USA > California > San Francisco County > San Francisco > The annals of San Francisco; containing a summary of the history of California, and a complete history of its great city: to which are added, biographical memoirs of some prominent citizens > Part 46
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This state of things had continued for some months, when in one of their destructive expeditions upon the tents and chattels of the Chilenos, a young man by the name of Beatty, not pro- perly one of themselves, but who happened to be among or near
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the band at the time, received a fatal shot from one of the attacked foreigners. This roused the "hounds" to vengeance against the whole population of Spanish origin, and they became fiercer and more destructive in their excesses than ever. People now could not avoid taking notice of these lawless abuses ; but public indignation was not yet full. About this time the " hounds " changed their name to "regulators," and had the impudence to profess themselves guardians of the community against the encroachments of Spanish foreigners. At the sound of the " assembly beat " on the drum, they would collect in great numbers at "Tammany Hall," ready to commit whatever vio- lence their leaders might direct.
On the afternoon of Sunday, the 15th of July, a large band of the "hounds " or "regulators," returning from a marauding excursion to Contra Costa, determined to signalize the occasion by some new exploits. Armed with firearms and heavy sticks, and under the command of one dressed in regimentals, whom they called Lieutenant, they paraded through the town in their usual ridiculous fashion, and towards evening proceeded to attack various Chilian tents. These they violently tore down, plunder- ing them of money and valuables, which they carried away, and totally destroying on the spot such articles as they did not think it worth while to seize. Without provocation, and in cold blood, they barbarously beat with sticks and stones, and cuffed and kicked the unoffending foreigners. Not content with that, they repeatedly and wantonly fired among the injured people, and aniid the shrieks of terrified women and groans of wounded men, recklessly continued their terrible course in different quarters, wherever in fact malice or thirst for plunder led them. This was in broad daylight ; but there were no individuals brave or fool- hardy enough to resist the progress of such a savage mob, whose exact force was unknown, but who were believed to be both nu- merous and desperate.
On the following day, Monday, the 16th July, when the news of these last outrages were circulated among the citizens, the whole town rose in the greatest state of excitement. Al- calde Leavenworth, who was himself powerless to quell the dis- turbance, was waited upon by Captain Bezer Simmons and Mr.
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Samuel Brannan, and urged by these gentlemen instantly to take some steps to organize the community to protect itself, and put down decidedly these disturbers of the public peace. Thus forced to some definite action, the alcalde the same day issued a procla- mation, calling on the public instantly to assemble in Ports- mouth Square. At three o'clock of that day, the whole honest part of the community seemed to turn out at the place appoint- ed. Mr. W. D. M. Howard was chosen president of the meeting, and Dr. Victor J. Fourgeand, secretary. Mr. Samuel Brannan then addressed the meeting, and denounced in forcible terms, the depredations and many crimes of the " hounds." Upon his mo- tion, a subscription list was opened for relief of the sufferers by the riots of the previous evening. It was next suggested that the citizens should organize themselves into a police force to ap- prehend the criminals and drag them to justice. This was im- mediately done ; and two hundred and thirty people of those present at the meeting enrolled themselves as special constables. The general command of the body was given to Mr. W. E. Spof- ford, while Messrs. Stevenson, Wadleigh, Simmons, Smith, Turk, Gillespie, Hughes, Priest, Webb and Stevens were appointed captains. They were armed with muskets, sixty of which were furnished gratuitously by Mr. Hiram Webb, now of the firm of Webb & Harris. This volunteer force exerted themselves so diligently, that, in spite of several attempts at open resistance by the "hounds," nearly twenty of the rioters were the same afternoon apprehended, examined and put in prison on board the United States ship " Warren," there being then no safe place on shore in which to keep them in custody. The leader, "Sam" Roberts, was also arrested on his way to Stockton. Mr. A. J. Ellis, who had been chosen to act as sheriff, took an effective part in making these arrests.
The same day another meeting of the citizens was held on Portsmouth Square, at which Dr. Wm. M. Gwin and James C. Ward were unanimously elected associate judges, to relieve from excessive responsibility the alcalde, and to aid him in trying the prisoners. Mr. Horace Hawes was then appointed district attor- ney, and Mr. Hall McAllister his associate counsel. The next day, Tuesday, a grand jury of twenty-four citizens met, and,
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upon evidence, found a true bill against Samuel Roberts and other supposed members of the "hounds," to the number of nine- teen, on the different charges of conspiracy, riot, robbery, and assault with intent to kill.
The following day, Wednesday, the trials began. All the usual judicial forms were observed, and there was no apparent desire to press harshly on the prisoners. Probably if they had been caught in their very acts of violence on the preceding Sun- day, the enraged people would at once have executed popular justice on them ; but now public indignation was somewhat calmed, and the trials proceeded with the greatest decorum and impartiality. Francis J. Lippitt, Horace Hawes, Hall McAllis- ter, and Frank Turk appeared as counsel for the people ; while P. Barry and Myron Norton were deputed to act for the accused. The judges were the alcalde, T. M. Leavenworth, and Messrs. Gwin and Ward. Counsel for the defence having waived all ex- ceptions to the form of the indictment, a jury was impanelled, consisting of the following named gentlemen :- Thomas B. Win- ston, J. R. Curtis, J. V. Plume, A. De Witt, Clarence Living- ston, Benjamin Reynolds, Z. Cheney, John Sime, William Hood, John W. Thompson, Francis Mellus and Frederick Tesche- macker.
Witnesses were next called, on the part of the prosecution, who proved the existence of the association called the "hounds," its organization under leaders, its professed and imputed objects, and general violent proceedings. Other witnesses, among whom were one of the wounded Chilenos, then presumed to be in a dying state, and who subsequently died in consequence of his wounds, established the facts of the riots, assaults and robberies of the Sunday night preceding, and identified some of the pris- oners as having been actors in the scene. After some observa- tions by counsel for the defence, evidence was led by them, the drift of which seemed to be to confound the persons of the panels at the bar with those described by the witnesses for the prosecu- tion as having been engaged in the occurrences of Sunday, and in some faint degree also to establish an alibi. After an impar- tial charge by the alcalde, the jury found Roberts, the leader of the gang, guilty of all the counts, and eight others guilty of one
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or more of them. Roberts and Saunders (another of the more active "hounds,") were then sentenced to ten years imprison- ment, with hard labor, in whatever penitentiary the governor of California might direct, and the remainder to imprisonment with hard labor for shorter periods, as well as most of them to consid- erable fines, some of them also being required to grant bonds for large sums to keep the peace for twelve months. From various circumstances these penalties were never inflicted ; but the pris- oners, some of whom were sent out of the country, were shortly afterwards set at liberty.
Thus ended the affair of the "hounds," which had alarmed the community so much, and which had compelled them, in the absence of a firm and regular judicature, to take the law into their own hands, and administer justice in a prompt and decisive manner. The early success and safety of the " hounds," for a long period afterwards led to still more daring and criminal ex- cesses on the part of the desperadoes with whom the town con- tinued to be haunted, and who were checked for only a little while in their crimes by the examples made of Roberts and his mates. On the other hand, the ease with which a number of respectable and determined men could thus put down a disorder- ly gang, afterwards encouraged the formation of the famous " Vigilance Committee " of the year 1851, when, what between theft and burglary, assault, murder and arson on the great scale, it became almost a life and death struggle for the honest citizen to preserve his property and inhabit the town in peace and per- sonal safety. Some of the "hounds," who had escaped the due punishment of their crimes at this time, met it shortly after- wards at the mines, where several of them were unceremoniously hanged, at an hour's notice, by the enraged miners, upon whom they had attempted to try the tricks they had so long played with impunity in San Francisco.
Notwithstanding all that we have said, there is yet another phase of the " hounds" business, which may be just noticed. At that period, there happened to be influential parties in San Fran- cisco, who were determined to make "political capital " for them- selves, and who considered that a gentle course of public disturb- ance, while it might not conduce to any materially evil results,
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could be employed, or at least its instruments, to facilitate the objects they had in view, and further their own personal interests. These persons were suspected at the time, and long afterwards were known, to have had secret intimacies and mysterious deal- ings with certain leaders of the " hounds," who undertook to promote the purposes of the former while at the same time they served their own. But the monster, which if not born, was, at least, nursed into strength by these very respectable aspirants, soon outgrew the power of its protectors to keep it within bounds, and became at last their disgrace and terror. Fearful of com- mitting themselves by owning a former connection, however slight, with such a vile association, some of the richest and most influential people in the town calmly heard of all the abuses com- mitted by their protégés, but took no steps to quell them. It would be imprudent at this time to mention names, but the fact is so nevertheless. The truly liberal, honest and brave portion of the community had therefore a doubly difficult task to accom- plish ; for not only had they to put down the "hounds " them- selves, who were emboldened to resist by the knowledge that they had " friends at court," but they had also to overcome the un- concealed reluctance of many of their fellow-citizens to move at all in the matter, and to set aside the various obstacles which these factiously were enabled to throw in the way.
36
FURNITUR
STORE
AGULLITT PATRICKCOON
warten
Hanging of Whittaker and Mckenzie.
THE VIGILANCE COMMITTEE.
THERE is probably no portion of the history of San Francisco which has more excited the attention, the mingled wonder and applause, scorn and indignation of the civilized world, than the proceedings of the famous "Vigilance Committee." To law- loving, peaceable, worthy people in the Atlantic States and Europe, it did certainly seem surprising, that a city really of thirty thousand inhabitants,-though since the population was chiefly composed of male adults, of virtually the pretension, the riches, business and character of a city of twice that number,- should patiently submit to the improvised law and arbitrary will of a secret society among themselves, however numerous, honest and respectable the members might be reputed. Few people, abroad, who had been trained from infancy to revere "the majesty of the law," and who had never seen any crime but what their own strong legal institutions and efficient police
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could detect and punish, could possibly conceive such a state of things as would justify the formation and independent action of an association which set itself above all formal law, and which openly administered summary justice, or what they called justice, in armed opposition and defiance to the regularly constituted tribunals of the country. Therefore, in other lands, it happened that the Vigilance Committee became often a term of reproach, and people pointed to it as a sign that society in California was utterly and perhaps irredeemably impure and disorganized. In San Francisco itself, while some citizens, it must be confessed, did condemn the proceedings of that body, by far the greater number cordially approved of them. The public press was almost unanimous in its support of the association. The officers of the law were often obliged to take cognizance of the existence and actions of the committee, and thought it a matter of public duty to denounce them ; but many of even these parties, in private conversation, and still more in heart, applauded the course which had been adopted by their fellow-citizens.
We have already had occasion to mention the affair of the " hounds " in 1849. The summary measures taken at that period by the people had the effect, for a while, of keeping the blackguards who had been long infesting the city within some moderate bounds. But the great immigration in the fall of that year, and the confusion in San Francisco which followed, natur- ally encouraged new depredations, which in the bustle of the time and place were unnoticed and unfelt by any but the actual victims. Over all California it was the same. The inroad of nearly a hundred thousand strangers, who were likewise strangers to each other, scattered among a dozen newly established towns, and over the various mining districts, and who themselves knew not the laws of the land, and perhaps expected, as they could find, no protection from them, but trusted only to their own watchfulness and revolvers, produced a state of things which greatly favored the increase of crime. In 1850, a similar vast immigration took place. The legal institutions and executive, that just before had served the needs of a population of twenty or thirty thousand, now failed to secure safety to a quarter of a million, in which number were some of the most daring and
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clever rascals in the world. Among the immigrants were many of the same stamp with the older criminals of the country, and who readily aided in the lawless exploits of the latter. When the towns, or any particular localities, became too hot to hold them, the mining regions, over a length of seven hundred miles, were ready to receive and shelter the fugitives. After a few months, under a new garb and name, the rascals would boldly return to their former haunts, and with impunity commit new crimes. Society was every where continually changing ; while disguised in every imaginable way, by dress and an alias, and not least by the growth and trimming of the beard, it was almost impossible that the old offenders could be recognized. The natural migration of honest diggers from mine to mine, often far distant from each other, and to the greater towns to spend their gains or recruit their health, was so great, that no notice could be taken, by the really few permanent residents in any place, of the arrival and departure of strangers, or of those traits in their behavior which might have seemed strange and suspicious, if witnessed by idle, inquisitive people of long settled lands. While this constant immigration favored the freedom of criminals from arrest, it also helped to extend their acquaintance among kindred rogues. Wherever they went, they knew there were one, two, or half a dozen noted haunts for fellows like themselves, upon whose aid they could always rely, to execute new outrages, to swear an alibi, or give any kind of false testimony that might be wished ; to fee counsel or offer straw-bail, or to plan an escape from pursuit or prison of themselves, or some hotly pressed associate in crime. Thus there was gradually formed a secret combination among the chief thieves, burglars and murderers of the country, minute ramifications of which extended down to the pettiest pilferers. To occasionally cut off a single member of this class would do little good, so long as the grand gang was at large and in full operation. Nothing less than the complete extirpation of the whole body of miscreants, with their numerous supporters and sympathizers, aids and abettors, would relieve society from the fearful incubus that now oppressed it.
America no doubt supplied a number of these plunderers, while the different countries of Europe likewise contributed a
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proportion. But the most daring, and probably the most numerous class had come from Van Dieman's Land and New South Wales, whither England had sent shiploads of her con- victed felons. The voyage from Sydney to San Francisco was neither a very tedious nor an expensive one ; and great numbers of " ticket-of-leave " men and old convicts who had " served their time," early contrived to sail for California. There the field seemed so rich and safe for a resumption of their quondam pranks, that they yielded to the temptation, and forthwith began to execute villanies that in magnitude and violent character far exceeded those for which they had been originally convicted. Callous in conscience, they feared nothing save the gallows. But that they had little reason to dread in merciful, gentle, careless California, where prosecutors and witnesses were few, or too busy to attend to the calls of justice ; where jurors, not knowing the law and eager to be at money-making again, were apt to take hasty charges from the bench as their sole rule of conduct ; where judges, chosen by popular election, were either grossly ignorant of law, or too timid or careless, corrupt or incapable, to measure out the full punishment of crime ; and where the laws themselves had not yet been methodically laid down, and the forms and procedure of legal tribunals digested into a plain, unerring system. These "Sydney coves" therefore were com- paratively safe in their attacks on society. They lost not the opportunity ; and, unchecked, during the fall of 1849, the whole of 1850, and the early part of 1851, reaped a large harvest.
There was a district of San Francisco that was noted as being the rendezvous of the numerous rascals we have been de- scribing ; and from which perhaps at this time emanated as much villainy as at any period the "Seven Dials " or the " Five Points" produced. This quarter lay around Clark's Point, in Broadway, Pacific street, and the immediate vicinity. It was the notorious Sydney-town of San Francisco. Low drinking and dancing houses, lodging and gambling houses of the same mean class, the constant scenes of lewdness, drunkenness and strife, abounded in the quarter mentioned. The daily and nightly occupants of these vile abodes had every one, more or less, been addicted to crime ; and many of them were at all times ready, for the most
.
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trifling consideration, to kill a man or fire a town. During the early hours of night, when the Alsatia was in revel, it was dangerous in the highest degree for a single person to venture within its bounds. Even the police hardly dared to enter there ; and if they attempted to apprehend some known individuals, it was always in a numerous, strongly-armed company. Seldom, however, were arrests made. The lawless inhabitants of the place united to save their luckless brothers, and generally man- aged to drive the assailants away. When the different fires took place in San Francisco, bands of plunderers issued from this great haunt of dissipation, to help themselves to whatever money or valuables lay in their way, or which they could possibly secure. With these they retreated to their dens, and defied detection or apprehension. Many of these fires were believed to have been raised by incendiaries, solely for the opportunity which they afforded for plundering. Persons were repeatedly seen in the act of kindling loose inflammable materials in out-houses and secret places ; while the subsequent confessions of convicted criminals left no doubt of the fact, that not only had frequent attempts been made to fire the city, but that some of these had unfortu- nately been successful. Fire, however, was only one means of attaining their ends. The most daring burglaries were committed, and houses and persons rifled of their valuables. Where resist- ance was made, the bowie-knife or the revolver settled matters, and left the robber unmolested. Midnight assaults, ending in murder, were common. And not only were these deeds perpe- trated under the shade of night ; but even in daylight, in the highways and byways of the country, in the streets of the town, in crowded bars, gambling saloons and lodging houses, crimes of an equally glaring character were of constant occurrence. People at that period generally carried during all hours, and wherever they happened to be, loaded firearms about their persons ; but these weapons availed nothing against the sudden stroke of the " slung shot," the plunge and rip of the knife, or the secret aim- ing of the pistol. No decent man was in safety to walk the streets after dark ; while at all hours, both of night and day, his property was jeopardized by incendiarism and burglary.
All this while, the law, whose supposed "majesty " is so awful
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in other countries, was here only a matter for ridicule. The police were few in number, and poorly as well as irregularly paid. Some of them were in league with the criminals themselves, and assisted these at all times to elude justice. Subsequent confes- sions of criminals on the eve of execution, implicated a consider- able number of people in various high and low departments of the executive. Bail was readily accepted in the most serious cases, where the security tendered was absolutely worthless ; and where, whenever necessary, both principal and cautioner quietly disappeared. The prisons likewise were small and insecure ; and though filled to overflowing, could no longer contain the crowds of apprehended offenders. When these were ultimately brought to trial, seldom could a conviction be obtained. From technical errors on the part of the prosecutors, laws ill under- stood and worse applied, false swearing of the witnesses for the prisoners, absence often of the chief evidence for the prosecution, dishonesty of jurors, incapacity, weakness, or venality of the judge, and from many other causes, the cases generally broke down and the prisoners were freed. Not one criminal had yet been executed. Yet it was notorious, that, at this period, at least one hundred murders had been committed within the space of a few months ; while innumerable were the instances of arson, and of theft, robbery, burglary, and assault with intent to kill. It was evident that the offenders defied and laughed at all the puny efforts of the authorities to control them. The tedious processes of legal tribunals had no terrors for them. As yet every thing had been pleasant and safe, and they saw no reason why it should not always be so. San Francisco had been just destroyed, a fifth time, by conflagration. The cities of Stockton and Nevada had likewise shared the same fate. That part of it was the doing of incendiaries no one doubted ; and too, no one doubted but that this terrible state of things would continue, and grow worse, until a new and very different executive from the legally-constituted one should rise up in vengeance against those pests that worried and preyed upon the vitals of society. It was at this fearful time that the Vigilance Committee was organized. They knew they had no ordinary duty to perform. They foresaw not merely much time, labor, expense, and actual
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danger occasioned to themselves-these were trifles-but also grievous responsibility, and perhaps much misconception and un- deserved personal obloquy thrown upon their motives and con- duct. They were prepared for all ; for what will not a man suffer to save life, limb, and property ? They knew they might possibly open a gate to insubordination and general anarchy, thereby periling all future law, peace and happiness ; but they did not think that a probable case, and at any rate the risk must be run. The chances were all calculated beforehand ; and the result showed only a clear winning game.
The law of nature, which is the foundation of, and is supe- rior to, all civil law, justifies every means for self-preservation. An individual or a community attacked has a right to defend itself ; and where that attack cannot be otherwise resisted, then is extermination of the offender proper. Where the constituted tribunals of a country fail to accomplish the ends for which they were created, society becomes resolved into its first elements, and some new method must be adopted to preserve its very existence. Opinions may differ as to the particular instant of time when formal law and legal courts become inoperative, and sanction a community in resorting to new and extraordinary measures for its own safety ; but in regard to the general principle, all history, and what is better, common sense and moral feeling, abundantly establish it. The people of San Francisco,-and they of all the world could alone know their own troubles,-believed that the un- happy point of time had been reached ; and they accordingly seized the occasion to make some terrible experiments, by which to check the growth of those crimes that were so rapidly sur- rounding them.
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