A Sketch of the Causes, Operations and Results of the San Francisco Vigilance Committee of 1856

S >> Stephen Palfrey Webb >> A Sketch of the Causes, Operations and Results of the San Francisco Vigilance Committee of 1856

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A Sketch of the Causes, Operations and Results of the San Francisco
Vigilance Committee in 1856

Written by Stephen Palfrey Webb in 1874

Stephen Palfrey Webb was born in Salem on March 20, 1804, the son of
Capt. Stephen and Sarah (Putnam) Webb. He was graduated from Harvard in
1824, and studied law with Hon. John Glen King, after which he was
admitted to the Essex Bar. He practiced law in Salem, served as
Representative and Senator in the Massachusetts Legislature, and was
elected Mayor of Salem in 1842, serving three years. He was Treasurer of
the Essex Railroad Company in the late forties.

About 1853, he went to San Francisco, where he resided several years,
serving as Mayor of that city in 1854 and 1855. It was during this time
that he witnessed the riotous mobs following the Gold Rush of 1849, and
upon his return Salem made notes for a lecture, which he delivered in
Salem; and later, with many additions, prepared this sketch, probably
about 1874. He was again elected Mayor of Salem, 1860-1862, and City
Clerk, 1863-1870. He died in Salem on September 29, 1879. On May 26,
1834, he married Hannah H. B. Robinson of Salem.

There have been several accounts of the activities of the Vigilance
Committee, but this is firsthand information from one who was on the
ground at the time, and for this reason it is considered a valuable
contribution to the history of those troublous days. It certainly is a
record of what a prominent, intelligent and observing eye-witness saw
regarding this important episode in the history of California. The
original paper is now in the possession of his granddaughter, Mrs.
Raymond H. Oveson of Groton, Massachusetts.

-

Many of the evils which afflicted the people of San Francisco may be
traced to the peculiar circumstances attendant upon the settlement of
California. The effect all over the world of the discovery of gold at
Sutter's Mill in 1848 was electric. A movement only paralleled by that
of the Crusades at once commenced. Adventurers of every character and
description immediately started for the far away land where gold was to
be had for the gathering. The passage round Cape Horn, which from the
earliest times had been invested with a dreamy horror, and had inspired
a vague fear in every breast, was now dared with an audacity which only
the all absorbing greed for gold could have produced. Old condemned
hulks which, at other times, it would not have been deemed safe to
remove from one part of the harbor to another, were hastily fitted up,
and with the aid of a little paint and a few as deceptive assurances of
the owners, were instantly filled with eager passengers and dispatched
to do battle, as they might, with the storms and perils of the deep
during the tedious months through which the passage extended. The
suffering and distress consequent upon the packing so many human beings
in so confined a space; the miserable quality and insufficient quantity
of the provisions supplied; the weariness and lassitude engendered by
the intolerable length of the voyage; the ill-temper and evil passions
so sure to be roused and inflamed by long and forced companionship
without sympathy or affection, all tended to make these trips, for the
most part, all but intolerable, and in many cases left feelings of hate
and desire for revenge to be afterwards prosecuted to bloody issues.

The miseries generally endured were however sometimes enlivened and
relieved by the most unexpected calls for exertion. A passenger
described his voyage from New York to San Francisco in 1849, in company
with several hundred others in a steamer of small size and the most
limited capacity in all respects, as an amusing instance of working
one's passage already paid for in advance. The old craft went groaning,
creaking, laboring and pounding on for seven months before she arrived
at her destination. Short of provisions, every sailing vessel that was
encountered was boarded for supplies, and almost every port on the
Atlantic and Pacific was entered for the same purpose. Out of fuel,
every few days, axes were distributed, and crew and passengers landed to
cut down trees to keep up steam for a few days longer. He expressed his
conviction that every point, headland, island and wooded tract on the
coast from the Cape to San Francisco had not only been seen by him, but
had resounded with the sturdy blows of his axe during the apparently
interminable voyage. His experience, with the exception of the axe
exercise, was that of thousands.

The extent to which the gold fever had impelled people on shipboard may
be judged by the facts that from the first of January, 1849, five
hundred and nine vessels arrived in the harbor of San Francisco; and the
number of passengers in the same space of time was eighteen thousand,
nine hundred and seventy-two. Previous to this time, one or two ships in
the course of a year found their way through the Golden Gate and into
the beautiful harbor of San Francisco in quest of hides, horns and
tallow, and gave languid employment to two or three Americans settled on
the sand hills, and engaged in collecting these articles of trade and
commerce. In the closing days of 1849, there were ninety-four thousand,
three hundred and forty-four tons of shipping in the harbor. The stream
of immigration moved over the Plains, likewise; and through privation,
fatigue, sickness, and the strife of the elements, passed slowly and
painfully on to the goal of their hopes.

Thus pouring into California in every direction and by every route, this
strange and heterogeneous mass of men, the representatives of every
occupation, honest and dishonest, creditable and disgraceful; of every
people under the sun, scattered through the gulches and ravines in the
mountains, or grouped themselves at certain points in cities, towns and
villages of canons or adobe. Perhaps never in the world's history did
cities spring into existence so instantaneously, and certainly never was
their population so strangely diverse in language, habits and customs.
Of course gamblers of every kind and color; criminals of every shade and
degree of atrocity; knaves of every grade of skill in the arts of fraud
and deceit abounded in every society and place. In these early times
gold was abundant, and any kind of honest labor was most richly and
extravagantly rewarded. The honest, industrious and able men of every
community, therefore, applied themselves strictly to business and would
not be diverted from it by any considerations of duty or of patriotism.
Studiously abstaining from politics; positively refusing to accept
office; shirking constantly and systematically all jury and other public
duty, which, onerous in every community, was doubly so, as they thought,
in that new country, they seemed never to reflect that there was a
portion, and that the worst, of the population, who would take advantage
of their remissness, and direct every institution of society to the
promotion of their own nefarious purposes.

Absorbed in their own pursuits, confident that a short time would enable
them to realize their great object of making a fortune and then leaving
the country, the better portion of the community abandoned the control
of public affairs to whoever might be willing or desirous to assume it.
Of course there was no lack of men who had no earthly objection to
assume all public duties and fill all public offices. Politicians void
of honesty and well-skilled in all the arts of intrigue, whose great end
and aim in life was to live out of the public treasury and grow rich by
public plunder, and whose most blissful occupation was to talk politics
in pot houses and groggeries; men of desperate fortunes who sought to
mend them, not by honest labor, but by opportunities for official
pickings and stealings; bands of miscreants resembling foul and unclean
birds which clamor and fight for the chance of settling down upon and
devouring the body to which their keen scent hag directed them; all were
astir and with but little effort obtained all that they desired. The
offices were thus filled by rapacious and unscrupulous men. The agents
who had helped to elect them, or impose them upon the people by fraud,
were supported and protected in their villainies; and in the
consciousness of impunity for crime, walked the streets heavily armed
and ready on the instant to exact a bloody revenge for an interference
with their infamous schemes, or an attempt to bring them to merited
punishment.

In San Francisco the effects of all this were visible at an early period
in the prevalence of crime and outrage; in the laxity with which
offenders were prosecuted; in the squandering of public property; the
increasing burden of taxation; and the insecurity of life and property.
Now and then when the evils of the system weighed with the most
depressing effect upon the business part of the community, some
spasmodic effort for a time produced a change. But a temporary check
only was applied. The snake was scotched, not killed. The ballot box
upon whose sanctity, in a Republican government must the liberties of
the people depend, was in the hands of the pliant tools of designing
politicians, or of desperate knaves ready to bargain and sell the result
of the election to the party or individuals who would pay the largest
sum for it. By such infamous arts had many officials of law and justice
been placed in situations of trust and power. Could it reasonably be
expected that they would honestly and fairly apply the law to the
punishment of the friends who had given them their offices, when they
added to these crimes against society, the scarcely more flagrant ones
of robbery and murder? If it was possible, the people did not believe it
would be done. They saw enough to convince them that it was not done.
They saw an unarmed man shot down and instantly killed in one of the
most frequented streets of the city while endeavoring to escape from his
pursuer. They saw the forms of trial applied in this clear case, and
after every quibble and perversion of law which ingenuity could devise
had been tried, the lame and impotent conclusion arrived at of a verdict
of manslaughter, and a sentence for a short period to the State Prison.
They saw a gambler, while quietly conversing with the United States
Marshal in the doorway of a store on Clay Street, draw a revolver from
his pocket and slay him upon the spot. They heard that gamblers and
other notorious characters, his associates and friends, had raised large
sums; that able lawyers had been retained for his defense; and then that
his trial had ended in a disagreement of the Jury, soon to be followed,
as they believed, by a nolle prosequi, and the discharge of the red
handed murderer. They saw an Editor, for commenting on a homicide in the
interior of the State, committed by a man claiming to be respectable,
and followed by his acquittal in the face of what appeared to be the
clearest evidence of his guilt; assaulted by the criminal in a public
street in San Francisco, knocked down from behind by a blow on the head
from a loaded cane, and beaten into insensibility, and, as seemed, to
death; while three of the assailant's friends stood by, with cocked
revolvers, threatening to slay anyone who should interfere. Again they
saw the farce of trial resulting, as every one knew it would, in
acquittal. At length, so confirmed and strengthened were villains by the
certainty of escape from punishment, that they did not even trouble
themselves to become assured of the identity of their victims. A worthy
citizen in going home through Merchant Street between eight and nine
o'clock in the evening was approached from behind by a person who,
pressing his arm over his shoulder thrust a knife into his breast.
Luckily the knife encountered in its passage a thick pocket memorandum
book which it cut through, and but for which, he would have lost his
life. The intended assassin undoubtedly mistook him for another person
whom he somewhat resembled. A few days after a gentleman passing by the
Oriental Hotel heard the report of a pistol, and was sensible of the
passage of a ball through his hat in most uncomfortable proximity to his
head. A person immediately stepped up to him saying, "Excuse me, I
thought it was another man."

The ally of the people in times of difficulty and danger, the Press,
seemed subservient from choice to this vile domination, or overawed and
controlled by it. Experience had proved that its conductors could be
true, bold, effective only at the peril of their lives. More than one
had suffered in his person the penalty of his allegiance to truth and
duty; until at length intimidated and desponding, they had ceased to
struggle with the spirit of evil ....

One man upon whom public attention was now turned, and whom the people
of the City and State began to regard as their champion and deliverer,
was James King of William, and he was no common man. He was born in
Georgetown, D. C., in January, 1822, and was therefore thirty-four years
old at the time of his death. Having received a common school education,
he was placed at an early age in the banking house of Corcoran & Riggs
at Washington City where he remained many years. His health at length
failing from steady application to business and conscientious devotion
to his employer's interests, he was induced to seek its restoration in
the invigorating climate of California. He arrived in the country just
previous to the discovery of gold. The marvelous growth of City and
State soon required facilities for the transaction of business, and he
became a resident of San Francisco, and established the first banking
house in that City. For several years he was eminently successful in
business; and his strict honesty and integrity secured for him the
abiding confidence and respect of the business community. But the sudden
and extreme depression in business in 1855 closed his doors as well as
those of many other bankers and merchants. By the surrender to his
creditors of all he possessed, even his homestead, which, to the value
of five thousand dollars, the laws of California allowed him to retain,
and which might well be coveted by him as a home for his wife and six
children; every claim against him was promptly met and discharged.
Retaining amidst all his reverses, the respect of all who knew him, he
engaged as a clerk in the banking house of Adams & Co. where most of his
old customers followed him, induced to do so by their confidence in him.
After the failure of that firm, he was for some time out of active
employment. But compelled by the necessities of a large family to seek
it, he determined to establish a daily newspaper and take upon himself
the editorial charge of it. For such an undertaking, his large
experience in business, his resolute spirit, his sound judgment, his
keen insight into character, his lofty scorn and detestation of
meanness, profligacy, peculation and fraud, eminently fitted him. The
paper, the Evening Bulletin, was first issued on the eighth day of
October, 1855. From that day to the day of his death, he devoted all his
faculties most faithfully and conscientiously to the exposure of guilt,
the laying bare gigantic schemes for defrauding the public, the
denouncing villains and villainy in high or low station, and the
reformation of the numerous and aggravated abuses under which the
community was and had long been groaning. Day after day did he assail
with dauntless energy the open or secret robbers, oppressors or
corruptors of the people. Neither wealth nor power could bribe or
intimidate him. It would be difficult to conceive the enthusiasm with
which the People hailed the advent of so able a champion, and the
intense satisfaction with which they witnessed his steadfast
perseverance in the cause of truth and the right.

At length, on the fourteenth day of May 1856, the anxious fears and
gloomy forebodings of his family and friends were realized .... His
assassin, James P. Casey, was well-known and of evil repute in the City.
Bold, daring, and unscrupulous, his hand was ever ready to execute the
plans of villainy which his fertile brain had conceived. Sentenced in
New York to imprisonment for grand larceny in the State Prison at Sing
Sing for the term of two years, and discharged when that term had nearly
expired; he soon after sailed for California. Shortly after his arrival,
he was chosen Inspector of Elections in the Sixth Ward of San Francisco.
Here he presided over the ballot box, and was generally believed to have
accomplished more ballot box staffing, ticket shifting and false returns
than any other individual in the City or State. He made, as was
generally believed, his office a means of livelihood, and held the City
and County offices in his hands to be disposed of in such manner as
might best promote his interest or fill his pockets. Year after year by
this means he was accumulating money, until he was reputed to have made
a fortune, although never known by the people to have been engaged in
any honest industrial occupation in California. For the purpose perhaps
of adding the levy of blackmail to his other modes of accumulation, he
established a newspaper, called the Sunday Times, and without principle,
character or education, assumed to be the enlightener of public opinion
and the conservator of public morals. During the few months of its
existence, the paper was conducted without ability; advocated no good
cause; favored no measures for promoting the public interest or welfare;
attained no measure of popularity; and its discontinuance inspired no
regret, but was felt rather to be a relief.

The thought seems now to have suggested itself that having been so long
the distributor of offices to others he might well assume it himself;
and thus while obtaining position in society, enlarge his sphere of
operations in plundering the public. Accordingly a ballot box at the
Presidio Precinct in the suburbs of the City was so arranged or presided
over by friends or pliant tools, that four or five days alter the
election, the law being conveniently silent as to the time which might
be consumed in counting votes and making the return, it was made to turn
out James P. Casey a member of the Board of Supervisors of the County,
although not known to have been a candidate for the office at the Polls
on the day of election. In this responsible position, he could find his
way on important Committees, be able to squander the resources of the
County, and by his vote and influence assist in passing the most
exorbitant claims, of which, it is to be presumed, he received a
satisfactory percentage.

So high-handed an offender against the law and the rights of the people
could not escape the notice or the withering rebuke of Mr. King. He
fearlessly proclaimed him a convicted felon, and dealt with him as one
of the principal of those offenders against all law, human or divine,
with whom San Francisco had been so long and so terribly cursed.

The Bulletin of May 14th, in which the charges founded upon the most
incontrovertible evidence, of Casey's conviction, sentence and discharge
from Sing Sing, was made in the plainest terms accompanied with comments
upon his ballot-box stuffings and other criminal acts in San Francisco,
was published at an early hour in the after noon. At four o'clock Casey
called at the Editor's room and demanded of Mr. King what he meant by
the article in the Bulletin just issued, and was asked to what article
he alluded? "To that" was the reply, "in which I am said to have been
formerly an inmate of Sing Sing State Prison." "Is it not true?" said
King. Casey replied, "That is not the question. I don't wish my past
acts raked up; on that point I am sensitive." King then pointed to the
door which was open, and told him to leave the room and never enter
there again. Casey moved to the door saying, "I'll say in my paper what
I please." To which King replied "You have a perfect right to do as you
please. I shall never notice your paper." Casey said, "If necessary, I
shall defend myself." King, rising from his seat, said, "Go, and never
show your face here again." Casey immediately retired.

At five o'clock, his usual dinner hour, Mr. King left his office. With
his arms crossed under his Taima, as was his wont, and his eyes cast
down, he passed along Montgomery Street apparently in deep thought, and
at the corner of Washington Street began to cross the street diagonally.
When about half across, Casey stepped from behind an Express wagon,
dropped a short cloak from his shoulders, and uttering a few words, the
only ones heard by Mr. King, as he said on his death bed, being "Come
on," immediately discharged one barrel of a large revolver into Mr.
King's breast. Mr. King drew himself up, and then made a slight motion
sideways, indicating plainly to the few persons in sight at the time,
that he was hit. The spectators immediately ran in towards him, and
assisted him into and seated him in the Express Office. He was badly
wounded in the left breast, and was apparently in a dying condition.

In the meantime Casey was hurried by his friends and the Police to the
Station House in the City Hall, and from thence, when the demonstrations
of the immense multitude of infuriated citizens became awfully
threatening, in a close carriage, to the Prison on Broadway, where,
within stone walls, he might, as he did, receive the visits an
congratulations of his admirers and the haters of the good man, whom he
had slain; and lay his plans for eluding justice as so many before him
had done. But he reckoned without his host. His hour had struck. The
Avenger was on his trick, never more to lose sight of him till he had
forced him to a speedy, public and ignominious death. The People, whom
he had so long abused and deprived of their rights, as at last almost to
have learned to ignore their very existence, had reached that point at
which forbearance had ceased to be a virtue. Through the City darted
with the speed of light the intelligence of his crime; and to the scene
of it rushed from all the streets, lanes and by ways of the City, with
wild haste and fearful imprecations, the thousands upon thousands whom
that word of fearful import had filled with sorrow, hate and desperate
resolve. Filling every street and avenue in the neighborhood with the
innumerable multitude which swayed to and fro like the tempest tossed
waves of ocean; the main body continued for hours, loading the air with
hoarse murmurs or angry shouts; detachments breaking off from time to
time to rush with frantic speed and hurl themselves successively but
impotently upon the iron doors and stone walls of the Station House or
Jail.

During the evening, so threatening became the demonstrations of the
people that every effort was made by the authorities to reinforce the
Police. Armed men were dispatched from time to time to be stationed
around and on the top of the Jail. They were received, as they made
their way through the dense mass with hootings and execrations. The
Mayor vainly endeavoured to obtain a hearing, and to calm the fiery
passion of the multitude. With wild rage, fruitless clamor and
ineffective effort, that great crowd waited impatiently but vainly for
some leader to give direction to their energy. At half past eleven a
mounted battalion consisting of the California Guards, First Light
Dragoons and National Lancers, were mustered, supplied with ammunition,
and marched off to the Jail, where they did duty during the night. The
safety of the Prison being now provided for, the people quietly
dispersed to their homes, not, however, until a Committee, consisting of
Messrs. Macondry, Palmer and Sims in whom they had confidence had been
sent in, and reported to them that the prisoner was securely locked in a
cell within it.

Meantime, amid this wild tumult of the people, a number of merchants and
other prominent and influential citizens had assembled in a store in the
lower part of the City, and there after full consideration of the
intolerable condition of affairs, it was resolved forthwith to organize
a Vigilance Committee. At an early hour the next morning another meeting
was held and a Constitution adopted, the publication of which was
sometime after sanctioned by the Executive Committee.

This Instrument was deliberately approved, and was subscribed by several
thousand citizens of San Francisco, who, in action under it, periled
life and fair fame. The following extracts from it will show the causes
of the movement; and the ability and determination of those who
inaugurated and prosecuted it to its final issue:

Whereas it has become apparent to the citizens of San Francisco that
there is no security for life or property either under the regulations
of society, as it at present exists, or under the laws as now
administered, and that by the association of bad characters our ballot
boxes have been stolen and others substituted, or stuffed with votes
that were never polled, and thereby our elections nullified; our dearest
rights violated; and no other method left by which the will of the
people can be manifested; therefore, the citizens whose names are
hereunto attached, do unite themselves into an association for
maintenance of the peace and good order of society; the prevention and
punishment of crime; the preservation of our lives and property; and to
insure that our ballot boxes shall hereafter express the actual and
unforged will of the majority of our citizens; and we do bind ourselves
each to the other by a solemn oath to do and perform every just and
lawful act for the maintenance of law and order, and to sustain the laws
when properly and faithfully administered. But we are determined that no
thief, burglar, incendiary, assassin, ballot box stuffer, or other
disturber of the peace shall escape punishment, either by the quibbles
of the law, the insecurity of prisons, the carelessness or corruption of
the police, or the laxity of those who pretend to administer justice;
and, to secure the objects of this association, we do hereby agree, that
the name and style of the Association shall be "The Committee of
Vigilance, for the protection of the ballot box, the lives, liberty, and
property of the citizens and residents of the City, of San Francisco."

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