USA > California > San Francisco County > San Francisco > San Francisco and thereabout > Part 2
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II
THE COMING OF THE ARGONAUTS
of the Mexican ranchers who governed their princi- palities like the barons of old. These were the days of boundless hospitality, when a man's family was as large as the surrounding population, when every stranger was welcome at the hacienda and became a guest for as long as he chose to stay. Those happy patriarchal times on the ranches of California, how they vanished at the coming of the gringo, the stranger from across the plains!
By the year 1840 a number of Americans had found their way to the remote Mexican territory of California. They had come as trappers and traders and were a hardy, adventurous set of men. That the suspicion and jealousy of the dons was not unfounded, subsequent events soon demonstrated. The Russians had pushed down the coast from their fur-trading posts in Alaska, and were narrowly watched by the Mexicans until, in 1841, they sold their California possessions to a Swiss settler, Captain John A. Sutter. Another element, however, was added to the population by the visits of the American whalers at San Francisco.
So strained had become the relations between the Mexicans and the Americans that about a hundred English-speaking people were arrested at San Fran- cisco on one occasion by order of the governor. They were sent to Monterey as prisoners and subsequently many of them were carried south into Mexico where they remained for varying periods without trial. Such violent efforts to discourage immigration had little effect in staying the tide which had already set in. Fremont, the pathfinder, had crossed the plains and had written glowing accounts of his adventures on mesa and prairie. Farnham, another early comer, described the Mexican territory of California in enthusiastic terms. They told of the wonderful landscape, of the great Sierra forests and the herds of deer, elk and wild horses that made their home on the broad valleys of the Sacramento and San Joaquin. Societies were formed in the East to promote immigration to the new country.
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The American flag was first raised at Monterey by Commodore Jones of the sloop-of-war Cyane. Hearing that the United States was at war with Mexico, he put up the stars and stripes and proclaimed the territory American. A day later, becoming convinced of his error, he retracted and apologized to the best of his ability.
When, in April, 1846, the war which had for some years been brewing between the United States and Mexico, finally reached the stage of active hostility, an independent war of conquest had already been waged in California by General John C. Fremont (then a colonel in the American army) in co-operation with Commodore Robert T. Stockton of the navy. Fremont had been sent with a party of army engineers on an exploring expedition, to map new routes from the East to California. In pursuit of this work he arrived near Monterey at a time when relations be- tween the Mexicans and gringos were much strained. General Castro, the comandante of Monterey, sus- pected ulterior motives, but Fremont went in person to explain the peaceful nature of his mission. Pro- ceeding on his route, he found a band of hostile Indians opposing him and received a report that Castro was planning an attack on his rear. A man of sudden resolution and indomitable will, he decided upon the hazardous plan of declaring war against California with his miniature army of sixty-two men.
Following this alarming move on the part of Fremont came the raising of the Bear Flag at Sonoma. William B. Ide was made commander of the troops there and issued a proclamation calling upon all citi- zens to rally around his standard. General Castro planned to attack Sonoma, but Fremont, who had left the town feebly garrisoned, hastily returned and held the Mexicans at bay. On July 4, 1846, the assembly of Americans at Sonoma declared their independence, made Fremont governor, and issued a formal declara- tion of war.
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It would carry us too far from the immediate history of San Francisco to describe the numerous complications which followed during the Mexican war,-the work of Commodore Sloat in seizing Mon- terey, the raising of the American flag in Portsmouth Square by Captain Montgomery, the military opera- tions in the South under Commodore Stockton and Colonel Fremont, when, with a forlorn-hope band, they marched through a hostile country and conquered it, the arrival of General Kearny and subsequent mis- understandings which led to the courtmartial of Fremont. By the treaty of 1848 the country became American territory and the last political obstacle to the emigration of American pioneers was removed.
There is something pathetically tragic about the discovery of gold in California. For centuries, Spanish adventurers had been the advance guard of the world in finding treasure. El Dorado of song and story was ever before them. But in California they had seen no trace of the precious metal. In January of the very year when the land was wrested from Mexico, 1848, the news reached San Francisco which ere long set the whole world into a fever of excitement. James W. Marshall, an employee of Captain Sutter, the Swiss settler, had discovered gold in large quantities amid the sand of the American River, a tributary of the Sacramento. When the report was confirmed by the shipment of considerable quantities of the coveted dust to San Francisco, a wild scramble to the spot ensued. The news spread in all directions like an epidemic, despite the remoteness of the land. Ships carried it to the four corners of the Pacific. From Chili and Peru came dark-eyed mestizos. Whalers and traders brought their quota of Kanakas and Marquesans. It is said that the Hawaiian Islanders were so stirred by the news of gold in California that by the month of November, 1848, twenty-seven vessels had sailed for San Francisco, carrying some six hun- dred people, while four thousand persons are reported
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to have gone from Chili that year to work in the mines of the new Dorado.
Meanwhile word reached the Eastern seaboard of America, and the great westward wave of migra- tion swept across the plains. Stillman says that never since the Crusades was such a movement known. The host, estimated at from twenty-five to forty thou- sand people, traveled in prairie schooners over that interminable stretch of plain, of desert, and moun- tain, braving the hardships of hunger and thirst, the perils of predatory Indian tribes, the dangers of the road which beset them from start to finish. Women and children shared with the men the privations of that terrible overland trail. Some were killed by the Indians, some perished of sheer exhaustion, others were storm-bound by the high Sierra snows, and died by inches, resorting to cannibalism in their maddened desperation.
At the same time that this multitude was cross- ing the plains, ships were fitted out for the long voy- age around Cape Horn, and old-fashioned side paddle- wheel steamers were put on the run to carry people by way of Panama. Thus from every State of the Union and from various parts of Europe came adven- turous spirits, all expecting to rock the sands of the Sacramento and make their fortunes.
The city of San Francisco grew almost in a day. It was a city of tents and gambling houses-a raw, crude, lawless place with the most cosmopolitan pop- ulation the world has ever seen. Here if anywhere was a confusion of tongues that would rival Babel. Bayard Taylor, who came by steamer in 1849 as cor- respondent for a New York paper, thus describes the scene:
"We scrambled up through piles of luggage, and among the crowd collected to witness our arrival, picked out two Mexicans to carry our trunks to a hotel. The barren side of the hill before us was cov- ered with tents and canvas houses, and nearly in front
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a large two-story building displayed the sign 'Fre- mont Family Hotel.'
"As yet we were only in the suburbs of the town. Crossing the shoulder of the hill, the view extended around the curve of the bay, and hundreds of tents and houses appeared, scattered all over the heights, and along the shore for more than a mile. A furious wind was blowing down through a gap in the hills, filling the street with clouds of dust. On every side stood buildings of all kinds, begun or half finished, and the greater part of them mere canvas sheds, open in front, and covered with all kinds of signs, in all languages. Great quantities of goods were piled up in the open air, for want of a place to store them. The streets were full of people hurrying to and fro, and of as diverse and bizarre a character as the houses; Yankees of every possible variety, native Cal- ifornians in serapes and sombreros, Chilians, Sonori- ans, Kanakas from Hawaii, Chinese with long tails, Malays armed with their everlasting creeses, and others in whose embrowned and bearded visages it was impossible to recognize any especial nationality. We came at last into the plaza, now dignified by the name of Portsmouth Square. It lies on the slant side of the hill, and from a high pole in front of a long one-story adobe building used as the Custom House, the American flag was flying. On the lower side stood the Parker House, an ordinary frame house of about sixty feet front-and toward its entrance we directed our course."
Bayard Taylor tells of the chaotic state of city streets and of all that goes to the making of a metrop- olis of canvas and packing boxes. He itemizes some of the rents during that feverish year. The Parker House yielded a hundred and ten thousand dollars annually, at least sixty thousand of which was paid by gamblers who held nearly all the second story. A canvas tent fifteen by twenty-five feet in size, called El Dorado, was leased to gamblers for forty thousand
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dollars a year. Provisions and wages were propor- tionate; extravagance, profligacy and gaming were the order of the day.
The winter of 1849 was the most notable in the history of San Francisco. The rains were unprece- dentedly heavy and the miserable streets became im- passable bogs. Horses were hopelessly mired and left to die. Kegs, boxes and rubbish of all sorts were thrown into the worst mud-holes to form stepping stones for pedestrians. The tent city was of the most temporary and inadequate description. Men leaving for the mines were obliged to travel by sailboat up the bay and Sacramento River, a tedious journey of days and sometimes weeks. Municipal affairs were in such a state of chaos that at one time there were three town councils in the city.
Out of all this hurly-burly and confusion of the mushroom metropolis, matters were presently reduced to at least a semblance of order. During nine months of this year, two hundred and thirty-three ships ar- rived from the Atlantic Coast and three hundred and sixteen from Pacific ports. As most of these vessels were deserted by their crews, who all rushed for the mines, the fleet of ships anchored in the harbor made an imposing appearance. A line of steamers was also put on by the Pacific Mail Steamship Company during this year, leaving monthly by way of Panama. Still, the difficulties of crossing the isthmus by row boat and pack train and the dangers of fever there, made many people prefer the longer route around Cape Horn.
During this period of excitement and disorder, an organization of ruffians known as the "Hounds" terrorized the city. They marched through the streets professing to be upholders of the rights of Americans as against the foreigners, and, with this pretext to shield them, attacked and looted tents, chiefly of the Mexicans and Chilians. Emboldened by success, they established headquarters, changed
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their name from Hounds to Regulators, paraded the streets with drum, fife and banners by day, and robbed and murdered by night. When, in July, 1849, they had become so fierce and desperate as to terrorize the whole city, a public meeting in Portsmouth Square was called by the Alcalde. Those present formed themselves into a voluntary police force to punish the desperados. Many of the worst offenders were speedily arrested and imprisoned on a ship in the harbor. An impartial jury trial followed which re- sulted in the conviction of a number of the ring- leaders to imprisonment with hard labor for varying terms.
To add to the terrors of this memorable year, a destructive fire swept the town, fanned by a high wind, licking up the flimsy houses of frame and canvas. It was but the first of a series of disasterous conflagra- tions which leveled the city during its early years. Painted cloth interiors furnished excellent fuel for a big blaze, and once started, the hand engines worked by a host of resolute young fellows, could make little stand against it. During the three years from 1849 to 1851, six fires devastated the city, involving a loss amounting in some cases to several millions, but with wonderful energy and courage the ruined citizens went to work each time to rebuild, improving with every bitter experience, until they learned to put up brick buildings with iron shutters on doors and win- dows to withstand the fearful ravage of the flames.
That some of these fires were of incendiary origin, no doubt was felt. Despite the suppression of the Hounds, lawlessness grew apace. The rush to the latest gold fields had attracted numbers of fearless criminals from various parts of the world. Australia was a penal colony, and thence in particular came a crowd of villains ready for robbery, murder, arson and all desperate deeds. They frequented the water- front saloons about Broadway and Pacific Street-a quarter of the city which was known as Sydney Town
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-and this region became a veritable hotbed of crime. The police were too corrupt and inefficient to cope with the evil. Judges and juries failed in their duty, and although over a hundred murders had been com- mitted, not a criminal had been executed.
So terrible had the demoralization of society become that desperate measures were necessary to restore order. In this period of stress and peril a band of citizens formed the world-famous Vigilance Com- mittee-an association as they themselves declared "for the maintenance of the peace and good order of society, and the preservation of the lives and prop- erty of the citizens of San Francisco." They had been organized but a short time when work was found for them to accomplish. John Jenkins, a mem- ber of the gang of Sydney Coves, as the criminals from Australia were termed, entered a waterfront store one evening and carried off a safe. Pursued, he took to a boat. Other boats were close upon his traces when he threw his plunder overboard and submitted to arrest. The safe was recovered, thus establishing the guilt of the prisoner beyond a shadow of doubt. He was taken to the rooms of the Vigilance Commit- tee on Battery Street near Pine. Almost immediately the town was aroused by short sharp double clangs of the Monumental Fire Engine Company's bell. It was the signal for the Vigilantes to assemble. Swiftly they responded. At the door only those who could give the pass-word were admitted. Outside waited the excited crowd, knowing that a dramatic moment in the history of the city was at hand. From ten to twelve o'clock they stood about, when, at the midnight hour, a thrill went through the assembled multitude. The bell of the California Engine House was tolling a death-knell.
It was nearly an hour later when Mr. Brannan, one of the committee, came out and announced to the people that the prisoner had been tried and found guilty. Within another hour the committee, all
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armed, marched silently forth from their quarters, guarding the prisoner in their midst. Solemnly they proceeded through those dark streets, followed by the multitude, to the Plaza. A rope was hastily tied about Jenkins' neck and in a trice the other end was tossed over a projecting timber of a low adobe house. The prisoner was speedily hoisted up and the rope, held in the grasp of willing arms, suspended him for some time after he ceased to move. The thousand spectators looked on in silence until the body was low- ered when they quietly dispersed to their homes.
The effect of this dramatic episode was electrify- ing. Most of the sober-minded of the community justified the violation of the law. All but one of the papers sustained the Vigilance Committee. It was the spirit of the people asserting itself against crime, but in defiance of constituted authority.
Other executions followed in rapid succession during 1851. A month later, another notorious crim- inal, James Stuart, was tried by the committee for a number of offenses, and after receiving the death sen- tence confessed his crimes and admitted the justice of the punishment. He too had been an Australian con- vict before coming to San Francisco. Two hours of grace were given him after the passing of judgment, and a minister was left alone with him. The whole committee, four hundred in number, kept the death watch in an adjoining room. Silent, resolute, they waited there. Not a whisper, not a murmur disturbed the awful calm of those two hours. Then the pris- oner was brought forth and, closely bound and guarded, was marched to the end of the Market Street Wharf where he was hung up to a derrick.
Two more men were subsequently hanged together from beams out of the windows of the Vigilance Com- mittee rooms, a crowd of six thousand people witness- ing the execution. This, with the deportation of many other desperate criminals, ended the work of the first committee and brought a state of tolerable
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security to life and property out of the condition of anarchy which had hitherto existed.
In 1856 the disordered state of society called a second time for strenuous measures and the Vigilance Committee was revived. Politics were at this period shockingly corrupt, and professional ballot box stuffers plied their vocation with impunity. A champion of the people and of order arose in the person of James King, the popular editor of the Bulletin. When, one day, the Bulletin made a statement, undoubtedly true, that a certain office-holder named Casey had served a term in Sing Sing Prison, the individual cited attempted to clear his reputation by a personal attack on the editor. He therefore shot and fatally wounded King, who died in a few days. Again the Vigilance Committee formed, larger, stronger and better organ- ized than before. They went to work in the same cool determined way to mete out justice and restore order. The execution, after due trial, of Casey and another desperate criminal, Cora, followed. Dangerous and disagreeable as was the work of the committee, they did not flinch in their attempt to supplant the law with a more just and effective tribunal. The specta- cle of an organized body of the most respected citizens, formed to act in defiance of law for the establishment of order in the community, has no parallel in history. They assumed full responsibility for their actions, their names were published with their sanction, and they incurred heavy personal expense and the danger of violent retaliation both from the desperate men whom they punished and the law which they defied.
The second Vigilance Committee ended its work amid great enthusiasm on August the eighteenth, 1856. The city was crowded with sightseers from the sur- rounding country. Flags and bunting brightened the streets. So strong had the organization become that over five thousand armed men passed the reviewing stand of the Executive Committee, including infan- try, cavalry and artillery, all equipped for action.
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After the parade the Vigilance Committee disbanded, having done its work so thoroughly that a different moral tone pervaded the community.
During this period, and in fact ever since 1852, when the gold output of California culminated in eighty-five million two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, a period of great depression occurred in San Francisco. Although over seventy-four million dol- lars' worth of gold were obtained in 1853 people became alarmed at the decline. Miners began to economize, trade fell off, the tide of immigration ceased and after a year or two even turned the other way. Business houses failed; Meiggs, the financier and promoter of North Beach, became a defaulter for immense sums and made his dramatic flight to Tahiti and South America. The whole situation in San Francisco looked blue enough. It was not until the Bonanza days of the Civil War that a revival of pros- perity came to the city.
Thus toiled the Argonauts for the golden fleece of El Dorado, and thus out of chaos and the strenuous life of the frontier grew modern San Francisco.
THE RAILROAD AND BONANZA KINGS
A FTER the decline in gold production in 1853, San Francisco passed through a period of comparative quiet and readjustment. In spite of the fact that for a number of years the annual gold output continued above fifty million dollars, public confidence in the boundless nature of the supply declined. Dull times fell upon San Francisco until the exciting days of the Civil War, when union or secession became a burning issue. The State decided with the North and showed its loyalty by subscribing for some time to the Sanitary Commission twenty-five thousand dollars a month, half the sum contributed by the entire coun- try. This from a city of a hundred and ten thousand people astonished the whole nation.
During the stirring times before the war, the eagerness to receive news and to communicate with far-away friends became so great that the pony express was started. Hardy riders carried the mail- bags on fast broncos all the long and dangerous way from Sacramento to St. Joseph, Missouri, the western terminus of the railroad. The distance was covered in the surprisingly short interval of ten and a half days, making the time from San Francisco to New York only thirteen days.
Still the people of California realized the neces- sity for closer relations with their kinsmen across the Rocky Mountains, and a railroad was the issue of the day. Congress, appreciating the strategic importance of a transcontinental system, listened to the demands of California and passed a bill for the construction
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THE RAILROAD AND BONANZA KINGS
of the road. In 1863 work on what seemed an almost hopeless undertaking was commenced at Sacramento. A small company of men who had been successful in business enterprises in Sacramento, notably Leland Stanford, C. P. Huntington, Mark Hopkins, Charles Crocker and E. B. Crocker, secured enormous con- cessions from the Government both in land and money, for building the Central Pacific Road, while another company received similar grants for constructing the Union Pacific Road, starting at the eastern end of the line. The dramatic race across the continent in the construction of these roads, each of which was to have all the line it had laid up to the point of meet- ing, ended on the desert near the Great Salt Lake, where, with due ceremony, in May, 1869, Leland Stanford drove the last spike in the line which united California with the East.
It was indeed an auspicious time for Califor- nia, but San Francisco was disappointed with the result. The directors of the road lived, during the first few years, at Sacramento. An effort, the second in the history of the city, was made by people inter- ested in Benicia, to make that place a rival of San Francisco, and to have the overland terminus there. Furthermore, the intention of the Central Pacific directors to make Goat Island their approach to San Francisco, connecting it by ferry with the city, was so hotly contested that the permission of Congress was withheld. Instead of the expected boom upon the completion of the road, San Francisco suffered a most disastrous panic.
After the decline of gold in California, specula- tive interest in the precious metals was revived by the discovery in Nevada of vast deposits of silver. As these mines were largely owned and controlled in San Francisco, the market in silver stocks became a gambling enterprise on a vast scale. ' Fortunes were made and lost in a day and the prosperity of San Francisco was dependent upon the reports of the out-
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look in Virginia City. In 1862 the Comstock Lode produced six million dollars in silver. Speculation in the mines of this region was so great that, in the following year, stocks of one company sold at six thousand three hundred dollars a share. Of course a panic ensued, although the yield of the Nevada mines in 1864 reached sixteen million dollars.
Ten years later all this fever of speculation was eclipsed by the vast yield of the Comstock Lode. Fabulous sums were taken from the Consolidated Virginia and the Gold Hill Bonanzas. In less than four years the Belcher and Crown Point mines had produced forty million dollars. Then came the Con- solidated Virginia, paying monthly dividends of three hundred thousand dollars. So wild was the excitement that the combined value of the Comstock shares is said to have increased during two months at the rate of a million dollars a day.
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