The San Francisco Vigilance Movement consists of two popular ad hoc organizations formed during the Gold Rush period in 1851 and 1856. Their ostensible purpose was to reign in rampant crime and government corruption. They were among the most notorious and, especially the 1856 Committee, the most successful organizations in the vigilante tradition of the American Old West.
A Committee of Vigilance was formed in 1851, and revived in 1856. These militias hanged 8 people, kidnapped hundreds of Irishmen and government militia members, and forced several elected officials to resign. Each Committee of Vigilance formally relinquished power after it decided the city had been "cleaned up," but the anti-immigrant aspects of its mob activity continued, later focusing on Chinese immigrants and leading to many race riots in the period leading up to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.
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[edit] 1851
The 1851 Committee of Vigilance was inaugurated following the June hanging of alleged burglar John Jenkins, who had been convicted in a trial organized by the committee of trying to steal a safe from an office (grand larceny was punishable by death under California law at the time). The June 13 San Francisco Alta printed this statement:
| “ | WHEREAS it has become apparent to the citizens of San Francisco, that there is no security for life and property, either under the regulations of society as it at present exists, or under the law as now administered; Therefore the citizens, whose names are hereunto attached, do unit themselves into an association for the maintenance of the peace and good order of society, and the preservation of the lives and property of the citizens of San Francisco, and do bind ourselves, each unto the other, to do and perform every lawful act for the maintenance of law and order, and to sustain the laws when faithfully and properly administered; but we are determined that no thief, burglar, incendiary or assassin, shall escape punishment, either by the quibbles of the law, the insecurity of prisons. the carelessness or corruption of the police, or a laxity of those who pretend to administer justice. | ” |
It boasted a membership of 700 and operated parallel to, and in defiance of, the duly constituted city government. Committee members used its headquarters for the interrogation and incarceration of suspects, who were denied the benefits of due process. The Committee engaged in policing, investigating disreputable boarding houses and vessels, deporting immigrants, and parading its militia. In total, four people were hanged by the Committee; one was whipped (a common punishment at that time); fourteen were deported to Australia; fourteen were informally ordered to leave California; fifteen were handed over to public authorities; and forty-one were discharged. The 1851 Committee of Vigilance was dissolved during the September elections, but its executive members continued to meet into 1853.[1]
The Committee offered a $5,000 reward for the capture of anyone found guilty of arson, and committee members patrolled the streets at night to watch for fires. After these actions were taken, fires in San Francisco diminished noticeably.
[edit] 1856
The Committee of Vigilance was reorganized on 15 May 1856 by many of the leaders from the first one and adopted an amended version of the 1851 constitution.[1] Unlike the earlier Committee, and the vigilante tradition generally, the 1856 Committee was concerned not only with civil crimes, but politics and political corruption.[1] The catalyst for the Committee was a political duel in which James P. Casey shot James King of William. The 1856 Committee was also much larger, claiming 6,000 in its ranks. The 1856 Committee of Vigilance dissolved on 11 August 1856, and marked the occasion with a “Grand Parade.”[1] Political power in San Francisco was transferred to a new political party established by the vigilantes, the People's Party, which ruled until 1867 and was eventually absorbed into the Republican Party. The vigilantes had thus succeeded in their objective of usurping power from the Democratic Party machine that hitherto dominated civic politics in the city.[2]
Vigilante headquarters in 1856 consisted of assembly halls, meeting rooms, a military kitchen and armoury, an infirmary, and prison cells, all of which were fortified with gunny sacks and cannons.[1] Four people were officially executed again in 1856, but the death toll also includes James “Yankee” Sullivan, an Irish immigrant and professional boxer who killed himself after being terrorized and detained in a Vigilante cell.[1][3] The 1856 Committee also engaged in policing, investigations, and secret trials, but it far exceeded its predecessor in audacity and rebelliousness. Most notably, it seized a federal shipment of armaments intended for the state militia and tried the chief justice of the California Supreme Court.[1] The Committee’s authority, however, was bolstered by almost all militia units in the city, including the California Guards.[1]
[edit] Controversy
A great deal of historical controversy exists about the vigilance movements. The 1856 hangings of Charles Cora and James Casey, for example, are open to interpretation. Both were hanged by the Committee of Vigilance as murderers, after killing men in duels. Cora had shot a U.S. Marshall, who had insulted Cora's mistress while drunk; Casey had murdered a rival newspaper editor, shortly after the man published an editorial exposing Casey's criminal record in New York. Cora's first trial had ended in a hung jury, and there were rumors that the jury had been bribed. Casey's friends sneaked him into the jail precisely because they were afraid that he would be hanged. This hanging could be seen either as a response by frustrated citizens to ineffectual law enforcement, or as their unwillingness to accept the possibility that due process would result in acquittals. Most popular histories have accepted the former view, that the illegality and brutality of the vigilantes was justified by the need to establish law and order in the city.
One prominent critic of the San Francisco vigilantes was General W. T. Sherman, who resigned from his position as major-general of the Second Division of Militia in San Francisco because the support and authority he required to put down the vigilante revolt through legitimate means was withdrawn. In his memoirs, Sherman wrote:
As they [the vigilantes] controlled the press, they wrote their own history, and the world generally gives them the credit of having purged San Francisco of rowdies and roughs; but their success has given great stimulus to a dangerous principle, that would at any time justify the mob in seizing all the power of government; and who is to say that the Vigilance Committee may not be composed of the worst, instead of the best, elements of a community? Indeed, in San Francisco, as soon as it was demonstrated that the real power had passed from the City Hall to the committee room, the same set of bailiffs, constables, and rowdies that had infested the City Hall were found in the employment of the "Vigilantes."[4]
[edit] External links
- Hubert Howe Bancroft, Popular Tribunals Volume I and Volume II. San Francisco: The History Company, 1887.
- Kevin Mullen, "Malachi Fallon: First Chief of Police" from the Encyclopaedia of San Francisco.
- Primary sources from the Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco.
- Mary Floyd Williams, History of the San Francisco Committee of Vigilance: A Study of Social Control on the California Frontier in the Days of the Gold Rush, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1921.
- Website critical of the Vigilantes
[edit] References
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Ethington (2001). The Public City: The Political Construction of Urban Life in San Francisco, 1850-1900. Berekely, CA: University of California Press, 88-89. ISBN 0-52023-001-9. Retrieved on 2007-09-03.
- ^ Ethington, Philip J. (Winter 1987). "Vigilantes and the Police: The Creation of a Professional Police Bureaucracy in San Francisco, 1847-1900". Journal of Social History 21 (2): 197–227.
- ^ Asbury, Herbert (1933). History of the Barbary Coast - An Informal History of the San Francisco Underworld. Alfred A Knopf. Retrieved on 2007-09-03.
- ^ "Chapter V: California," in The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete at Project Gutenberg
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