USA > Washington > History of Washington; the rise and progress of an American state, Vol. IV > Part 20
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The prisoners were employed in a sash and door factory, in a stone quarry in the immediate neighborhood, and in such other work as the sheriff found for them. Only a few of them worked without shackles. This prison was used until 1886, when the legislature provided that a new and per- manent penitentiary should be constructed at Walla Walla.
The people had begun to be hopeful before Governor Ferry's time, that the territory might soon become a state. It had been talked of in Governor Cole's time, although the census of 1860 had shown that the population of the territory was only 11,594. In the winter of 1867-8 the legislature passed an act, providing that the question of calling a con- vention to form a constitution should be submitted to the
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people at the next general election. But so few votes were cast in favor of it, that it was evident that a very large ma- jority preferred a territorial government for the time being. As a territory the national government paid a large part of the governmental expenses, and most of the settlers were willing it should continue to do so. However, the question was again submitted in 1870 and again in 1871, when it was provided that the governor should give notice by proc- lamation that each voter must declare his preference for or against a convention. But the result was practically the same as it had been in the three preceding elections, and yet the question was again submitted in 1873 with the hope, apparently, that the voters would in time become sufficiently interested to have a convention called. But the hope was futile; the proposition was again defeated. Nevertheless it was submitted again, by act of 1875, and at the election held in the following year something over 7,000 votes were cast, with a large majority in favor of a convention. The legislature accordingly provided that one should be held at Walla Walla in June, 1878, and that the delegates fifteen in number, should be elected in April of that year.
No enabling act had been passed by Congress, to authorize the formation of a state government. Delegate Jacobs had introduced a bill in the house of representatives, after the favorable vote of 1876, but it had not yet received favorable attention, when the delegates to the constitutional conven- tion assembled at Walla Walla. They were sixteen in num- ber, including one from the northern counties of Idaho who was admitted to a part in the deliberations, though without a vote, and the convention sat for twenty-four days .*
*The delegates were: W. A. George, Elwood Evans, S. M. Gilmore, S. M. Wait, B. F. Dennison, Chas. H. Larrabee, C. M. Bradshaw, H. B.
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The constitution made by this convention would doubtless have served for a considerable time, if the people had been permitted to form a government under it. It fixed a new boundary for the state, including the northern counties of Idaho, whose people found it more difficult to communicate with the capital of that territory than with the capital of Washington. Their representatives, and all others having business at Boise, usually went thither through the counties of eastern Washington, when they went at all. As the lines of communication then were, and seemed likely to remain for a considerable time, it would be far more convenient for them to be a part of Washington than of Idaho. It was for that reason that they desired, as they have desired at other times since then, to be annexed to this state.
An effort was made to have the convention provide for female suffrage, but it was not done. The distasteful word "male" was retained in describing the qualifications of voters. It was provided however, that "no person on account of sex, shall be disqualified to enter upon and pursue any lawful business, avocation or profession." Biennial sessions of the legislature were provided for, and they were limited to forty days. Special legislation was forbidden, and no lotteries could be authorized or divorces granted. The courts were reorganized; taxes were made uniform under general laws; and the power to tax corporate property could never be suspended; the public school fund could never be reduced; educational and penal institutions were to be provided, and the legislature was given power to change
Emory, D. B. Hannah, Francis Henry, A. S. Abernethy, J. V. Odell, George H. Stuart, O. P. Lacey, and L. B. Andrews. The Idaho delegate was Alonzo Leland. A. S. Abernethy was elected president, W. Byron Daniels was secretary, assisted by William S. Clark, and Henry D, Cook was sergeant-at-arms.
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the location of the seat of government, though not without submitting the matter to a vote of the people at the next general election following the adoption of the constitution. Three articles were submitted for separate vote. The first provided for local option; the second for female suffrage, and the third for the annexation of the discontented counties of Idaho. These separate articles were all defeated, but the constitution was adopted when submitted to the people for their approval.
But it never became effective. Congress could not be prevailed upon to accept Delegate Jacob's enabling law, nor was Delegate Brents, who succeeded Jacobs in 1879, able to procure legislation approving the constitution, or authorizing the people of the territory to form a new one. It was not until eleven years later that an enabling act was finally adopted.
It was during Governor Ferry's administration that the greatest marine disaster that has ever shocked the people on this part of the coast occurred, bringing sorrow to many homes. The steamer Pacific was, in 1875, one of the finest vessel plying between San Francisco, Victoria and the Sound ports. She left Victoria on the forenoon of November 4th, of that year, with a full cargo, and a large number of passen- gers, though just how many was never known. It was ยท supposed however, that passengers and crew numbered 275, among the former being representatives from nearly every considerable town in the territory and British Columbia, some of whom were widely known and their loss was univer- sally regretted.
The steamer passed Tatoosh light about 4 o'clock in the afternoon. As the ocean was reached a strong wind from the west was encountered, against which she made but
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little headway. The night came on very dark and stormy, but no serious difficulty was encountered until about 10 o'clock, when those who were awake felt a shock. They seem not to have been greatly alarmed by it, so far as known, although the ship's hull had been shattered, and she soon afterwards sank. There was time only to lower one of the boats, into which as many of the women and children as could be aroused and collected from their staterooms, were hurried, and then the wrecked vessel went down. The life- boat was swamped, and all in it perished. Only two of all on board escaped alive. One of these was a passenger named Henry F. Jelly, who with four others, seized hold of the over- turned boat, after its occupants had all been drowned. One after another of the four were washed away, but Jelly main- tained his hold for nearly 48 hours, until rescued by a tug from Port Townsend. The other was one of the ship's quartermasters, named Henley, who had got upon one of the life-rafts, and was rescued five days later in the Straits of Fuca. Seventeen persons in all are known to have got places on the life rafts, after the ship went down, but all perished from exposure, or became insane and drowned themselves, before the end of the third day, except Henley. Jelly died from the effects of exposure not long after he was rescued, but Henley is still living .* His home is at Steila- coom.
*May 1909. The fact that Henley was rescued in the straits, and that the bodies of several of the passengers who were drowned, were found a long time afterwards, on San Juan Island, indicates that the current inward through the strait when the tide comes in, is much stronger than that outward when it is receding. This is probably due to the fact that a large part of the water which comes in through the straits passes out through the Gulf of Georgia and the channel east of Vancouver Island.
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The wreck was caused by a collision of the steamer with the ship Orpheus, whose captain was supposed for a time, to have been at fault, but investigation cleared him and his crew of blame. He had been approaching the straits, and the lookouts had discovered the steamer's lights only a few minutes before she was upon them. In the darkness they could not make out her course. When quite near her whistle was blown, probably as soon as the ship was observed from her decks, and almost immediately her prow struck the ship's side a glancing blow, staving in her planking almost to the water line, and carrying away a good part of her rigging. The Orpheus was so badly disabled that she could hardly be kept afloat, and neither the captain nor any of the sailors observed the sinking of the steamer. They expected she would be put about, and some inquiry made as to the damage done, but as nothing of the kind happened they felt that they had been heartlessly abandoned by the ship which had so nearly run them down. All that night and all the following day, were spent in making such repairs to the ship as were possible, and then an attempt was made to reach land. The first light sighted was supposed to be that at Cape Flattery, but proved to be at Cape Beale and the ship went hard on the rocks at the entrance to Barclay Sound. All on board were saved, but the ship was a total loss.
Among the passengers on the steamer who were lost was G. L. Vining, a merchant and farmer of the Puyallup Valley, Mrs. Mohan, a daughter of Job Carr, the first settler on the site of Tacoma; Mr. Hellmuth, a prominent resident of Walla Walla, and his wife; Colin Chisholm, one of the owners of the mill at Utsalady; S. P. Moody, a prominent mill man from Burrard's Inlet, B. C .; Mr. Victor, husband of Mrs. Frances Fuller Victor, the well known historical writer of
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Oregon; Fred D. Hard, postal agent on the Sound; F. Garesche, Wells, Fargo & Co.'s agent at Victoria; Capt. Parsons, an old steamboat man from Fraser River; John Tarbell, a brother of Capt. Frank Tarbell of Olympia, and uncle of George Tarbell now of Tacoma. The captain of the steamer was Jeff. D. Howell, a brother-in-law of Jefferson Davis. He had been educated at Annapolis, but at the breaking out of the war, joined the Confederacy. After the war he served for some time as a common sailor, then as quartermaster on a ship sailing to China. From there he went to San Francisco and entered the service of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company as mate and master for a time, after which he served with the Oregon Steamship Company, and lastly with the North Pacific Transportation Company as master of several steamships.
A similar catastrophe, though not accompanied by the loss of so many lives, occurred April 16, 1879, when the steamer Great Republic went aground at the mouth of the Columbia and became a total wreck. It was at the time the largest sidewheel steamer on the coast, having a capacity of 3,882 tons. She had on board 896 passengers, and a large crew, all of whom were saved except eleven, who were drowned by the swamping of the last boat to leave the ship.
Governor William A. Newell of New Jersey succeeded Ferry as governor in 1880, and served for one full term of four years. His administration was generally uneventful. During his term the first permanent buildings for the insane asylum at Steilacoom were constructed, and the penitentiary at Seatco was considerably improved, and the treatment of prisoners ameloriated. A new kind of shackle had been invented which could be conveniently removed while the prisoners were in their cells, and a considerable supply of
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them was ordered to be bought, so that the prisoners might be relieved from them while they slept.
The population of the territory was now becoming so dense that complaint began to be made of the unnecessary amount of land assigned to the Indians for their use, by the treaties which Governor Stevens had made. There were fifteen reservations in the territory which comprised some- thing more than 7,000,000 acres in the aggregate. There were not more than 13,000 Indians all told. It was evident that they had no need for so much land, and could neither profitably use nor occupy it. It was untaxed, and generally unimproved. There were no roads through the reservations, and through some of them roads were beginning to be urgently necessary. But they could not be opened without the con- sent of the Indian office in Washington, which it took a long time to obtain, and they could only be improved at the expense of the settlers themselves. Governor Newell im- pressed upon the legislature the desirability of memorializing Congress to reduce these reservations by new treaties, and the matter was a subject of legislative consideration during several succeeding sessions. The deepening of the Colum- bia River from the Willamette to its mouth, and the improve- ment of its upper part so as to provide convenient transporta- tion by water, from the rapidly developing counties in the eastern part of the territory, also began to be matters of more interest than formerly, and Congress was urgently appealed to, to begin this great work.
It was during Governor Newell's administration that the first practical test was made in the territory, of a law authoriz- ing women to vote, to serve as jurors, to hold office, and generally to exercise all the rights and privileges of full citi- zenship. This matter had been long agitated in the territory,
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as well as in other parts of the country, and had at times seemed to be regarded with considerable favor. An attempt had been made to pass a woman's suffrage law in Ferry's time, and a certain number of members of the legislature had been quite in favor of it. There were other members, as there always are, of the kind once aptly characterized by the late Emery A. Storrs of Chicago, as "band wagon statesmen,"-men who are willing to vote for any measure that seems to be popular at the moment, or likely to become so, without giving much thought to its desirability or prac- ticability. Some of these, knowing that Ferry was opposed to woman's suffrage, were willing to vote for the bill if the governor would veto it, and they accordingly approached him to know whether he would do so. But he told them frankly that while he was opposed to it, if the legislature passed the bill he would approve it, and these "band wagon statesmen" were forced to determine for themselves whether or not they would support it. The courage of the majority of them was apparently not sufficient to enable them to justify so great an innovation on the established order of things, and the bill was for that session defeated. But in the session of 1883-4 it came up again and was adopted.
It remained the law for nearly four years, during which women voted and served on both grand and petit juries. Sometimes the service they rendered was so satisfactory as to convert even the more vigorous opponents of the experi- nent, and among these was Governor Ferry himself, who after retiring from office as governor, returned to the practice of law at Seattle. He subsequently declared that he had ound that women who had sat on the juries to hear and determine the cases in which he had been engaged, had given is careful attention to the evidence and the arguments, and
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had generally weighed them as accurately, and decided the issues involved, with as much good judgment as was ordin- arily shown by male jurors.
Curiously enough the law was declared to be invalid in a gambling case, which raised the suffrage question only inci- dentally. One, Harland a gambler, was arrested on a charge of having unfairly beaten another player out of something over $600 at cards. Five members of the grand jury which indicted him were women, and it was pleaded in his defense that they were not householders, with the meaning of the act, as they were all married and living with their husbands. Objection was also raised to the title of the act, which was "an act to amend section 3050 of the statutes." The case was argued in the Supreme Court by Elwood Evans, for the defendant, and by Fremont Campbell then prosecuting attorney of Pierce County, for the people. Although it was known that it involved the validity of the suffrage act, the women of the territory took little interest in and made no efforts at all to be represented at the hearing. The Anti-Chinese disturbances had taken place only a short time before it came on to be heard, and in these some women had so conducted themselves as to very greatly lessen the good opinion which the test of the law so far as made had gained for it, and even to shake the confi- dence, to some degree, of the women who had been most deeply interested in securing its enactment. So the whole question was submitted upon the arguments made by the counsel for and against the defendant in the gambling case.
The court was divided. The opinion of the majority was written by Justice Turner and concurred in by Justice Langford; Chief Justice Greene dissented. The majority
3
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opinion held the act invalid, because its character was not sufficiently described in its title.
The law was reenacted with a new title in 1888, and in April following, at the city election in Spokane, Mrs. Nevada S. Bloomer offered to vote, and her ballot was rejected by the judges. She brought an action for damages on account of having been denied her rights under the law, and the question again went to the Supreme Court, which again declared the law invalid as not being authorized by the organic act.
During the winter of 1881-2 a condition of affairs prevailed in Seattle that caused a great deal of excitement and anxiety, though it did not call for the intervention of the territorial authority. The city had become infested with thieves and rough characters, who set the law at defiance, and robbed and murdered people as frequently and as openly as similar characters had robbed and murdered people in Walla Walla twenty years earlier. The authorities seemed to be entirely inadequate to cope with them. Only on comparatively rare occasions were arrests made, and few criminals were punished. Things finally became so bad that there was but one sure remedy, and this was effectively applied.
On the evening of January 17, 1882, George B. Reynolds was passing along the street near his place of business when he was accosted by two men, one of whom thrust a pistol in his face and ordered him to throw up his hands. This he refused to do, and attempted to draw his own pistol, when he was shot through the breast. As he sank to the pavement he uttered a cry for help, and a crowd soon gathered, but his assailants for the time being escaped. Reynolds was carried to his home where he soon after expired in great agony.
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News of the murder spread rapidly through the town, and law-abiding citizens were aroused as they had not been aroused by any previous outrage, for Reynolds was widely known and popular. The opinion was universal that the time had arrived when effective measures should be taken to clear the town of the rough element, and restore peace and safety to the community. The fire bell was rung, and about two hundred citizens assembled at the engine house. A vigilance committee was organized, and its members imme- diately began a search for the murderers.
Some of those who had been in the vicinity when the shooting occurred were able to give a partial description of them. It was observed that they had fled through an alley, and it was found that their tracks in it were still visible. Four hours later two men were found in hiding under some hay on Harrington & Smith's wharf, one of whom, a one- armed man, had a revolver with one empty and four loaded chambers. The other had about a hundred cartridges that fitted this weapon.
The two were arrested and taken to the jail, where the members of the vigilance committee, just formed, soon after appeared and demanded them. The sheriff, L. V. Wyckoff, Van. Wyckoff, his son; John H. McGraw, then chief of police, and James H. Wollery were at the jail and refused to give them up. The crowd then broke down the door, when the sheriff drew his pistol and declared his determina- tion to defend the prisoners with his life. One resolute man, with the law in his favor is usually more than a match for a hundred who think they are willing to violate it, and it was so in this case. The crowd hesitated and finally came to a parley, in which it was concluded to await the preliminary examination of the prisoners on the following morning. But
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on retiring from the jail they took with them the shoes of the prisoners, which were found to fit exactly in the tracks left in the alley through which the murderers had escaped.
The court room was crowded to the doors next morning when the prisoners, who gave their names as James Sullivan and William Howard, were brought up for examination. As they had no lawyer one was appointed by the court to defend them, and W. H. White and Orange Jacobs appeared for the territory. The death of Reynolds was proven, and it was shown that he had been killed by a bullet of the same size as the calibre of the revolver found on one of the prisoners. Several persons testified to having seen them near the place, and at about the time when the shooting had occurred. It was also shown that their shoes fitted the tracks made by some persons who had run through the alley, through which the murderers were known to have gone. This evidence was regarded as so conclusive of guilt that the prisoners were held for the grand jury, and remanded to the custody of the officers.
But Justice Coombs had scarcely announced this order when the crowd made a rush for them, and before the officers who had them in charge could make any effective resistance, they had been taken away from them and were hurried into the street. The crowd knew exactly what it intended to do, and when and where it was to be done. The prisoners were hurried through an alley behind the court room to Occidental Square, where two scantlings had already been placed in the forks of two maple trees in front of Mr. Yesler's residence. Only one of them made any resistance, but he was easily overpowered, and it took but a moment to place ropes about their necks and hang them.
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Chief Justice Greene, who had hurried to the scene as soon as he learned what was taking place, attempted to address the crowd, and made as much effort as one man could make against several hundred to save the lives of the wretches, but it was ineffectual. They were hanged, and the crowd would not permit them to be touched or taken down until both were dead. While they were still writhing in the last throes of their death agony, someone remembered that there was another murderer in the jail, one Benjamin Payne, who was charged with having murdered David Sires, a police officer, and a cry was raised that he also ought to be hanged. The suggestion was instantly approved. The crowd hurried to the jail, tore down the fence surrounding it, battered in the doors, seized the prisoner and hurried him to execution. He protested his innocence, but no one listened, and within a few minutes his lifeless body was hanging with the other two.
These hangings put an end to the reign of terror in Seattle. The rough element soon moved out, and from that time for- ward life and property were as safe there as in any other city on the coast.
Watson C. Squire was appointed governor at the close of Newell's term. It was during his administration that the Anti-Chinese agitation occured, an account of which is given in a succeeding chapter. Previous to his time the reports made by the governors to the secretary of the interior, when they had been made at all, were merely formal reviews of the acts of the territorial administration for each year. But Governor Squire did much more than this. His first report was a document of 77 pages, in which the resources of the territory, and the progress made in their development were fully described. A vast amount of statistical and other
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interesting information, which had been collected with great pains, was embodied in this report, which was printed by the department and subsequently reprinted by the Northern Pacific Railroad Company, and by the legislature, and widely distributed. It was one of the most effective advertisements of the territory that had been prepared since the time of Jay Cooke and Governor Stevens, and proved to be of great benefit in promoting the settlement of the territory. His subsequent reports were equally valuable, as were those of Governor Semple who was his successor.
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