The Vigilante Justice Committee...!...

In the olden days when things got so out of hand that the law couldn't or wouldn't help, vigilantes became the order of the day.

It was a wild and crazy time, as you can imagine!

When San Francisco Was Ruled By A Vigilante Justice Committee

By Debra Kelly on Thursday, February 4, 2016

In the 1850s, long before designs for the Golden Gate Bridge were even put down on paper, San Francisco was awash with crime. From murderers and thieves to corrupt politicians, it wasn’t a pleasant place. Spurred on by first a robbery and then the assassination of a newspaper editor, thousands of citizens, merchants, and businessmen banded together to form the Committee of Vigilance. Two committees—one in 1851 and the second in 1856—would take it upon themselves to clean up the city and prosecute and hang criminals. State militias were called in, but the committee ultimately disbanded voluntarily.

The 1850s were a busy time in California. People from all over were descending on the West Coast in hopes of striking gold and becoming rich overnight. Unsurprisingly, it could be a pretty lawless place at times.

The residents of one city were so fed up with the crime rate that they decided to take matters (and hangings) into their own hands.

The first Committee of Vigilance was formed in 1851, but it was fairly short-lived. A local paper claimed that the group had formed for the sole purpose of protecting its citizens against scum and villainy, and it was surprisingly well-organized.

Even though it was small, the committee had a group that was responsible for policing the streets and putting an end to criminal activity when they saw it. Their own justice system was responsible for handing out the punishments, which were then dispensed with enviable speed.

Part of the problem was the influence of the city’s politicians. Most were rather crooked and were more interested in using the official system to line their own pockets than fight the rash of unsolved murders that gripped the city from 1849 to 1851.

The committee formed in the face of a brazen theft on June 9, 1851. A man named John Jenkins walked into a store, picked up the safe, and walked away with it. Then he boarded a boat and headed out into the San Francisco Bay.

This proved to be something of a breaking point, and other merchants gave chase. Even though he threw the safe overboard, Jenkins completely failed to make the brilliant getaway that he so needed.

He was dragged back to the city, put before a hastily assembled jury, and hanged by 2:00 AM that same night.

The committee was re-convened in 1856 when matters were no better. This time, the trigger was a deadly disagreement between newspaper editor James King and the notoriously corrupt politician James Casey. After King called Casey’s well-known corruption out in the paper (along with spilling the beans about his previous stint at Sing Sing), Casey had had enough and shot the editor.

The reaction was immediate. Around 10,000 men took up arms and put the committee back together. They would make up San Francisco’s justice system for the next five months.

Casey was seized by the committee, as was a man named Charles Cora, who’d been jailed after shooting and killing a US Marshal a few months before. (The committee brought along a cannon to discourage actual law enforcement from arguing against their authority.)

An overnight trial was begun, and it happened at the same time that King succumbed to his wounds and died. The charges against both men were upgraded to murder, and they were declared guilty the next morning.

They were hanged that afternoon.

The message was clear, and it was directed at one man: David Broderick. Everyone knew he was a crooked root of the corruption and crime in the area. After making an example of some of his cronies, the committee discovered a false-bottom ballot box in the possession of one of Broderick’s Democratic committee members.

The committee deported around 25 of his party members, ushering them on ships and sending them on their way. About 800 others—from ballot-box stuffers to thieves, gamblers, and con men—were also sent packing.

However, the committee was opposed by a working-class gang called the Chivs, and conflict got so bad that the state militia was called in to stop the chaos.

They failed.

Other plans were put into place, but with countless official government employees involved in the whole mess, no one knew quite what to do. On August 18, 1856, the Committee of Vigilance saved everyone the problem when they voluntarily disbanded, content that the worst messes in the city had been cleaned up.

Of course, a month later, things were back to normal.

I'm thinking that we could probably use a touch of this justice from time to time. Not much...just a touch. Know what I mean?

Coffee out on the patio this morning.

Another Western Wednesday...!

Today on Western Wednesday we are looking at a popular form of frontier justice...mob justice!

Overall, the second so-called "Vigilante Committee" of San Francisco was effective, although it probably was due to the large size more so than justice! From the folks over at History.com, here's the story!

May 15, 1856:

Second vigilante committee organizes in San Francisco

Angered by the shooting of a prominent journalist, San Franciscans form their second vigilance committee to combat lawlessness.

The need for vigilance committees in San Francisco was obvious. Only two years after gold was discovered at Sutter's Mill in 1848, San Francisco had grown from a sleepy little village with 900 inhabitants to a booming metropolis with more than 200,000 residents. The sudden influx of people overwhelmed the city. Harried law enforcement officials found it nearly impossible to maintain law and order, and chaos often reigned in the streets, which were lined with saloons and gambling parlors. Attracted by the promise of gold, marauding bands of Australian criminals called "Sydney ducks" robbed and extorted the people of San Francisco with near impunity.

San Franciscans formed their first vigilance committee in 1851. About 200 vigilantes enrolled, most of them from the elite professional and merchant class of the city. They had headquarters along Battery Street, where they could temporarily imprison criminals, and the ringing of the city's fire bell would summon the vigilantes to action. A handful of men who were found guilty of serious crimes like murder were hanged from a nearby derrick normally used to haul freight into the second story of a warehouse. More commonly, though, the vigilantes simply deported criminals like the "Sydney ducks" back to their homelands.

Whether due to the vigilante actions or because conventional law enforcement became more effective, things eventually quieted down in San Francisco and the first vigilance committee disbanded. In 1856, however, a rigged election put an Irish-Catholic politician named James P. Casey on the city board of supervisors. James King, a crusading editor of the Daily Evening Bulletin, accused Casey of being involved in criminal activity in the city. On May 14, 1856, Casey confronted King in the street and fatally wounded him with a Colt navy revolver.

The next day, angry San Franciscans created the second vigilance committee. This time, however, they could not claim that the city government was not enforcing the law--the sheriff had already arrested Casey and put him in the county jail pending trial. Acting more like a raging mob than an instrument of justice, 500 vigilantes surrounded the county jail and removed Casey from the sheriff's custody on May 18. After a short but reasonably fair trial, they hanged him.

Some historians have argued that the second vigilance committee was less interested in suppressing crime than in attacking its political enemies. Casey's election signaled a shift in power to the dominant faction of recently immigrated Irish-Catholic Democrats. The vigilantes, who were largely native-born Protestants, reasserted their control by arresting and exiling their political opponents from the city. As before, they hanged several men.

Regardless of the vigilantes' true motives, a number of Irish Catholic leaders did leave the city and the Protestant elite managed to regain control of the government. Late in 1856, the vigilance committee formally disbanded and never again became active.

One thing I couldn't help but notice in this bit of history is that the editor that was shot shared my name! Not that it actually means anything, but it's not the first time my name has shown up in an article about the violence of the old western days. At least this time it isn't attached to an outlaw!

How about coffee on the patio this morning? It's fairly nice with the temps already in the high 70s.