, made a violent attack upon the Vigilantes in his Picture of Pioneer Times in California.10 A more modern writer who strongly condemned the Committee of '56 was Isaac J. Wistar. He was an associate of Edward D. Baker, Casey's attorney during the trial for the murder of Richardson.11
On the other hand, a large number of the early Californians who had known the dangers of inefficient law and the protection of prompt, severe, but extra-legal punishment, maintained that the Committees of Vigilance accomplished an ultimate good and that some radical action was necessary to break the hold upon office which had been obtained by unscrupulous politicians and their criminal adherents. The Rev. S. H. Willey said : "It looked then as if the immense preponderance of opinion in favor of the Committee was an effort to regain the reality of 'law and order,'
7 See Marryat, Mountains and Molehills, 227, 238, 390.
8 John Currey, Incidents in California, 1878, p. 16, MS in the Bancroft Library.
9 E. S. Capron, History of California, 1854, pp. 131, 161.
10 Picture of Pioneer Times, by William Grey [W. F. White], 108-114. The facts presented by this author are far from accurate.
11 I, J. Wistar, Autobiography, 1914, I, 313-316, 325-332.
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while those who stood by its forms were mainly those who had got those forms into their hands and used them to defeat justice."12
Some of the keenest criticisms on Californian conditions dur- ing the exciting period from 1851 to 1856 were written by Mrs. Eliza W. Farnham. She acknowledged the promptness and the usual justice of the popular tribunals as contrasted with the authorized courts, and the check they put upon criminals who had little cause to fear the law; she admitted that an era of apparent tranquility resulted from the rule of the Committee of Vigilance of 1851; but she felt that the improvement was superficial and was based upon a public opinion that desired order merely for temporary self-protection. "There is no deep stake in social welfare," she wrote, "and consequently no action that reaches its spring." She sustained her contention by eiting the constant tendency to elevate the worst men to office where dishonesty could do even more damage than it could in better organized and more watchful communities. When the events of 1856 justified her anticipations of recurring violence. she fol- lowed them with eager interest, and although her concluding chapter was written before the adjournment of the Committee, she expressed her belief that the people of San Francisco and California were about to free themselves effectually from the open and dreadful corruption which had fastened upon their public affairs.13
H. H. Helper saw very little to admire in California, but he gave unhesitating praise to the Committees of Vigilance as the one means of enforcing order in communities which overwhelm- ingly reversed the normal American proportion of lawless and
12 S. H. Willey, Thirty Years in California, 1879, p. 49 et seq. He reported that the churches were fuller for four or five years after the uprising of '56, The editor of The Pacific, a pioneer religious weekly, asserted that with few exceptions the clergymen and church members approved the second Committee (The Pacific, 1856, Oct. 9 21).
13 See Farnham, California In-doors and Out, 96, 318, 458-508.
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law-abiding citizens.14 Another statement of the views of those who sympathized with the Committee may be found in Alonzo Delano's Life on the Plains and among the Diggings. A brief excerpt may well be quoted here :15
When the history of California shall be written, after time has mellowed the asperity of passing events, the occurrences of these days will form a singular . .. chapter. ... In a country whose people are proverbial for their love of justice and order . . . a condition of things existed, which threatened at one time to dissolve the social compact of the community ... organized bands of desperadoes and assassins . . . made the existing laws only an instrument to protect them in crime and high-handed villainy ... the whole length and breadth of California was so beset with unprincipled men . . . that, for the peace of society, a general revolution became necessary. ... [When] it was found that under the administration of the law, the insecurity of life and property increased instead of diminished, the people became aroused to a sense of their own wrongs, and, convinced that there was no other mode of redress, they resolved to take the punishment of offenders into their own hands, and to do what the administrators of the law could not, or would not do- protect the honest part of the community from the depredations which were daily and hourly committed upon them. .. . This state of things could no longer be endured. Patience was no longer a virtue. Self- preservation rendered it imperative that the first law of nature should be observed, and that unless some united effort was made, society must resolve itself into its primitive elements, and brute force become the only defence against aggression and violence.
It is interesting to notice that travelers from Europe, in spite of their more conventional traditions, expressed approval of the Committees of Vigilanee. Writing of affairs in 1852, Borthwick said :16 "Any one who lived in the mines of California at that time is bound gratefully to acknowledge that the feeling of security of life and person which he there enjoyed was due in a great measure to his knowledge of the fact that this admirable institution of Lynch-law was in full and active operation."
14 Helper, Land of Gold, 237-253. See also Harlan, California, 211.
15 Delano, Life on the Plains and among the Diggings, 363-365.
16 Borthwick, Three Years, 224-234.
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Ernest Seyd, another Englishman, said that the Committees were supported by the majority of the educated English, German and French immigrants.17
Saint-Amant, who made a most sympathetic analysis of the difficulties that accompanied the establishment of government in such unusual surroundings, paid tribute to the immense good accomplished by Vigilante methods.18 Auger also approved heartily, and wrote a spirited account of the executions in San Francisco in 1851, which, however, was not based on the experi- ences of an eyewitness.19 Ernest Frignet, giving another second- ary report, eulogized both Committees as instruments that served the ultimate establishment of public order.20
"A Prussian Gentlemen," writing to the Alta, lauded the Committee of 1851 as an object lesson which compelled erim- inals to visualize the indignation of the law-abiding element. He held that it is "very necessary that society show itself in immediate concrete form, otherwise it is regarded as a mere abstract idea, which exerts too little influence on the stolid minds of brutish individuals."21 The German traveler, Friedrich Ger- stäcker. familiar with events in California through prior obser- vation and contemporary correspondence. also praised the Com- mittee of 1851. and wrote that it "honors the citizen to risk his own life and property that he may free town and state from such a curse. or. at least, check the continuance of such crimes."22
The later historians. Bancroft and Hittell, were staunch advocates of both Committees. Even Josiah Royce, who found
17 Ernest Seyd, California and Its Resources, 1858, pp. 23-24.
15 Saint-Amant, Voyages, 138, 408-411.
19 Auger, Voyage en California, 209-219.
20 Frignet, La Californie. 177-179, 196-202.
21 Alta. 1852, April 7 31-
22 Gerstäcker, Narrative of a Journey round the World, 253-255. See also commendation of Frank Lecouvreur, From East Prussia to the Golden Gate. 1906, pp. 183-193; Carl Meyer, Nach dem Sacramento, 1855, pp. 189-192.
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so much to condemn in the progress of society in California, called them the "expression of a pressing desire so to reform the social order that lynch law should no longer be necessary," and he said that what they accomplished was "not the direct destrue- tion of a criminal class, but the conversion of honest men to a sensible and devout local patriotism."23
But it is fruitless to multiply the repetition of opinions either for or against the Committee of Vigilance of San Francisco,24 since every estimate is so deeply colored by the personal tempera- ment or the experiences of the writer. Yet it is interesting to observe that whether the various critics justify or condemn, whether they depiet the Committee as productive of immediate good or immediate evil, they all agree that it was a product of basic defects in the local organization of society from which had arisen a pressing need for fundamental readjustment. In this judgment they were unquestionably correct, and here the com- mentators on California conditions have usually been content to pause. They have studied the Committee of Vigilance solely as a product of its local environment and described the situation from which it sprang as a ferment of political and social corrup- tion peculiar to the time and place. Such a treatment is in- adequate and misleading ; just as the Committee must be related to the earlier episodes of frontier expansion, so also must it be related to later developments of American life.
For California did not present a unique and isolated example of defective social adjustment ; while the state was emerging from
23 Royce, California, 407, 465.
24 A few further references may be given. Cornelius Cole, who had little sympathy with lynch law, acknowledged that the San Francisco Committee of '56 contributed largely towards bringing about a condition where lynch law was no longer employed, and afforded "an example of good flowing from evil" (Memoirs. 119). Much the same opinion was expressed by New- mark (Sixty Years in Southern California, 141). H. K. Norton approved its results (Story of California, 254-257), as did Henry Robinson, ("Pio- neer Days of California, " Overland Monthly, VIII [1872], 457-462).
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her period of storm and stress, and deferring more and more to the mandates of her constituted authorities, many of the con- ditions characteristic of her earlier youth were reappearing elsewhere. The individual histories of several states and the publications of their local historical associations are full of material that is closely akin to the reminiscences of the California Argonauts. In Indiana the lawful authorities were so incapable of restraining crime that the legislature of 1852 legalized the formation of private associations for the pursuit and arrest of horse thieves and gave the members the rights and privileges of constables. The experiment proved dangerous, for the volunteer posses were inclined to exceed their authority and inflict sum- mary punishment on their captives. In spite of this tendency the statute remained in force, with modifications dating from 1865.25 Vigilance Committees to suppress erime were formed as well in Iowa in the decade of the fifties. They kept few records and their actions were often governed by sectional animosities, while their punishments were sometimes flagrantly eruel and unjust.26
During the years 1855 to 1870 gold rushes like that of 1849 sent prospectors by the thousands into Idaho, Montana, Eastern Washington, and Oregon. There, as in California, social neces- sities everywhere outran the tardy establishment of institutional administration. There, again, was the same intermingling of diverse races and of honesty and crime; the same atmosphere of seething excitement ; the same need for local self-assertion in the absence of social control imposed from without. An excellent review of this general situation has been made by William J. Trimble in his Mining Advance into the Inland Empire. To one
25 See W. A. Rawles, Centralizing Tendencies in the Administration of Indiana. 1903, pp. 308-309.
26 The Annals of the Jackson County Historical Society of Iowa contain many reminiscences of the period of lynch law, especially I (1905), 30-34, 51-52; II (1906), 51-91 passim; III (1906), 28, 34-41, 68-75; IV (1907), 93-97. See also B. F. Gue, History of Iowa, 1903, I, 337-350; and supra, p. 74 note 23.
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who approaches that volime after a detailed study of California problems, it is very interesting to read :27
But whatever elements of population prevailed in one or the other place, there was one everywhere present, everywhere respected, every- where vital-the Californian. To Fraser River, Cariboo, Kootenay; John Day, Boise, Alder Gulch, Helena, went the adopted sons of California- youngest begetter of colonies-carrying with them the methods, the cus- toms, and the ideas of the mother region, and retaining for it not a little of love and veneration.
In the first critical months of the gold rush the territorial government of Washington exerted a nominal and attenuated authority from the seacoast to the Rocky Mountains. It entirely lacked the force needed to control the scattered and shifting camps, and the miners turned instinctively to the precedents set in California. Miners' meetings were summoned, miners' courts were formed, and civil and criminal matters were adjusted by popular decision.28 As had been the case in California, this simple and voluntary association was effective in safeguarding life and property in camps dominated by industrious and honest workmen, but it could not cope with organized and expert criminals.
A notorious gang of such criminals operated in 1862 and 1863 in the neighborhood of East Bannock, within the present limits of the state of Montana. Their seeret leader was Henry Plummer, a shrewd, courageous man, who was popular in the camp as the trusted miners' sheriff, while at the same time he was using his position to direct and protect the movements of his confederates. The entire district was terrorized, over a hundred murders were committed, and the friends of the outlaws often controlled the miners' meetings that tried suspected prisoners. Finally, in December of 1863, a Vigilance Committee was formed by the citizens of Virginia City and its vicinity. The association
27 W. J. Trimble, Mining Advance into the Inland Empire, 1914, p. 141. 28 Ibid., 227-242.
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Vigilance Committee of 1851
extended over a wide area, and in conformity with the San Fran- cisco example, the various branches of the Committee had written pledges and by-laws, executive committees, and permanent, responsible officers, many of whom became respected leaders of civic affairs in the later era of order and tranquility. At the same time the organization differed in several important points from that of San Francisco. Its membership was absolutely secret. Its deliberations were also secret, and sentences were passed. in advance of arrest. upon men known to be affiliated with the desperadoes. Pursuit was then instituted and the death penalty was often inflieted as soon as the culprits were appre- hended. Relentlessly the Vigilantes seoured their snow-swept wilderness and within a month Plummer and more than a score of his confederates were executed, other criminals took refuge in flight. and violence was checked. A pioneer who knew of this work from personal observation said of it :29
Of all the organizations for the irregular administration of justice that have marked the westward advance of American civilization, whether known as Moderators, Regulators, Vigilantes, or what not, the Vigilance Committee of Montana will be found to have been the most complete, most efficient, and most necessary of them all, and to have partaken of the character of a mob the least of any.
The territory of Montana was given separate organization in the spring of the next year, but the courts established their supremacy slowly, and the very judges themselves were some- times content to let the Vigilantes go on for a time, as they could attend to criminal matters more cheaply, more quickly, and better than it could be done by the courts. The perplex- ing problems of frontier justice were discussed with unusual judgment and lucidity in two charges to the grand jury of
29 C. Barbour, "Two Vigilance Committees," Overland Monthly, ser. 2, X (1887), 285-291. For detailed accounts of these Committees the reader is referred to T. J. Dimsdale, The Vigilantes of Montana, various editions, 1866-1915: N. P. Langford, Vigilante Days and Ways, 1890 (2 vols.), or 1912 (1 vol. ) ; O. D. Wheeler. "Nathaniel Pitt Langford." Minnesota State Historical Society, Collections, XV (1904-1914), 634-639.
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Madison County, Montana, delivered by Chief Justice H. L. Hosmer in 1864 and 1866. Thoroughly conversant with con- ditions that existed prior to the organization of competent courts, Judge Hosmer gave unqualified approval to the severe measures adopted by the Vigilantes for the suppression of crime, and lamented the disorders that had resulted elsewhere from "the tardiness and moral obliquity of those Territories which have adopted a more lenient course." None the less, he pointed out with solemn warning the evils that would inevitably ensue if popular tribunals persisted in a country equipped for legal justice; but instead of berating the Committees of Montana for continuing their work, even after the courts had been established in the territory, he expressed the conviction that their members would gladly disband as soon as they saw that courts and juries met the demands of their frontier society, and he gravely queried whether the blame for each fresh outbreak of popular vengeance might not lie at the door of his own court, or rest upon the juries he impaneled.30
A later chief justice, Theodore Brantley, in reviewing the judicial history of Montana, wrote of the Committee of Vigi- lance :31
Much casuistry may be indulged in as to the right and necessity of its doings. We must remember, however, that the arm of the law was not strong enough to extend to the people needed protection, and that, wherever it is a question, as it was then, whether peace and order shall prevail over crime and lawless spoliation, society may act in its own defense, by the use of whatever means may be necessary to preserve its life by protecting or insuring personal safety and individual rights. Necessity knows no law. Whatever wrongs or mistakes may have been committed by the men constituting this organization, its existence was justified by the necessities of the times, and the salutary results accom- plished by it, must stand as its vindication.
30 Sec Montana Historical Society, Contributions, V (1904), 235-252; also L. E. Munson, "Pioneer Life in Montana, " ibid., 200-234.
31 See Montana Historical Society, Contributions, IV (1903), 109-121, especially p. 112. Much valuable Vigilante material is preserved in that historical series, and particular reference may be made to II (1896), 254; III (1900), 290-295; VIII (1917), 99-104.
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Wherever the blame rested, it was corrected but slowly. Judge Brantley said that for many years public sentiment favored Vigilance Committees and seemed to oppose the infliction of the death penalty in all legal trials.
Trimble collected many references to Committees of Vigilance in Montana, Oregon, and Idaho.32 The majority began their work with a system approximating that of the Committee of San Francisco. Throughout this region, however, there was a greater tendeney for the associations to degenerate into instruments of political ambition or of private animosity, and some of them fell under the well merited condemnation of the publie that at first supported them.
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