All this was merely adventure for the young, strong, and healthy; but the terrible part of the Panama Trail was the number of victims claimed by cholera and fever. The climate and the unwonted labor brought to the point of exhaustion men unaccustomed to such exertions. They lay flat by the trail as though dead. Many actually did die either from the jungle fever or the yellow-jack. The universal testimony of the times is that this horseback journey seemed interminable; and many speak of being immensely cheered when their Indian stopped, washed his feet in a wayside mudhole, and put on his pantaloons. That indicated the proximity, at last, of the city of Panama.
It was a quaint old place. The two-story wooden houses with corridor and verandah across the face of the second story, painted in bright colors, leaned crazily out across the streets. Narrow and mysterious alleys led between them. Ancient cathedrals and churches stood gray with age before the grass-grown plazas. In the outskirts were massive masonry ruins of great buildings, convents, and colleges, some of which had never been finished. The immense blocks lay about the ground in confusion, covered by thousands of little plants, or soared against the sky in broken arches and corridors. But in the body of the town, the old picturesque houses had taken on a new and temporary smartness which consisted mostly of canvas signs. The main street was composed of hotels, eating-houses, and assorted hells. At times over a thousand men were there awaiting transportation. Some of them had been waiting a long time, and had used up all their money. They were broke and desperate. A number of American gambling-houses were doing business, and of course the saloons were much in evidence. Foreigners kept two of the three hotels; Americans ran the gambling joints; French and Germans kept the restaurants. The natives were content to be interested but not entirely idle spectators. There was a terrible amount of sickness aggravated by American quack remedies. Men rejoiced or despaired according to their dispositions. Every once in a while a train of gold bullion would start back across the Isthmus with mule-loads of huge gold bars, so heavy that they were safe, for no one could carry them off to the jungle. On the other hand there were some returning Californians, drunken and wretched. They delighted in telling with grim joy of the disappointments of the diggings. But probably the only people thoroughly unhappy were the steamship officials. These men had to bear the brunt of disappointment, broken promises, and savage recrimination, if means for going north were not very soon forthcoming. Every once in a while some ship, probably an old tub, would come wallowing to anchor at the nearest point, some eleven miles from the city. Then the raid for transportation took place all over again. There was a limited number of small boats for carrying purposes, and these were pounced on at once by ten times the number they could accommodate. Ships went north scandalously overcrowded and underprovisioned. Mutinies were not infrequent. It took a good captain to satisfy everybody, and there were many bad ones. Some men got so desperate that, with a touching ignorance of geography, they actually started out in small boats to row to the north. Others attempted the overland route. It may well be believed that the reaction from all this disappointment and delay lifted the hearts of these argonauts when they eventually sailed between the Golden Gates.
This confusion, of course, was worse at the beginning. Later the journey was to some extent systematized. The Panama route subsequently became the usual and fashionable way to travel. The ship companies learned how to handle and treat their patrons. In fact, it was said that every jewelry shop in San Francisco carried a large stock of fancy silver speaking-trumpets because of the almost invariable habit of presenting one of these to the captain of the ship by his grateful passengers. One captain swore that he possessed eighteen of them!
CHAPTER VIII
THE DIGGINGS
The two streams of immigrants, by sea and overland, thus differed, on the average, in kind. They also landed in the country at different points. The overlanders were generally absorbed before they reached San Francisco. They arrived first at Fort Sutter, whence they distributed themselves; or perhaps they even stopped at one or another of the diggings on their way in.
Of those coming by sea all landed at San Francisco. A certain proportion of the younger and more enthusiastic set out for the mines, but only after a few days had given them experience of the new city and had impressed them with at least a subconscious idea of opportunity. Another certain proportion, however, remained in San Francisco without attempting the mines. These were either men who were discouraged by pessimistic tales, men who had sickened of the fever, or more often men who were attracted by the big opportunities for wealth which the city then afforded. Thus at once we have two different types to consider, the miner and the San Franciscan.
The mines were worked mostly by young men. They journeyed up to the present Sacramento either by river-boats or afoot. Thence they took their outfits into the diggings. It must have seemed a good deal like a picnic. The goal was near; rosy hope had expanded to fill the horizon; breathless anticipation pervaded them–a good deal like a hunting-party starting off in the freshness of the dawn.
The diggings were generally found at the bottoms of the deep river-beds and ravines. Since trails, in order to avoid freshets and too many crossings of the water-courses, took the higher shoulder of the hill, the newcomer ordinarily looked down upon his first glimpse of the mines. The sight must have been busy and animated. The miners dressed in bright-colored garments, and dug themselves in only to the waist or at most to the shoulders before striking bed rock, so that they were visible as spots of gaudy color. The camps were placed on the hillsides or little open flats, and occasionally were set in the bed of a river. They were composed of tents, and of rough log or bark structures.
The newcomers did not spend much time in establishing themselves comfortably or luxuriously. They were altogether too eager to get at the actual digging. There was an immense excitement of the gamble in it all. A man might dig for days without adequate results and then of a sudden run into a rich pocket. Or he might pan out an immense sum within the first ten minutes of striking his pick to earth. No one could tell. The fact that the average of all the days and all the men amounted to very little more than living wages was quite lost to sight. At first the methods were very crude. One man held a coarse screen of willow branches which he shook continuously above an ordinary cooking pot, while his partner slowly shovelled earth over this impromptu sieve. When the pots were filled with siftings, they were carried to the river, where they were carefully submerged, and the contents were stirred about with sticks. The light earth was thus flowed over the rims of the pots. The residue was then dried, and the lighter sand was blown away. The result was gold, though of course with a strong mixture of foreign substance. The pan miners soon followed; and the cradle or rocker with its riffle-board was not long delayed. The digging was free. At first it was supposed that a new holding should not be started within fifteen feet of one already in operation. Later, claims of a definite size were established. A camp, however, made its own laws in regard to this and other matters.
Most of the would-be miners at first rather expected to find gold lying on the surface of the earth, and were very much disappointed to learn that they actually had to dig for it. Moreover, digging in the boulders and gravel, under the terrific heat of the California sun in midsummer, was none too easy; and no matter how rich the diggings averaged–short of an actual bonanza–the miner was disappointed in his expectations. One man is reported saying: “They tell me I can easily make there eleven hundred dollars a day. You know I am not easily moved by such reports. I shall be satisfied if I make three hundred dollars per day.” Travelers of the time comment on the contrast between the returning stream of discouraged and disgruntled men and the cheerfulness of the lot actually digging. Nobody had any scientific system to go on. Often a divining-rod was employed to determine where to dig. Many stories were current of accidental finds; as when one man, tiring of waiting for his dog to get through digging out a ground squirrel, pulled the animal out by the tail, and with it a large nugget. Another story is told of a sailor who asked some miners resting at noon where he could dig and as a joke was directed to a most improbable side hill. He obeyed the advice, and uncovered a rich pocket. With such things actually happening, naturally it followed that every report of a real or rumored strike set the miners crazy. Even those who had good claims always suspected that they might do better elsewhere. It is significant that the miners of that day, like hunters, always had the notion that they had come out to California just one trip too late for the best pickings.
The physical life was very hard, and it is no wonder that the stragglers back from the mines increased in numbers as time went on. It was a true case of survival of the fittest. Those who remained and became professional miners were the hardiest, most optimistic, and most persistent of the population. The mere physical labor was very severe. Any one not raised as a day laborer who has tried to do a hard day’s work in a new garden can understand what pick and shovel digging in the bottoms of gravel and boulder streams can mean. Add to this the fact that every man overworked himself under the pressure of excitement; that he was up to his waist in the cold water from the Sierra snows, with his head exposed at the same time to the tremendous heat of the California sun; throw in for good measure that he generally cooked for himself, and that his food was coarse and badly prepared; and that in his own mind he had no time to attend to the ordinary comforts and decencies of life. It can well be imagined that a man physically unfit must soon succumb. But those who survived seemed to thrive on these hardships.
California camps by their very quaint and whimsical names bear testimony to the overflowing good humor and high spirits of the early miners. No one took anything too seriously, not even his own success or failure. The very hardness of the life cultivated an ability to snatch joy from the smallest incident. Some of the joking was a little rough, as when some merry jester poured alcohol over a bully’s head, touched a match to it, and chased him out of camp yelling, “Man on fire–put him out!” It is evident that the time was not one for men of very refined or sensitive nature, unless they possessed at bottom the strong iron of character. The ill-balanced were swept away by the current of excitement, and fell readily into dissipation. The pleasures were rude; the life was hearty; vices unknown to their possessors came to the surface. The most significant tendency, and one that had much to do with later social and political life in California, was the leveling effect of just this hard physical labor. The man with a strong back and the most persistent spirit was the superior of the man with education but with weaker muscles. Each man, finding every other man compelled to labor, was on a social equality with the best. The usual superiority of head-workers over hand-workers disappeared. The low-grade man thus felt himself the equal, if not the superior, of any one else on earth, especially as he was generally able to put his hand on what were to him comparative riches. The pride of employment disappeared completely. It was just as honorable to be a cook or a waiter in a restaurant as to dispense the law,–where there was any. The period was brief, but while it lasted, it produced a true social democracy. Nor was there any pretense about it. The rudest miner was on a plane of perfect equality with lawyers, merchants, or professional men. Some men dressed in the very height of style, decking themselves out with all the minute care of a dandy; others were not ashamed of, nor did they object to being seen in, ragged garments. No man could be told by his dress.
The great day of days in a mining-camp was Sunday. Some over-enthusiastic fortune-seekers worked the diggings also on that day; but by general consent–uninfluenced, it may be remarked, by religious considerations–the miners repaired to their little town for amusement and relaxation. These little towns were almost all alike. There were usually two or three combined hotels, saloons, and gambling-houses, built of logs, of slabs, of canvas, or of a combination of the three. There was one store that dispensed whiskey as well as dryer goods, and one or two large places of amusement. On Sunday everything went full blast. The streets were crowded with men; the saloons were well patronized; the gambling games ran all day and late into the night. Wrestling-matches, jumping-matches, other athletic tests, horse-races, lotteries, fortune-telling, singing, anything to get a pinch or two of the dust out of the good-natured miners–all these were going strong. The American, English, and other continentals mingled freely, with the exception of the French, who kept to themselves. Successful Germans or Hollanders of the more stupid class ran so true to type and were so numerous that they earned the generic name of “Dutch Charley.” They have been described as moon-faced, bland, bullet-headed men, with walrus moustaches, and fatuous, placid smiles. Value meant nothing to them. They only knew the difference between having money and having no money. They carried two or three gold watches at the end of long home-made chains of gold nuggets fastened together with links of copper wire. The chains were sometimes looped about their necks, their shoulders, and waists, and even hung down in long festoons. When two or three such Dutch Charleys inhabited one camp, they became deadly rivals in this childlike display, parading slowly up and down the street, casting malevolent glances at each other as they passed. Shoals of phrenologists, fortune-tellers, and the like, generally drunken old reprobates on their last legs, plied their trades. One artist, giving out under the physical labor of mining, built up a remarkably profitable trade in sketching portraits. Incidentally he had to pay two dollars and a half for every piece of paper! John Kelly, a wandering minstrel with a violin, became celebrated among the camps, and was greeted with enthusiasm wherever he appeared. He probably made more with his fiddle than he could have made with his shovel. The influence of the “forty-two caliber whiskey” was dire, and towards the end of Sunday the sports became pretty rough.
This day was also considered the time for the trial of any cases that had arisen during the week. The miners elected one of their number to act as presiding judge in a “miners’ meeting.” Justice was dealt out by this man, either on his own authority with the approval of the crowd, or by popular vote. Disputes about property were adjudicated as well as offenses against the criminal code. Thus a body of precedent was slowly built up. A new case before the _alcalde_ of Hangtown was often decided on the basis of the procedure at Grub Gulch. The decisions were characterized by direct common sense. It would be most interesting to give adequate examples here, but space forbids. Suffice it to say that a Mexican horse-thief was convicted and severely flogged; and then a collection was taken up for him on the ground that he was on the whole unfortunate. A thief apprehended on a steamboat was punished by a heavy fine for the benefit of a sick man on board.
Sunday evening usually ended by a dance. As women were entirely lacking at first, a proportion of the men was told off to represent the fair sex. At one camp the invariable rule was to consider as ladies those who possessed patches on the seats of their trousers. This was the distinguishing mark. Take it all around, the day was one of noisy, good-humored fun. There was very little sodden drunkenness, and the miners went back to their work on Monday morning with freshened spirits. Probably just this sort of irresponsible ebullition was necessary to balance the hardness of the life.
In each mining-town was at least one Yankee storekeeper. He made the real profits of the mines. His buying ability was considerable; his buying power was often limited by what he could get hold of at the coast and what he could transport to the camps. Often his consignments were quite arbitrary and not at all what he ordered. The story is told of one man who received what, to judge by the smell, he thought was three barrels of spoiled beef. Throwing them out in the back way, he was interested a few days later to find he had acquired a rapidly increasing flock of German scavengers. They seemed to be investigating the barrels and carrying away the spoiled meat. When the barrels were about empty, the storekeeper learned that the supposed meat was in reality sauerkraut!
The outstanding fact about these camps was that they possessed no solidarity. Each man expected to exploit the diggings and then to depart for more congenial climes. He wished to undertake just as little responsibility as he possibly could. With so-called private affairs other than his own he would have nothing to do. The term private affairs was very elastic, stretching often to cover even cool-blooded murder. When matters arose affecting the whole public welfare in which he himself might possibly become interested, he was roused to the point of administering justice. The punishments meted out were fines, flogging, banishment, and, as a last resort, lynching. Theft was considered a worse offense than killing. As the mines began to fill up with the more desperate characters who arrived in 1850 and 1851, the necessity for government increased. At this time, but after the leveling effect of universal labor had had its full effect, the men of personality, of force and influence, began to come to the front. A fresh aristocracy of ability, of influence, of character was created.
CHAPTER IX
THE URBAN FORTY-NINER
In popular estimation the interest and romance of the Forty-niners center in gold and mines. To the close student, however, the true significance of their lives is to be found even more in the city of San Francisco.
At first practically everybody came to California under the excitement of the gold rush and with the intention of having at least one try at the mines. But though gold was to be found in unprecedented abundance, the getting of it was at best extremely hard work. Men fell sick both in body and spirit. They became discouraged. Extravagance of hope often resulted, by reaction, in an equal exaggeration of despair. The prices of everything were very high. The cost of medical attendance was almost prohibitory. Men sometimes made large daily sums in the placers; but necessary expenses reduced their net income to small wages. Ryan gives this account of an interview with a returning miner: “He readily entered into conversation and informed us that he had passed the summer at the mines where the excessive heat during the day, and the dampness of the ground where the gold washing is performed, together with privation and fatigue, had brought on fever and ague which nearly proved fatal to him. He had frequently given an ounce of gold for the visit of a medical man, and on several occasions had paid two and even three ounces for a single dose of medicine. He showed us a pair of shoes, nearly worn out, for which he had paid twenty-four dollars.” Later Ryan says: “Only such men as can endure the hardship and privation incidental to life in the mines are likely to make fortunes by digging for the ore. I am unequal to the task … I think I could within an hour assemble in this very place from twenty to thirty individuals of my own acquaintance who had all told the same story. They were thoroughly dissatisfied and disgusted with their experiment in the gold country. The truth of the matter is that only traders, speculators, and gamblers make large fortunes.” Only rarely did men of cool enough heads and far enough sight eschew from the very beginning all notion of getting rich quickly in the placers, and deliberately settle down to make their fortunes in other ways.
This conclusion of Ryan’s throws, of course, rather too dark a tone over the picture. The “hardy miner” was a reality, and the life in the placers was, to such as he, profitable and pleasant. However, this point of view had its influence in turning back from the mines a very large proportion of those who first went in. Many of them drifted into mercantile pursuits. Harlan tells us: “During my sojourn in Stockton I mixed freely with the returning and disgusted miners from whom I learned that they were selling their mining implements at ruinously low prices. An idea struck me one day which I immediately acted upon for fear that another might strike in the same place and cause an explosion. The heaven-born idea that had penetrated my cranium was this: start in the mercantile line, purchase the kits and implements of the returning miners at low figures and sell to the greenhorns en route to the mines at California prices.” In this manner innumerable occupations supplying the obvious needs were taken up by many returned miners. A certain proportion drifted to crime or shady devices, but the large majority returned to San Francisco, whence they either went home completely discouraged, or with renewed energy and better-applied ability took hold of the destinies of the new city. Thus another sort of Forty-niner became in his way as significant and strong, as effective and as romantic as his brother, the red-shirted Forty-niner of the diggings.
But in addition to the miners who had made their stakes, who had given up the idea of mining, or who were merely waiting for the winter’s rains to be over to go back again to the diggings, an ever increasing immigration was coming to San Francisco with the sole idea of settling in that place. All classes of men were represented. Many of the big mercantile establishments of the East were sending out their agents. Independent merchants sought the rewards of speculation. Gamblers also perceived opportunities for big killings. Professional politicians and cheap lawyers, largely from the Southern States, unfortunately also saw their chance to obtain standing in a new community, having lost all standing in their own. The result of the mixing of these various chemical elements of society was an extraordinary boiling and bubbling.
When Commander Montgomery hoisted the American flag in 1846, the town of Yerba Buena, as San Francisco was called, had a population of about two hundred. Before the discovery of gold it developed under the influence of American enterprise normally and rationally into a prosperous little town with two hotels, a few private dwellings, and two wharves in the process of construction. Merchants had established themselves with connections in the Eastern States, in Great Britain, and South America. Just before the discovery of gold the population had increased to eight hundred and twelve.
The news of the placers practically emptied the town. It would be curious to know exactly how many human souls and chickens remained after Brannan’s _California Star_ published the authentic news. The commonest necessary activities were utterly neglected, shops were closed and barricaded, merchandise was left rotting on the wharves and the beaches, and the prices of necessities rose to tremendous altitudes. The place looked as a deserted mining-camp does now. The few men left who would work wanted ten or even twenty dollars a day for the commonest labor.
However, the early pioneers were hard-headed citizens. Many of the shopkeepers and merchants, after a short experience of the mines, hurried back to make the inevitable fortune that must come to the middleman in these extraordinary times. Within the first eight weeks of the gold excitement two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in gold dust reached San Francisco, and within: the following eight weeks six hundred thousand dollars more came in. All of this was to purchase supplies at any price for the miners.
This was in the latter days of 1848. In the first part of 1849 the immigrants began to arrive. They had to have places to sleep, things to eat, transportation to the diggings, outfits of various sorts. In the first six months of 1849 ten thousand people piled down upon the little city built to accommodate eight hundred. And the last six months of the year were still more extraordinary, as some thirty thousand more dumped themselves on the chaos of the first immigration. The result can be imagined. The city was mainly of canvas either in the form of tents or of crude canvas and wooden houses. The few substantial buildings stood like rocks in a tossing sea. No attempt, of course, had been made as yet toward public improvements. The streets were ankle-deep in dust or neck-deep in mud. A great smoke of dust hung perpetually over the city, raised by the trade winds of the afternoon. Hundreds of ships lay at anchor in the harbor. They had been deserted by their crews, and, before they could be re-manned, the faster clipper ships, built to control the fluctuating western trade, had displaced them, so that the majority were fated never again to put to sea.
Newcomers landed at first on a flat beach of deep black sand, where they generally left their personal effects for lack of means of transportation. They climbed to a ragged thoroughfare of open sheds and ramshackle buildings, most of them in the course of construction. Beneath crude shelters of all sorts and in great quantities were goods brought in hastily by eager speculators on the high prices. The four hundred deserted ships lying at anchor in the harbor had dumped down on the new community the most ridiculous assortment of necessities and luxuries, such as calico, silk, rich furniture, mirrors, knock-down houses, cases and cases of tobacco, clothing, statuary, mining-implements, provisions, and the like.
The hotels and lodging houses immediately became very numerous. Though they were in reality only overcrowded bunk-houses, the most enormous prices were charged for beds in them. People lay ten or twenty in a single room–in row after row of cots, in bunks, or on the floor. Between the discomfort of hard beds, fleas, and overcrowding, the entire populace spent most of its time on the street or in the saloons and gambling, houses. As some one has pointed out, this custom added greatly to the apparent population of the place. Gambling was the gaudiest, the best-paying, and the most patronized industry. It occupied the largest structures, and it probably imported and installed the first luxuries. Of these resorts the El Dorado became the most famous. It occupied at first a large tent but soon found itself forced to move to better quarters. The rents paid for buildings were enormous. Three thousand dollars a month in advance was charged for a single small store made of rough boards. A two-story frame building on Kearny Street near the Plaza paid its owners a hundred and twenty thousand dollars a year rent. The tent containing the El Dorado gambling saloon was rented for forty thousand dollars a year. The prices sky-rocketed still higher. Miners paid as high as two hundred dollars for an ordinary gold rocker, fifteen or twenty dollars for a pick, the same for a shovel, and so forth. A copper coin was considered a curiosity, a half-dollar was the minimum tip for any small service, twenty-five cents was the smallest coin in circulation, and the least price for which anything could be sold. Bread came to fifty cents a loaf. Good boots were a hundred dollars.
Affairs moved very swiftly. A month was the unit of time. Nobody made bargains for more than a month in advance. Interest was charged on money by the month. Indeed, conditions changed so fast that no man pretended to estimate them beyond thirty days ahead, and to do even that was considered rather a gamble. Real estate joined the parade of advance. Little holes in sand-hills sold for fabulous prices. The sick, destitute, and discouraged were submerged beneath the mounting tide of vigorous optimism that bore on its crest the strong and able members of the community. Every one either was rich or expected soon to be so. Opportunity awaited every man at every corner. Men who knew how to take advantage of fortune’s gifts were assured of immediate high returns. Those with capital were, of course, enabled to take advantage of the opportunities more quickly; but the ingenious mind saw its chances even with nothing to start on.
One man, who landed broke but who possessed two or three dozen old newspapers used as packing, sold them at a dollar and two dollars apiece and so made his start. Another immigrant with a few packages of ordinary tin tacks exchanged them with a man engaged in putting up a canvas house for their exact weight in gold dust. Harlan tells of walking along the shore of Happy Valley and finding it lined with discarded pickle jars and bottles. Remembering the high price of pickles in San Francisco, he gathered up several hundred of them, bought a barrel of cider vinegar from a newly-arrived vessel, collected a lot of cucumbers, and started a bottling works. Before night, he said, he had cleared over three hundred dollars. With this he made a corner in tobacco pipes by which he realized one hundred and fifty dollars in twenty-four hours.
Mail was distributed soon after the arrival of the mail-steamer. The indigent would often sit up a day or so before the expected arrival of the mail-steamer holding places in line at the post-office. They expected no letters but could sell the advantageous positions for high prices when the mail actually arrived. He was a poor-spirited man indeed who by these and many other equally picturesque means could not raise his gold slug in a reasonable time; and, possessed of fifty dollars, he was an independent citizen. He could increase his capital by interest compounded every day, provided he used his wits; or for a brief span of glory he could live with the best of them. A story is told of a new-come traveler offering a small boy fifty cents to carry his valise to the hotel. The urchin looked with contempt at the coin, fished out two fifty-cent pieces, handed them to the owner of the valise, saying “Here’s a dollar; carry it yourself.”
One John A. McGlynn arrived without assets. He appreciated the opportunity for ordinary teaming, and hitching California mules to the only and exceedingly decrepit wagon to be found he started in business. Possessing a monopoly, he charged what he pleased, so that within a short time he had driving for him a New York lawyer, whom he paid a hundred and seventy-five dollars a month. His outfit was magnificent. When somebody joked with him about his legal talent, he replied, “The whole business of a lawyer is to know how to manage mules and asses so as to make them pay.” When within a month plenty of wagons were imported, McGlynn had so well established himself and possessed so much character that he became _ex officio_ the head of the industry. He was evidently a man of great and solid sense and was looked up to as one of the leading citizens.
Every human necessity was crying out for its ordinary conveniences. There were no streets, there were no hotels, there were no lodging-houses, there were no warehouses, there were no stores, there was no water, there was no fuel. Any one who could improvise anything, even a bare substitute, to satisfy any of these needs, was sure of immense returns. In addition, the populace was so busy–so overwhelmingly busy–with its own affairs that it literally could not spare a moment to govern itself. The professional and daring politicians never had a clearer field. They went to extraordinary lengths in all sorts of grafting, in the sale of public real estate, in every “shenanigan” known to skillful low-grade politicians. Only occasionally did they go too far, as when, in addition to voting themselves salaries of six thousand dollars apiece as aldermen, they coolly voted themselves also gold medals to the value of one hundred and fifty dollars apiece “for public and extra services.” Then the determined citizens took an hour off for the council chambers. The medals were cast into the melting-pot.
All writers agree, in their memoirs, that the great impression left on the mind by San Francisco was its extreme busyness. The streets were always crammed full of people running and darting in all directions. It was, indeed, a heterogeneous mixture. Not only did the Caucasian show himself in every extreme of costume, from the most exquisite top-hatted dandy to the red-shirted miner, but there were also to be found all the picturesque and unknown races of the earth, the Chinese, the Chileno, the Moor, the Turk, the Mexican, the Spanish, the Islander, not to speak of ordinary foreigners from Russia, England, France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, and the out-of-the-way corners of Europe. All these people had tremendous affairs to finish in the least possible time. And every once in a while some individual on horseback would sail down the street at full speed, scattering the crowd left and right. If any one remarked that the marauding individual should be shot, the excuse was always offered, “Oh, well, don’t mind him. He’s only drunk,” as if that excused everything. Many of the activities of the day also were picturesque. As there were no warehouses in which to store goods, and as the few structures of the sort charged enormous rentals, it was cheaper to auction off immediately all consignments. These auctions were then, and remained for some years, one of the features of the place. The more pretentious dealers kept brass bands to attract the crowd. The returning miners were numerous enough to patronize both these men and the cheap clothing stores, and having bought themselves new outfits, generally cast the old ones into the middle of the street. Water was exceedingly scarce and in general demand, so that laundry work was high. It was the fashion of these gentry to wear their hair and beards long. They sported red shirts, flashy Chinese scarves around their waists, black belts with silver buckles, six-shooters and bowie-knives, and wide floppy hats.
The business of the day over, the evening was open for relaxation. As the hotels and lodging-houses were nothing but kennels, and very crowded kennels, it followed that the entire population gravitated to the saloons and gambling places. Some of these were established on a very extensive scale. They had not yet attained the magnificence of the Fifties, but it is extraordinary to realize that within so few months and at such a great distance from civilization, the early and enterprising managed to take on the trappings of luxury. Even thus early, plate-glass mirrors, expensive furniture, the gaudy, tremendous oil paintings peculiar to such dives, prism chandeliers, and the like, had made their appearance. Later, as will be seen, these gambling dens presented an aspect of barbaric magnificence, unique and peculiar to the time and place. In 1849, however gorgeous the trappings might have appeared to men long deprived of such things, they were of small importance compared with the games themselves. At times the bets were enormous. Soule tells us that as high as twenty thousand dollars were risked on the turn of one card. The ordinary stake, however, was not so large, from fifty cents to five dollars being about the usual amount. Even at this the gamblers were well able to pay the high rents. Quick action was the word. The tables were always crowded and bystanders many deep waited to lay their stakes. Within a year or so the gambling resorts assumed rather the nature of club-rooms, frequented by every class, many of whom had no intention of gambling. Men met to talk, read the newspapers, write letters, or perhaps take a turn at the tables. But in 1849 the fever of speculation held every man in its grip.
Again it must be noted how wide an epoch can be spanned by a month or two. The year 1849 was but three hundred and sixty-five days long, and yet in that space the community of San Francisco passed through several distinct phases. It grew visibly like the stalk of a century plant.
Of public improvements there were almost none. The few that were undertaken sprang from absolute necessity. The town got through the summer season fairly well, but, as the winter that year proved to be an unusually rainy time, it soon became evident that something must be done. The streets became bottomless pits of mud. It is stated, as plain and sober fact, that in some of the main thoroughfares teams of mules and horses sank actually out of sight and were suffocated. Foot travel was almost impossible unless across some sort of causeway. Lumber was so expensive that it was impossible to use it for the purpose. Fabulous quantities of goods sent in by speculators loaded the market and would sell so low that it was actually cheaper to use bales of them than to use planks. Thus one muddy stretch was paved with bags of Chilean flour, another with tierces of tobacco, while over still another the wayfarers proceeded on the tops of cook stoves. These sank gradually in the soft soil until the tops were almost level with the mud. Of course one of the first acts of the merry jester was to shy the stove lids off into space. The footing especially after dark can be imagined. Crossing a street on these things was a perilous traverse watched with great interest by spectators on either side. Often the hardy adventurer, after teetering for some time, would with a descriptive oath sink to his waist in the slimy mud. If the wayfarer was drunk enough, he then proceeded to pelt his tormentors with missiles of the sticky slime. The good humor of the community saved it from absolute despair. Looked at with cold appraising eye, the conditions were decidedly uncomfortable. In addition there was a grimmer side to the picture. Cholera and intermittent fever came, brought in by ships as well as by overland immigrants, and the death-rate rose by leaps and bounds.
The greater the hardships and obstacles, the higher the spirit of the community rose to meet them. In that winter was born the spirit that has animated San Francisco ever since, and that so nobly and cheerfully met the final great trial of the earthquake and fire of 1906.
About this time an undesirable lot of immigrants began to arrive, especially from the penal colonies of New South Wales. The criminals of the latter class soon became known to the populace as “Sydney Ducks.” They formed a nucleus for an adventurous, idle, pleasure-loving, dissipated set of young sports, who organized themselves into a loose band very much on the order of the East Side gangs in New York or the “hoodlums” in later San Francisco, with the exception, however, that these young men affected the most meticulous nicety in dress. They perfected in the spring of 1849 an organization called the Regulators, announcing that, as there was no regular police force, they would take it upon themselves to protect the weak against the strong and the newcomer against the bunco man. Every Sunday they paraded the streets with bands and banners. Having no business in the world to occupy them, and holding a position unique in the community, the Regulators soon developed into practically a band of cut-throats and robbers, with the object of relieving those too weak to bear alone the weight of wealth. The Regulators, or Hounds, as they soon came to be called, had the great wisdom to avoid the belligerent and resourceful pioneer. They issued from their headquarters, a large tent near the Plaza, every night. Armed with clubs and pistols, they descended upon the settlements of harmless foreigners living near the outskirts, relieved them of what gold dust they possessed, beat them up by way of warning, and returned to headquarters with the consciousness of a duty well done. The victims found it of little use to appeal to the _alcalde_, for with the best disposition in the world the latter could do nothing without an adequate police force. The ordinary citizen, much too interested in his own affairs, merely took precautions to preserve his own skin, avoided dark and unfrequented alleyways, barricaded his doors and windows, and took the rest out in contemptuous cursing.
Encouraged by this indifference, the Hounds naturally grew bolder and bolder. They considered they had terrorized the rest of the community, and they began to put on airs and swagger in the usual manner of bullies everywhere. On Sunday afternoon of July 15, they made a raid on some California ranchos across the bay, ostensibly as a picnic expedition, returning triumphant and very drunk. For the rest of the afternoon with streaming banners they paraded the streets, discharging firearms and generally shooting up the town. At dark they descended upon the Chilean quarters, tore down the tents, robbed the Chileans, beat many of the men to insensibility, ousted the women, killed a number who had not already fled, and returned to town only the following morning.
This proved to be the last straw. The busy citizens dropped their own affairs for a day and got together in a mass meeting at the Plaza. All work was suspended and all business houses were closed. Probably all the inhabitants in the city with the exception of the Hounds had gathered together. Our old friend, Sam Brannan, possessing the gift of a fiery spirit and an arousing tongue, addressed the meeting. A sum of money was raised for the despoiled foreigners. An organization was effected, and armed _posses_ were sent out to arrest the ringleaders. They had little difficulty. Many left town for foreign parts or for the mines, where they met an end easily predicted. Others were condemned to various punishments. The Hounds were thoroughly broken up in an astonishingly brief time. The real significance of their great career is that they called to the attention of the better class of citizens the necessity for at least a sketchy form of government and a framework of law. Such matters as city revenue were brought up for practically the first time. Gambling-houses were made to pay a license. Real estate, auction sales, and other licenses were also taxed. One of the ships in the harbor was drawn up on shore and was converted into a jail. A district-attorney was elected, with an associate. The whole municipal structure was still about as rudimentary as the streets into which had been thrown armfuls of brush in a rather hopeless attempt to furnish an artificial bottom. It was a beginning, however, and men had at last turned their eyes even momentarily from their private affairs to consider the welfare of this unique society which was in the making.
CHAPTER X
ORDEAL BY FIRE
San Francisco in the early years must be considered, aside from the interest of its picturesqueness and aside from its astonishing growth, as a crucible of character. Men had thrown off all moral responsibility. Gambling, for example, was a respectable amusement. People in every class of life frequented the gambling saloons openly and without thought of apology. Men were leading a hard and vigorous life; the reactions were quick; and diversions were eagerly seized. Decent women were absolutely lacking, and the women of the streets had as usual followed the army of invasion. It was not considered at all out of the ordinary to frequent their company in public, and men walked with them by day to the scandal of nobody. There was neither law nor restraint. Most men were drunk with sudden wealth. The battle was, as ever, to the strong.
There was every inducement to indulge the personal side of life. As a consequence, many formed habits they could not break, spent all of their money on women and drink and gambling, ruined themselves in pocket-book and in health, returned home broken, remained sodden and hopeless tramps, or joined the criminal class. Thousands died of cholera or pneumonia; hundreds committed suicide; but those who came through formed the basis of a race remarkable today for its strength, resourcefulness, and optimism. Characters solid at bottom soon come to the inevitable reaction. They were the forefathers of a race of people which is certainly different from the inhabitants of any other portion of the country.
The first public test came with the earliest of the big fires that, within the short space of eighteen months, six times burned San Francisco to the ground. This fire occurred on December 4, 1849. It was customary in the saloons to give negroes a free drink and tell them not to come again. One did come again to Dennison’s; he was flogged, and knocked over a lamp. Thus there started a conflagration that consumed over a million dollars’ worth of property. The valuable part of the property, it must be confessed, was in the form of goods, is the light canvas and wooden shacks were of little worth. Possibly the fire consumed enough germs and germ-breeding dirt to pay partially for itself. Before the ashes had cooled, the enterprising real estate owners were back reerecting the destroyed structures.
This first fire was soon followed by others, each intrinsically severe. The people were splendid in enterprise and spirit of recovery; but they soon realized that not only must the buildings be made of more substantial material, but also that fire-fighting apparatus must be bought. In June, 1850, four hundred houses were destroyed; in May, 1851, a thousand were burned at a loss of two million and a half; in June, 1851, the town was razed to the water’s edge. In many places the wharves were even disconnected from the shore. Everywhere deep holes were burned in them, and some people fell through at night and were drowned. In this fire a certain firm, Dewitt and Harrison, saved their warehouse by knocking in barrels of vinegar and covering their building with blankets soaked in that liquid. Water was unobtainable. It was reported that they thus used eighty thousand gallons of vinegar, but saved their warehouse.
The loss now had amounted to something like twelve million dollars for the large fires. It became more evident that something must be done. From the exigencies of the situation were developed the volunteer companies, which later became powerful political, as well as fire-fighting, organizations. There were many of these. In the old Volunteer Department there were fourteen engines, three hook-and-ladder companies, and a number of hose companies. Each possessed its own house, which was in the nature of a club-house, well supplied with reading and drinking matter. The members of each company were strongly partisan. They were ordinarily drawn from men of similar tastes and position in life. Gradually they came to stand also for similar political interests, and thus grew to be, like New York’s Tammany Hall, instruments of the politically ambitious.
On an alarm of fire the members at any time of the day and night ceased their occupation or leaped from their beds to run to the engine-house. Thence the hand-engines were dragged through the streets at a terrific rate of speed by hundreds of yelling men at the end of the ropes. The first engine at a fire obtained the place of honor; therefore every alarm was the signal for a breakneck race. Arrived at the scene of fire, the water-box of one engine was connected by hose with the reservoir of the next, and so water was relayed from engine to engine until it was thrown on the flames. The motive power of the pump was supplied by the crew of each engine. The men on either side manipulated the pump by jerking the hand-rails up and down. Putting out the fire soon became a secondary matter. The main object of each company was to “wash” its rival; that is, to pump water into the water box of the engine ahead faster than the latter could pump it out, thus overflowing and eternally disgracing its crew. The foremen walked back and forth between the rails, as if on quarter-decks, exhorting their men. Relays in uniform stood ready on either side to take the place of those who were exhausted. As the race became closer, the foremen would get more excited, begging their crews to increase the speed of the stroke, beating their speaking trumpets into shapeless and battered relics.
In the meantime the hook-and-ladder companies were plying their glorious and destructive trade. A couple of firemen would mount a ladder to the eaves of the house to be attacked, taking with them a heavy hook at the end of a long pole or rope. With their axes they cut a small hole in the eaves, hooked on this apparatus, and descended. At once as many firemen and volunteers as could get hold of the pole and the rope began to pull. The timbers would crack, break; the whole side of the house would come out with a grand satisfying smash. In this way the fire within was laid open to the attack of the hose-men. This sort of work naturally did little toward saving the building immediately affected, but it was intended to confine or check the fire within the area already burning. The occasion was a grand jubilation for every boy in the town–which means every male of any age. The roar of the flames, the hissing of the steam, the crash of the timber, the shrieks of the foremen, the yells of applause or of sarcastic comment from the crowd, and the thud of the numerous pumps made a glorious row. Everybody, except the owners of the buildings, was hugely delighted, and when the fire was all over it was customary for the unfortunate owner further to increase the amount of his loss by dealing out liquid refreshments to everybody concerned. On parade days each company turned out with its machine brought to a high state of polish by varnish, and with the members resplendent in uniform, carrying pole-axes and banners. If the rivalries at the fire could only be ended in a general free fight, everybody was the better satisfied.
Thus by the end of the first period of its growth three necessities had compelled the careless new city to take thought of itself and of public convenience. The mud had forced the cleaning and afterwards the planking of the principal roads; the Hounds had compelled the adoption of at least a semblance of government; and the repeated fires had made necessary the semiofficial organization of the fire department.
By the end of 1850 we find that a considerable amount of actual progress has been made. This came not in the least from any sense of civic pride but from the pressure of stern necessity. The new city now had eleven wharves, for example, up to seventeen hundred feet in length. It had done no little grading of its sand-hills. The quagmire of its streets had been filled and in some places planked. Sewers had been installed. Flimsy buildings were being replaced by substantial structures, for which the stones in some instances were imported from China.
Yet it must be repeated that at this time little or no progress sprang from civic pride. Each man was for himself. But, unlike the native Californian, he possessed wants and desires which had to be satisfied, and to that end he was forced, at least in essentials, to accept responsibility and to combine with his neighbors.
The machinery of this early civic life was very crude. Even the fire department, which was by far the most efficient, was, as has been indicated, more occupied with politics, rivalry, and fun, than with its proper function. The plank roads were good as long as they remained unworn, but they soon showed many holes, large and small, jagged, splintered, ugly holes going down into the depths of the mud. Many of these had been mended by private philanthropists; many more had been labeled with facetious signboards. There were rough sketches of accidents taken from life, and various legends such as “Head of Navigation,” “No bottom,” “Horse and dray lost here,” “Take sounding,” “Storage room, inquire below,” “Good fishing for teal,” and the like. As for the government, the less said about that the better. Responsibility was still in embryo; but politics and the law, as an irritant, were highly esteemed. The elections of the times were a farce and a holiday; nobody knew whom he was voting for nor what he was shouting for, but he voted as often and shouted as loud as he could. Every American citizen was entitled to a vote, and every one, no matter from what part of the world he came, claimed to be an American citizen and defied any one to prove the contrary. Proof consisted of club, sling-shot, bowie, and pistol. A grand free fight was a refreshment to the soul. After “a pleasant time by all was had,” the populace settled down and forgot all about the officers whom it had elected. The latter went their own sweet way, unless admonished by spasmodic mass-meetings that some particularly unscrupulous raid on the treasury was noted and resented. Most of the revenue was made by the sale of city lots. Scrip was issued in payment of debt. This bore interest sometimes at the rate of six or eight per cent a month.
In the meantime, the rest of the crowd went about its own affairs. Then, as now, the American citizen is willing to pay a very high price in dishonesty to be left free for his own pressing affairs. That does not mean that he is himself either dishonest or indifferent. When the price suddenly becomes too high, either because of the increase in dishonesty or the decrease in value of his own time, he suddenly refuses to pay. This happened not infrequently in the early days of California.
CHAPTER XI
THE VIGILANTES OF ’51
In 1851 the price for one commodity became too high. That commodity was lawlessness.
In two years the population of the city had vastly increased, until it now numbered over thirty thousand inhabitants. At an equal or greater pace the criminal and lawless elements had also increased. The confessedly criminal immigrants were paroled convicts from Sydney and other criminal colonies. These practiced men were augmented by the weak and desperate from other countries. Mexico, especially, was strongly represented. At first few in numbers and poverty-stricken in resources, these men acted merely as footpads, highwaymen, and cheap crooks. As time went on, however, they gradually became more wealthy and powerful, until they had established a sort of caste. They had not the social importance of many of the “higher-ups” of 1856, but they were crude, powerful, and in many cases wealthy. They were ably seconded by a class of lawyers which then, and for some years later, infested the courts of California. These men had made little success at law, or perhaps had been driven forth from their native haunts because of evil practices. They played the game of law exactly as the cheap criminal lawyer does today, but with the added advantage that their activities were controlled neither by a proper public sentiment nor by the usual discipline of better colleagues. Unhappily we are not yet far enough removed from just this perversion to need further explanation of the method. Indictments were fought for the reason that the murderer’s name was spelled wrong in one letter; because, while the accusation stated that the murderer killed his victim with a pistol, it did not say that it was by the discharge of said pistol; and so on. But patience could not endure forever. The decent element of the community was forced at last to beat the rascals. Its apparent indifference had been only preoccupation.
The immediate cause was the cynical and open criminal activity of an Englishman named James Stuart. This man was a degenerate criminal of the worst type, who came into a temporary glory through what he considered the happy circumstances of the time. Arrested for one of his crimes, he seemed to anticipate the usual very good prospects of escaping all penalties. There had been dozens of exactly similar incidents, but this one proved to be the spark to ignite a long gathering pile of kindling. One hundred and eighty-four of the wealthiest and most prominent men of the city formed themselves into a secret Committee of Vigilance. As is usual when anything of importance is to be done, the busiest men of the community were summoned and put to work. Strangely enough, the first trial under this Committee of Vigilance resulted also in a divided jury. The mob of eight thousand or more people who had gathered to see justice done by others than the appointed court finally though grumblingly acquiesced. The prisoners were turned over to the regular authorities, and were eventually convicted and sentenced.
So far from being warned by this popular demonstration, the criminal offenders grew bolder than ever. The second great fire, in May, 1851, was commonly believed to be the work of incendiaries. Patience ceased to be a virtue. The time for resolute repression of crime had arrived. In June the Vigilance Committee was formally organized. Our old and picturesque friend Sam Brannan was deeply concerned. In matters of initiative for the public good, especially where a limelight was concealed in the wing, Brannan was an able and efficient citizen. Headquarters were chosen and a formal organization was perfected. The Monumental Fire Engine Company bell was to be tolled as a summons for the Committee to meet.
Even before the first meeting had adjourned, this signal was given. A certain John Jenkins had robbed a safe and was caught after a long and spectacular pursuit. Jenkins was an Australian convict and was known to numerous people as an old offender in many ways. He was therefore typical of the exact thing the Vigilance Committee had been formed to prevent. By eleven o’clock the trial, which was conducted with due decorum and formality, was over. Jenkins was adjudged guilty. There was no disorder either before or after Jenkins’s trial. Throughout the trial and subsequent proceedings Jenkins’s manner was unafraid and arrogant. He fully expected not only that the nerve of the Committee would give out, but that at any moment he would be rescued. It must be remembered that the sixty or seventy men in charge were known as peaceful unwarlike merchants, and that against them were arrayed all the belligerent swashbucklers of the town. While the trial was going on, the Committee was informed by its officers outside that already the roughest characters throughout the city had been told of the organization, and were gathering for rescue. The prisoner insulted his captors, still unconvinced that they meant business; then he demanded a clergyman, who prayed for three-quarters of an hour straight, until Mr. Ryckman, hearing of the gathering for rescue, no longer contained himself. Said he: “Mr. Minister, you have now prayed three-quarters of an hour. I want you to bring this prayer business to a halt. I am going to hang this man in fifteen minutes.”
The Committee itself was by no means sure at all times. Bancroft tells us that “one time during the proceedings there appeared some faltering on the part of the judges, or rather a hesitancy to take the lead in assuming responsibility and braving what might be subsequent odium. It was one thing for a half-drunken rabble to take the life of a fellow man, but quite another thing for staid church-going men of business to do it. Then it was that William A. Howard, after watching the proceedings for a few moments, rose, and laying his revolver on the table looked over the assembly. Then with a slow enunciation he said, ‘Gentlemen, as I understand it, we are going to hang somebody.’ There was no more halting.”
While these things were going on, Sam Brannan was sent out to communicate to the immense crowd the Committee’s decision. He was instructed by Ryckman, “Sam, you go out and harangue the crowd while we make ready to move.” Brannan was an ideal man for just such a purpose. He was of an engaging personality, of coarse fiber, possessed of a keen sense of humor, a complete knowledge of crowd psychology, and a command of ribald invective that carried far. He spoke for some time, and at the conclusion boldly asked the crowd whether or not the Committee’s action met with its approval. The response was naturally very much mixed, but like a true politician Sam took the result he wanted. They found the lovers of order had already procured for them two ropes, and had gathered into some sort of coherence. The procession marched to the Plaza where Jenkins was duly hanged. The lawless element gathered at the street corners, and at least one abortive attempt at rescue was started. But promptness of action combined with the uncertainty of the situation carried the Committee successfully through. The coroner’s jury next day brought in a verdict that the deceased “came to his death on the part of an association styling themselves a Committee on Vigilance, of whom the following members are implicated.” And then followed nine names. The Committee immediately countered by publishing its roster of one hundred and eighty names in full.
The organization that was immediately perfected was complete and interesting. This was an association that was banded together and close-knit, and not merely a loose body of citizens. It had headquarters, company organizations, police, equipment, laws of its own, and a regular routine for handling the cases brought before it. Its police force was large and active. Had the Vigilance movement in California begun and ended with the Committee of 1851, it would be not only necessary but most interesting to follow its activities in detail. But, as it was only the forerunner and trail-blazer for the greater activities of 1856, we must save our space and attention for the latter. Suffice it to say that, with only nominal interference from the law, the first Committee hanged four people and banished a great many more for the good of their country. Fifty executions in the ordinary way would have had little effect on the excited populace of the time; but in the peculiar circumstances these four deaths accomplished a moral regeneration. This revival of public conscience could not last long, to be sure, but the worst criminals were, at least for the time being, cowed.
Spasmodic efforts toward coherence were made by the criminals, but these attempts all proved abortive. Inflammatory circulars and newspaper articles, small gatherings, hidden threats, were all freely indulged in. At one time a rescue of two prisoners was accomplished, but the Monumental bell called together a determined band of men who had no great difficulty in reclaiming their own. The Governor of the State, secretly in sympathy with the purposes of the Committee, was satisfied to issue a formal proclamation.
It must be repeated that, were it not for the later larger movement of 1856, this Vigilance Committee would merit more extended notice. It gave a lead, however, and a framework on which the Vigilance Committee of 1856 was built. It proved that the better citizens, if aroused, could take matters into their own hands. But the opposing forces of 1851 were very different from those of five years later. And the transition from the criminal of 1851 to the criminal of 1856 is the history of San Francisco between those two dates.
CHAPTER XII
SAN FRANCISCO IN TRANSITION
By the mid-fifties San Francisco had attained the dimensions of a city. Among other changes of public interest within the brief space of two or three years were a hospital, a library, a cemetery, several churches, public markets, bathing establishments, public schools, two race-courses, twelve wharves, five hundred and thirty-seven saloons, and about eight thousand women of several classes. The population was now about fifty thousand. The city was now of a fairly substantial character, at least in the down-town districts. There were many structures of brick and stone. In many directions the sand-hills had been conveniently graded down by means of a power shovel called the Steam Paddy in contradistinction to the hand Paddy, or Irishman with a shovel. The streets were driven straight ahead regardless of contours. It is related that often the inhabitants of houses perched on the sides of the sand-hills would have to scramble to safety as their dwellings rolled down the bank, undermined by some grading operation below. A water system had been established, the nucleus of the present Spring Valley Company. The streets had nearly all been planked, and private enterprise had carried the plank toll-road even to the Mission district. The fire department had been brought to a high state of perfection. The shallow waters of the bay were being filled up by the rubbish from the town and by the debris from the operations of the Steam Paddies. New streets were formed on piles extended out into the bay. Houses were erected, also on piles and on either side of these marine thoroughfares. Gradually the rubbish filled the skeleton framework. Occasionally old ships, caught by this seaward invasion, were built around, and so became integral parts of the city itself.
The same insistent demand that led to increasing the speed of the vessels, together with the fact that it cost any ship from one hundred to two hundred dollars a day to lie at any of the wharves, developed an extreme efficiency in loading and unloading cargoes. Hittell says that probably in no port of the world could a ship be emptied as quickly as at San Francisco. For the first and last time in the history of the world the profession of stevedore became a distinguished one. In addition to the overseas trade, there were now many ships, driven by sail or steam, plying the local routes. Some of the river steamboats had actually been brought around the Horn. Their free-board had been raised by planking-in the lower deck, and thus these frail vessels had sailed their long and stormy voyage–truly a notable feat.
It did not pay to hold goods very long. Eastern shippers seemed, by a curious unanimity, to send out many consignments of the same scarcity. The result was that the high prices of today would be utterly destroyed by an oversupply of tomorrow. It was thus to the great advantage of every merchant to meet his ship promptly, and to gain knowledge as soon as possible of the cargo of the incoming vessels. For this purpose signal stations were established, rowboat patrols were organized, and many other ingenious schemes was applied to the secret service of the mercantile business. Both in order to save storage and to avoid the possibility of loss from new shipments coming in, the goods were auctioned off as soon as they were landed.
These auctions were most elaborate institutions involving brass bands, comfortable chairs, eloquent “spielers,” and all the rest. They were a feature of the street life, which in turn had an interest all its own. The planking threw back a hollow reverberating sound from the various vehicles. There seemed to be no rules of the road. Omnibuses careered along, every window rattling loudly; drays creaked and strained; non-descript delivery wagons tried to outrattle the omnibuses; horsemen picked their way amid the melee. The din was described as something extraordinary–hoofs drumming, wheels rumbling, oaths and shouts, and from the sidewalk the blare and bray of brass bands before the various auction shops. Newsboys and bootblacks darted in all directions. Cigar boys, a peculiar product of the time, added to the hubbub. Bootblacking stands of the most elaborate description were kept by French and Italians. The town was full of characters who delighted in their own eccentricities, and who were always on public view. One individual possessed a remarkably intelligent pony who every morning, without guidance from his master, patronized one of the shoe-blacking stands to get his front hoofs polished. He presented each one in turn to the foot-rest, and stood like a statue until the job was done.
Some of the numberless saloons already showed signs of real magnificence. Mahogany bars with brass rails, huge mirrors in gilt frames, pyramids of delicate crystal, rich hangings, oil paintings of doubtful merit but indisputable interest, heavy chandeliers of glass prisms, the most elaborate of free lunches, skillful barkeepers who mixed drinks at arm’s length, were common to all the better places. These things would not be so remarkable in large cities at the present time, but in the early Fifties, only three years after the tent stage, and thousands of miles from the nearest civilization, the enterprise that was displayed seemed remarkable. The question of expense did not stop these early worthies. Of one saloonkeeper it is related that, desiring a punch bowl and finding that the only vessel of the sort was a soup-tureen belonging to a large and expensive dinner set, he bought the whole set for the sake of the soup-tureen. Some of the more pretentious places boasted of special attractions: thus one supported its ceiling on crystal pillars; another had dashing young women to serve the drinks, though the mixing was done by men as usual; a third possessed a large musical-box capable of playing several very noisy tunes; a fourth had imported a marvelous piece of mechanism run by clockwork which exhibited the sea in motion, a ship tossing on the waves, on shore a windmill in action, a train of cars passing over a bridge, a deer chased by hounds, and the like.
But these bar-rooms were a totally different institution from the gambling resorts. Although gambling was not now considered the entirely worthy occupation of a few years previous, and although some of the better citizens, while frequenting the gambling halls, still preferred to do their own playing in semi-private, the picturesqueness and glory of these places had not yet been dimmed by any general popular disapproval. The gambling halls were not only places to risk one’s fortune, but they were also a sort of evening club. They usually supported a raised stage with footlights, a negro minstrel troop, or a singer or so. On one side elaborate bars of rosewood or mahogany ran the entire length, backed by big mirrors of French plate. The whole of the very large main floor was heavily carpeted. Down the center generally ran two rows of gambling tables offering various games such as faro, keeno, roulette, poker, and the dice games. Beyond these tables, on the opposite side of the room from the bar, were the lounging quarters, with small tables, large easy-chairs, settees, and fireplaces. Decoration was of the most ornate. The ceilings and walls were generally white with a great deal of gilt. All classes of people frequented these places and were welcomed there. Some were dressed in the height of fashion, and some wore the roughest sort of miners’ clothes–floppy old slouch hats, flannel shirts, boots to which the dried mud was clinging or from which it fell to the rich carpet. All were considered on an equal plane. The professional gamblers came to represent a type of their own,–weary, indifferent, pale, cool men, who had not only to keep track of the game and the bets, but also to assure control over the crowd about them. Often in these places immense sums were lost or won; often in these places occurred crimes of shooting and stabbing; but also into these places came many men who rarely drank or gambled at all. They assembled to enjoy each other’s company, the brightness, the music, and the sociable warmth.
On Sunday the populace generally did one of two things: either it sallied out in small groups into the surrounding country on picnics or celebrations at some of the numerous road-houses; or it swarmed out the plank toll-road to the Mission. To the newcomer the latter must have been much the more interesting. There he saw a congress of all the nations of the earth: French, Germans, Italians, Russians, Dutchmen, British, Turks, Arabs, Negroes, Chinese, Kanakas, Indians, the gorgeous members of the Spanish races, and all sorts of queer people to whom no habitat could be assigned. Most extraordinary perhaps were the men from the gold mines of the Sierras. The miners had by now distinctly segregated themselves from the rest of the population. They led a hardier, more laborious life and were proud of the fact. They attempted generally to differentiate themselves in appearance from all the rest of the human race, and it must be confessed that they succeeded. The miners were mostly young and wore their hair long, their beards rough; they walked with a wide swagger; their clothes were exaggeratedly coarse, but they ornamented themselves with bright silk handkerchiefs, feathers, flowers, with squirrel or buck tails in their hats, with long heavy chains of nuggets, with glittering and prominently displayed pistols, revolvers, stilettos, knives, and dirks. Some even plaited their beards in three tails, or tied their long hair under their chins; but no matter how bizarre they made themselves, nobody on the streets of _blase_ San Francisco paid the slightest attention to them. The Mission, which they, together with the crowd, frequented, was a primitive Coney Island. Bear pits, cockfights, theatrical attractions, side-shows, innumerable hotels and small restaurants, saloons, races, hammer-striking, throwing balls at negroes’ heads, and a hundred other attractions kept the crowds busy and generally good-natured. If a fight arose, “it was,” as the Irishman says, “considered a private fight,” and nobody else could get in it. Such things were considered matters for the individuals themselves to settle.
The great feature of the time was its extravagance. It did not matter whether a man was a public servant, a private and respected citizen, or from one of the semi-public professions that cater to men’s greed and dissipation, he acted as though the ground beneath his feet were solid gold. The most extravagant public works were undertaken without thought and without plan. The respectable women vied in the magnificence and ostentation of their costumes with the women of the lower world. Theatrical attractions at high prices were patronized abundantly. Balls of great magnificence were given almost every night. Private carriages of really excellent appointment were numerous along the disreputable planked roads or the sandy streets strewn with cans and garbage.
The feverish life of the times reflected itself domestically. No live red-blooded man could be expected to spend his evenings reading a book quietly at home while all the magnificent, splendid, seething life of down-town was roaring in his ears. All his friends would be out; all the news of the day passed around; all the excitements of the evening offered themselves. It was too much to expect of human nature. The consequence was that a great many young wives were left alone, with the ultimate result of numerous separations and divorces. The moral nucleus of really respectable society–and there was a noticeable one even at that time–was overshadowed and swamped for the moment. Such a social life as this sounds decidedly immoral but it was really unmoral, with the bright, eager, attractive unmorality of the vigorous child. In fact, in that society, as some one has expressed it, everything was condoned except meanness.
It was the era of the grandiose. Even conversation reflected this characteristic. The myriad bootblacks had grand outfits and stands. The captain of a ship offered ten dollars to a negro to act as his cook. The negro replied, “If you will walk up to my restaurant, I’ll set you to work at twenty-five dollars immediately.” From men in such humble stations up to the very highest and most respected citizens the spirit of gambling, of taking chances, was also in the air.
As has been pointed out, a large proportion of the city’s wealth was raised not from taxation but from the sale of its property. Under the heedless extravagance of the first government the municipal debt rose to over one million dollars. Since interest charged on this was thirty-six per cent annually, it can be seen that the financial situation was rather hopeless. As the city was even then often very short of funds, it paid for its work and its improvements in certificates of indebtedness, usually called “scrip.” Naturally this scrip was held below par–a condition that caused all contractors and supply merchants to charge two or three hundred per cent over the normal prices for their work and commodities in order to keep even. And this practice, completing the vicious circle, increased the debt. An attempt was made to fund the city debt by handing in the scrip in exchange for a ten per cent obligation. This method gave promise of success; but a number of holders of scrip refused to surrender it, and brought suit to enforce payment. One of these, a physician named Peter Smith, was owed a considerable sum for the care of indigent sick. He obtained a judgment against the city, levied on some of its property, and proceeded to sell. The city commissioners warned the public that titles under the Smith claim were not legal, and proceeded to sell the property on their own account. The speculators bought claims under Peter Smith amounting to over two millions of dollars at merely nominal rates. For example, one parcel of city lots sold at less than ten cents per lot. The prices were so absurd that these sales were treated as a joke. The joke came in on the other side, however, when the officials proceeded to ratify these sales. The public then woke up to the fact that it had been fleeced. Enormous prices were paid for unsuitable property, ostensibly for the uses of the city. After the money had passed, these properties were often declared unsuitable and resold at reduced prices to people already determined upon by the ring.
Nevertheless commercially things went well for a time. The needs of hundreds of thousands of newcomers, in a country where the manufactures were practically nothing, were enormous. It is related that at first laundry was sent as far as the Hawaiian Islands. Every single commodity of civilized life, such as we understand it, had to be imported. As there was then no remote semblance of combination, either in restraint of or in encouragement of trade, it followed that the market must fluctuate wildly. The local agents of eastern firms were often embarrassed and overwhelmed by the ill-timed consignments of goods. One Boston firm was alleged to have sent out a whole shipload of women’s bonnets–to a community where a woman was one of the rarest sights to be found! Not many shipments were as silly as this, but the fact remains that a rumor of a shortage in any commodity would often be followed by rush orders on clipper ships laden to the guards with that same article. As a consequence the bottom fell out of the market completely, and the unfortunate consignee found himself forced to auction off the goods much below cost.
During the year 1854, the tide of prosperity began to ebb. A dry season caused a cessation of mining in many parts of the mountains. Of course it can be well understood that the immense prosperity of the city, the prosperity that allowed it to recover from severe financial disease, had its spring in the placer mines. A constant stream of fresh gold was needed to shore up the tottering commercial structure. With the miners out of the diggings, matters changed. The red-shirted digger of gold had little idea of the value of money. Many of them knew only the difference between having money and having none. They had to have credit, which they promptly wasted. Extending credit to the miners made it necessary that credit should also be extended to the sellers, and so on back. Meanwhile the eastern shippers continued to pour goods into the flooded market. An auction brought such cheap prices that they proved a temptation even to an overstocked public. The gold to pay for purchases went east, draining the country of bullion. One or two of the supposedly respectable and polished citizens such as Talbot Green and “honest Harry Meiggs” fell by the wayside. The confidence of the new community began to be shaken. In 1854 came the crisis. Three hundred out of about a thousand business houses shut down. Seventy-seven filed petitions in insolvency with liabilities for many millions of dollars. In 1855 one hundred and ninety-seven additional firms and several banking houses went under.
There were two immediate results of this state of affairs. In the first place, every citizen became more intensely interested and occupied with his own personal business than ever before; he had less time to devote to the real causes of trouble, that is the public instability; and he grew rather more selfish and suspicious of his neighbor than ever before. The second result was to attract the dregs of society. The pickings incident to demoralized conditions looked rich to these men. Professional politicians, shyster lawyers, political gangsters, flocked to the spoil. In 1851 the lawlessness of mere physical violence had come to a head. By 1855 and 1856 there was added to a recrudescence of this disorder a lawlessness of graft, of corruption, both political and financial, and the overbearing arrogance of a self-made aristocracy. These conditions combined to bring about a second crisis in the precarious life of this new society.
CHAPTER XIII
THE STORM GATHERS
The foundation of trouble in California at this time was formal legalism. Legality was made a fetish. The law was a game played by lawyers and not an attempt to get justice done. The whole of public prosecution was in the hands of one man, generally poorly paid, with equally underpaid assistants, while the defense was conducted by the ablest and most enthusiastic men procurable. It followed that convictions were very few. To lose a criminal case was considered even mildly disgraceful. It was a point of professional pride for the lawyer to get his client free, without reference to the circumstances of the time or the guilt of the accused. To fail was a mark of extreme stupidity, for the game was considered an easy and fascinating one. The whole battery of technical delays was at the command of the defendant. If a man had neither the time nor the energy for the finesse that made the interest of the game, he could always procure interminable delays during which witnesses could be scattered or else wearied to the point of non-appearance. Changes of venue to courts either prejudiced or known to be favorable to the technical interpretation of the law were very easily procured. Even of shadier expedients, such as packing juries, there was no end.
With these shadier expedients, however, your high-minded lawyer, moving in the best society, well dressed, proud, looked up to, and today possessing descendants who gaze back upon their pioneer ancestors with pride, had little directly to do. He called in as counsel other lawyers, not so high-minded, so honorable, so highly placed. These little lawyers, shoulder-strikers, bribe-givers and takers, were held in good-humored contempt by the legal lights who employed them. The actual dishonesty was diluted through so many agents that it seemed an almost pure stream of lofty integrity. Ordinary jury-packing was an easy art. Of course the sheriff’s office must connive at naming the talesmen; therefore it was necessary to elect the sheriff; consequently all the lawyers were in politics. Of course neither the lawyer nor the sheriff himself ever knew of any individual transaction! A sum of money was handed by the leading counsel to his next in command and charged off as “expense.” This fund emerged considerably diminished in the sheriff’s office as “perquisites.”
Such were the conditions in the realm of criminal law, the realm where the processes became so standardized that between 1849 and 1856 over one thousand murders had been committed and only one legal conviction had been secured! Dueling was a recognized institution, and a skillful shot could always “get” his enemy in this formal manner; but if time or skill lacked, it was still perfectly safe to shoot him down in a street brawl–provided one had money enough to employ talent for defense.
But, once in politics, the law could not stop at the sheriff’s office. It rubbed shoulders with big contracts and big financial operations of all sorts. The city was being built within a few years out of nothing by a busy, careless, and shifting population. Money was still easy, people could and did pay high taxes without a thought, for they would rather pay well to be let alone than be bothered with public affairs. Like hyenas to a kill, the public contractors gathered. Immense public works were undertaken at enormous prices. To get their deals through legally it was, of course, necessary that officials, councilmen, engineers, and others should be sympathetic. So, naturally, the big operators as well as the big lawyers had to go into politics. Legal efficiency coupled with the inefficiency of the bench, legal corruption, and the arrogance of personal favor, dissolved naturally into political corruption.
The elections of those days would have been a joke had they been not so tragically significant. They came to be a sheer farce. The polls were guarded by bullies who did not hesitate at command to manhandle any decent citizen indicated by the local leaders. Such men were openly hired for the purposes of intimidation. Votes could be bought in the open market. “Floaters” were shamelessly imported into districts that might prove doubtful; and, if things looked close, the election inspectors and the judges could be relied on to make things come out all right in the final count. One of the exhibits later shown in the Vigilante days of 1856 was an ingenious ballot box by which the goats could be segregated from the sheep as the ballots were cast. You may be sure that the sheep were the only ones counted. Election day was one of continuous whiskey drinking and brawling so that decent citizens were forced to remain within doors. The returns from the different wards were announced as fast as the votes were counted. It was therefore the custom to hold open certain wards until the votes of all the others were known. Then whatever tickets were lacking to secure the proper election were counted from the packed ballot box in the sure ward. In this manner five hundred votes were once returned from Crystal Springs precinct where there dwelt not over thirty voters. If some busybody made enough of a row to get the merry tyrants into court, there were always plenty of lawyers who could play the ultra-technical so well that the accused were not only released but were returned as legally elected as well.
With the proper officials in charge of the executive end of the government and with a trained crew of lawyers making their own rules as they went along, almost any crime of violence, corruption, theft, or the higher grades of finance could be committed with absolute impunity. The state of the public mind became for a while apathetic. After numberless attempts to obtain justice, the public fell back with a shrug of the shoulders. The men of better feeling found themselves helpless. As each man’s safety and ability to resent insult depended on his trigger finger, the newspapers of that time made interesting but scurrilous and scandalous reading. An appetite for personalities developed, and these derogatory remarks ordinarily led to personal encounters. The streets became battle-grounds of bowie-knives and revolvers, as rivals hunted each other out. This picture may seem lurid and exaggerated, but the cold statistics of the time supply all the details.
The politicians of the day were essentially fighting men. The large majority were low-grade Southerners who had left their section, urged by unmistakable hints from their fellow-citizens. The political life of early California was colored very largely by the pseudo-chivalry which these people used as a cloak. They used the Southern code for their purposes very thoroughly, and bullied their way through society in a swashbuckling manner that could not but arouse admiration. There were many excellent Southerners in California in those days, but from the very start their influence was overshadowed by the more unworthy. Unfortunately, later many of the better class of Southerners, yielding to prejudice and sectional feeling, joined the so-called “Law and Order” party.
It must be remembered, however, that whereas the active merchants and industrious citizens were too busy to attend to local politics, the professional low-class Southern politician had come out to California for no other purpose. To be successful, he had to be a fighting man. His revolver and his bowie-knife were part of his essential equipment. He used the word “honor” as a weapon of defense, and battered down opposition in the most high-mannered fashion by the simple expedient of claiming that he had been insulted. The fire-eater was numerous in those days. He dressed well, had good manners and appearance, possessed abundant leisure, and looked down scornfully on those citizens who were busy building the city, “low Yankee shopkeepers” being his favorite epithet.
Examined at close range, in contemporary documents, this individual has about him little of romance and nothing whatever admirable. It would be a great pity, were mistaken sentimentality allowed to clothe him in the same bright-hued garments as the cavaliers of England in the time of the Stuarts. It would be an equal pity, were the casual reader to condemn all who eventually aligned themselves against the Vigilance movement as of the same stripe as the criminals who menaced society. There were many worthy people whose education thoroughly inclined them towards formal law, and who, therefore, when the actual break came, found themselves supporting law instead of justice.
As long as the country continued to enjoy the full flood of prosperity, these things did not greatly matter. The time was individualistic, and every man was supposed to take care of himself. But in the year 1855 financial stringency overtook the new community. For lack of water many of the miners had stopped work and had to ask for credit in buying their daily necessities. The country stores had to have credit from the city because the miners could not pay, and the wholesalers of the city again had to ask extension from the East until their bills were met by the retailers. The gold of the country went East to pay its bills. Further to complicate the matter, all banking was at this time done by private firms. These could take deposits and make loans and could issue exchange, but they could not issue bank-notes. Therefore the currency was absolutely inelastic.
Even these conditions failed to shake the public optimism, until out of a clear sky came announcement that Adams and Company had failed. Adams and Company occupied in men’s minds much the same position as the Bank of England. If Adams and Company were vulnerable, then nobody was secure. The assets of the bankrupt firm were turned over to one Alfred Cohen as receiver, with whom Jones, a member of the firm of Palmer, Cook, and Company, and a third individual were associated as assignees. On petition of other creditors the judge of the district court removed Cohen and appointed one Naglee in his place. This new man, Naglee, on asking for the assets was told that they had been deposited with Palmer, Cook, and Company. The latter firm refused to give them up, denying Naglee’s jurisdiction in the matter. Naglee then commenced suit against the assignees and obtained a judgment against them for $269,000. On their refusal to pay over this sum, Jones and Cohen were taken into custody. But Palmer, Cook, and Company influenced the courts, as did about every large mercantile or political firm. They soon secured the release of the prisoners, and in the general scramble for the assets of Adams and Company they secured the lion’s share.
It was the same old story. An immense amount of money had disappeared. Nobody had been punished, and it was all strictly legal. Failures resulted right and left. Even Wells, Fargo, and Company closed their doors but reopened them within a few days. There was much excitement which would probably have died as other excitement had died before, had not the times produced a voice of compelling power. This voice spoke through an individual known as James King of William.
King was a man of keen mind and dauntless courage, who had tried his luck briefly at the mines, realized that the physical work was too much for him, and had therefore returned to mercantile and banking pursuits in San Francisco. His peculiar name was said to be due to the fact that at the age of sixteen, finding another James King in his immediate circle, he had added his father’s name as a distinguishing mark. He was rarely mentioned except with the full designation–James King of William. On his return he opened a private banking-house, brought out his family, and entered the life of the town. For a time his banking career prospered and he acquired a moderate fortune, but in 1854 unwise investments forced him to close his office. In a high-minded fashion, very unusual in those times and even now somewhat rare, he surrendered to his creditors everything on earth he possessed. He then accepted a salaried position with Adams and Company, which he held until that house also failed. Since to the outside world his connection with the firm looked dubious, he exonerated himself through a series of pamphlets and short newspaper articles. The vigor and force of their style arrested attention, so that when his dauntless crusading spirit, revolting against the carnival of crime both subtle and obvious, desired to edit a newspaper, he had no difficulty in raising the small sum of money necessary. He had always expressed his opinions clearly and fearlessly, and the public watched with the greatest interest the appearance of the new sheet.
The first number of the _Daily Evening Bulletin_ appeared on October 8, 1855. Like all papers of that day and like many of the English papers now, its first page was completely covered with small advertisements. A thin driblet of local items occupied a column on the third and fourth pages, and a single column of editorials ran down the second. As a newspaper it seemed beneath contempt, but the editorials made men sit up and take notice. King started with an attack on Palmer, Cook, and Company’s methods. He said nothing whatever about the robberies. He dealt exclusively with the excessive rentals for postal boxes charged the public by Palmer, Cook, and Company. That seemed a comparatively small and harmless matter, but King made it interesting by mentioning exact names, recording specific instances, avoiding any generalities, and stating plainly that this was merely a beginning in the exposure of methods. Jones of Palmer, Cook, and Company–that same Jones who had been arrested with Cohen–immediately visited King in his office with the object of either intimidating or bribing him as the circumstances seemed to advise. He bragged of horsewhips and duels, but returned rather noncommittal. The next evening the _Bulletin_ reported Jones’s visit simply as an item of news, faithfully, sarcastically, and in a pompous vein. There followed no comment whatever. The next number, now eagerly purchased by every one, was more interesting because of its hints of future disclosures rather than because of its actual information. One of the alleged scoundrels was mentioned by name, and then the subject was dropped. The attention of the City Marshal was curtly called to disorderly houses and the statutes concerning them, and it was added “for his information” that at a certain address, which was given, a structure was then actually being built for improper purposes. Then, without transition, followed a list of official bonds and sureties for which Palmer, Cook, and Company were giving vouchers, amounting to over two millions. There were no comments on this list, but the inference was obvious that the firm had the whip-hand over many public officials.
The position of the new paper was soon formally established. It possessed a large subscription list; it was eagerly bought on its appearance in the street; and its advertising was increasing. King again turned his attention to Palmer, Cook, and Company. Each day he explored succinctly, clearly, without rhetoric, some single branch of their business. By the time he had finished with them, he had not only exposed all their iniquities, but he had, which was more important, educated the public to the financial methods of the time. It followed naturally in this type of exposure that King should criticize some of the legal subterfuges, which in turn brought him to analysis of the firm’s legal advisers, who had previously enjoyed a good reputation. From such subjects he drifted to dueling, venal newspapers, and soon down to the ordinary criminals such as Billy Mulligan, Wooley Kearny, Casey, Cora, Yankee Sullivan, Ned McGowan, Charles Duane, and many others. Never did he hesitate to specify names and instances. He never dealt in innuendoes. This was bringing him very close to personal danger, for worthies of the class last mentioned were the sort who carried their pistols and bowie-knives prominently displayed and handy for use. As yet no actual violence had been attempted against him. Other methods of reprisal that came to his notice King published without comment as items of news.
Mere threats had little effect in intimidating the editor. More serious means were tried. A dozen men publicly announced that they intended to kill him–and the records of the dozen were pretty good testimonials to their sincerity. In the gambling resorts and on the streets bets were made and pools formed on the probable duration of King’s life. As was his custom, he commented even upon this. Said the _Bulletin’s_ editorial columns: “Bets are now being offered, we have been told, that the editor of the _Bulletin_ will not be in existence twenty days longer. And the case of Dr. Hogan of the Vicksburg paper who was murdered by gamblers of that place is cited as a warning. Pah!… War then is the cry, is it? War between the prostitutes and gamblers on one side and the virtuous and respectable on the other! Be it so, then! Gamblers of San Francisco, you have made your election and we are ready on our side for the issue!” A man named Selover sent a challenge to King. King took this occasion to announce that he would consider no challenges and would fight no duels. Selover then announced his intention of killing King on sight. Says the _Bulletin_: “Mr. Selover, it is said, carries a knife. We carry a pistol. We hope neither will be required, but if this rencontre cannot be avoided, why will Mr. Selover persist in imperiling the lives of others? We pass every afternoon about half-past four to five o’clock along Market Street from Fourth to Fifth Streets. The road is wide and not so much frequented as those streets farther in town. If we are to be shot or cut to pieces, for heaven’s sake let it be done there. Others will not be injured, and in case we fall our house is but a few hundred yards beyond and the cemetery not much farther.” Boldness such as this did not act exactly as a soporific.
About this time was perpetrated a crime of violence no worse than many hundreds which had preceded it, but occurring at a psychological time. A gambler named Charles Cora shot and killed William Richardson, a United States marshal. The shooting was cold-blooded and without danger to the murderer, for at the time Richardson was unarmed. Cora was at once hustled to jail, not so much for confinement as for safety against a possible momentary public anger. Men had been shot on the street before–many men, some of them as well known and as well liked as Richardson–but not since public sentiment had been aroused and educated as the _Bulletin_ had aroused and educated it. Crowds commenced at once to gather. Some talk of lynching went about. Men made violent street-corner speeches. The mobs finally surged to the jail, but were firmly met by a strong armed guard and fell back. There was much destructive and angry talk.
But to swing a mob into action there must be determined men at its head, and this mob had no leader. Sam Brannan started to say something, but was promptly arrested for inciting riot. Though the situation was ticklish, the police seem to have handled it well, making only a passive opposition and leaving the crowd to fritter its energies in purposeless cursing, surging to and fro, and harmless threatenings. Nevertheless this crowd persisted longer than most of them.
The next day the _Bulletin_ vigorously counseled dependence upon the law, expressed confidence in the judges who were to try the case–Hager and Norton–and voiced a personal belief that the day had passed when it would ever be necessary to resort to arbitrary measures. It may hence be seen how far from a contemplation of extra legal measures was King in his public attitude. Nevertheless he added a paragraph of warning: “Hang Billy Mulligan–that’s the word. If Mr. Sheriff Scannell does not remove Billy Mulligan from his present post as keeper of the County Jail and Mulligan lets Cora escape, hang Billy Mulligan, and if necessary to get rid of the sheriff, hang him–hang the sheriff!”
Public excitement died. Conviction seemed absolutely certain. Richardson had been a public official and a popular one. Cora’s action had been cold-blooded and apparently without provocation. Nevertheless he had remained undisturbed. He had retained one of the most brilliant lawyers of the time, James McDougall. McDougall added to his staff the most able of the younger lawyers of the city. Immense sums of money were available. The source is not exactly known, but a certain Belle Cora, a prostitute afterwards married by Cora, was advancing large amounts. A man named James Casey, bound by some mysterious obligation, was active in taking up general collections. Cora lived in great luxury at the jail. He had long been a close personal friend of the sheriff and his deputy, Mulligan. When the case came to trial, Cora escaped conviction through the disagreement of the jury.
This fiasco, following King’s editorials, had a profound effect on the public mind. King took the outrage against justice as a fresh starting-point for new attacks. He assailed bitterly and fearlessly the countless abuses of the time, until at last he was recognized as a dangerous opponent by the heretofore cynically amused higher criminals. Many rumors of plots against King’s life are to be found in the detailed history of the day. Whether his final assassination was the result of one of these plots, or simply the outcome of a burst of passion, matters little. Ultimately it had its source in the ungoverned spirit of the times.
Four months after the farce of the Cora trial, on May 14, King published an attack on the appointment of a certain man to a position in the federal custom house. The candidate had happened to be involved with James P. Casey in a disgraceful election. Casey was at that time one of the supervisors. Incidental to his attack on the candidate, King wrote as follows: “It does not matter how bad a man Casey had been, or how much benefit it might be to the public to have him out of the way, we cannot accord to any one citizen the right to kill him or even beat him, without justifiable provocation. The fact that Casey has been an inmate of Sing Sing prison in New York is no offense against the laws of this State; nor is the fact of his having stuffed himself through the ballot box, as elected to the Board of Supervisors from a district where it is said he was not even a candidate, any justification for Mr. Bagley to shoot Casey, however richly the latter may deserve to have his neck stretched for such fraud on the people.”
Casey read this editorial in full knowledge that thousands of his fellow-citizens would also read it. He was at that time, in addition to his numerous political cares, editor of a small newspaper called _The Sunday Times_. This had been floated for the express purpose of supporting the extremists of the legalists’ party, which, as we have explained, now included the gambling and lawless element. How valuable he was considered is shown by the fact that at a previous election Casey had been returned as elected supervisor, although he had not been a candidate, his name had not been on the ticket, and subsequent private investigations could unearth no man who would acknowledge having voted for him. Indeed, he was not even a resident of that district. However, a slick politician named Yankee Sullivan, who ran the election, said officially that the most votes had been counted for him; and so his election was announced. Casey was a handy tool in many ways, rarely appearing in person but adept in selecting suitable agents. He was personally popular. In appearance he is described as a short, slight man with a keen face, a good forehead, a thin but florid countenance, dark curly hair, and blue eyes; a type of unscrupulous Irish adventurer, with perhaps the dash of romantic idealism sometimes found in the worst scoundrels. Like most of his confreres, he was particularly touchy on the subject of his “honor.”
On reading the _Bulletin_ editorials, he proceeded at once to King’s office, announcing his intention of shooting the editor on sight. Probably he would have done so except for the accidental circumstance that King happened to be busy at a table with his back turned squarely to the door. Even Casey could not shoot a man in the back, without a word of warning. He was stuttering and excited. The interview was overheard by two men in an adjoining office.
“What do you mean by that article?” cried Casey.
“What article?” asked King.
“That which says I was formerly an inmate of Sing Sing.”
“Is it not true?” asked King quietly.
“That is not the question. I don’t wish my past acts raked up. On that point I am sensitive.”
A slight pause ensued.
“Are you done?” asked King quietly. Then leaping from the chair he burst suddenly into excitement.
“There’s the door, go! And never show your face here again.”
Casey had lost his advantage. At the door he gathered himself together again.
“I’ll say in my paper what I please,” he asserted with a show of bravado.
King was again in control of himself.
“You have a perfect right to do so,” he rejoined. “I shall never notice your paper.”
Casey struck himself on the breast.
“And if necessary I shall defend myself,” he cried.
King bounded again from his seat, livid with anger.
“Go,” he commanded sharply, and Casey went.
Outside in the street Casey found a crowd waiting. The news of his visit to the _Bulletin_ office had spread. His personal friends crowded around asking eager questions. Casey answered with vague generalities: he wasn’t a man to be trifled with, and some people had to find out! Blackmailing was not a healthy occupation when it aimed at a gentleman! He left the general impression that King had apologized. Bragging in this manner, Casey led the way to the Bank Exchange, the fashionable bar not far distant. Here he remained drinking and boasting for some time.
In the group that surrounded him was a certain Judge Edward McGowan, a jolly, hard-drinking, noisy individual. He had been formerly a fugitive from justice. However, through the attractions of a gay life, a combination of bullying and intrigue, he had made himself a place in the new city and had at last risen to the bench. He was apparently easy to fathom, but the stream really ran deep. Some historians claim that he had furnished King the document which proved Casey an ex-convict. It is certain that now he had great influence with Casey, and that he drew him aside from the bar and talked with him some time in a low voice. Some people insist that he furnished the navy revolver with which a few moments later Casey shot King. This may be so, but every man went armed in those days, especially men of Casey’s stamp.
It is certain, however, that after his interview with McGowan, Casey took his place across the street from the Bank Exchange. There, wrapped in his cloak, he awaited King’s usual promenade home.
That for some time his intention was well known is proved by the group that little by little gathered on the opposite side of the street. It is a matter of record that a small boy passing by was commandeered and sent with a message for Peter Wrightman, a deputy sheriff. Pete, out of breath, soon joined the group. There he idled, also watching,–an official charged with the maintenance of the law of the land!
At just five o’clock King turned the corner, his head bent. He started to cross the street diagonally and had almost reached the opposite sidewalk when he was confronted by Casey who stepped forward from his place of concealment behind a wagon.
“Come on,” he said, throwing back his cloak, and immediately fired. King, who could not have known what Casey was saying, was shot through the left breast, staggered, and fell. Casey then took several steps toward his victim, looked at him closely as though to be sure he had done a good job, let down the hammer of his pistol, picked up his cloak, and started for the police-station. All he wanted now was a trial under the law.
The distance to the station-house was less than a block. Instantly at the sound of the shot his friends rose about him and guarded him to the shelter of the lock-up. But at last the public was aroused. Casey had unwittingly cut down a symbol of the better element, as well as a fearless and noble man. Someone rang the old Monumental Engine House bell–the bell that had been used to call together the Vigilantes of 1851. The news spread about the city like wildfire. An immense mob appeared to spring from nowhere.
The police officials were no fools; they recognized the quality of the approaching hurricane. The city jail was too weak a structure. It was desirable to move the prisoner at once to the county jail for safe-keeping. A carriage was brought to the entrance of an alley next the city jail; the prisoner, closely surrounded by armed men, was rushed to it; and the vehicle charged out through the crowd. The mob, as yet unorganized, recoiled instinctively before the plunging horses and the presented pistols. Before anybody could gather his wits, the equipage had disappeared.
The mob surged after the disappearing vehicle, and so ended up finally in the wide open space before the county jail. The latter was a solidly built one-story building situated on top of a low cliff. North, the marshal, had drawn up his armed men. The mob, very excited, vociferated, surging back and forth, though they did not rush, because as yet they had no leaders. Attempts were made to harangue the gathering, but everywhere the speeches were cut short. At a crucial moment the militia appeared. The crowd thought at first that the volunteer troops were coming to uphold their own side, but were soon undeceived. The troops deployed in front of the jail and stood at guard. Just then the mayor attempted to address the crowd.
“You are here creating an excitement,” he said, “which may lead to occurrences this night which will require years to wipe out. You are now laboring under great excitement and I advise you to quietly disperse. I assure you the prisoner is safe. Let the law have its course and justice will be done.”
He was listened to with respect, up to this point, but here arose such a chorus of jeers that he retired hastily.
“How about Richardson?” they demanded of him. “Where is the law in Cora’s case? To hell with such justice!”
More and more soldiers came into the square, which was soon filled with bayonets. The favorable moment had passed and this particular crisis was, like all the other similar crises, quickly over. But the city was aroused. Mass meetings were held in the Plaza and in other convenient localities. Many meetings took place in rooms in different parts of the city. Men armed by the thousands. Vehement orators held forth from every balcony. Some of these people were, as a chronicler of the times quaintly expressed it, “considerably tight.” There was great diversity of opinion. All night the city seethed with ill-directed activity. But men felt helpless and hopeless for want of efficient organization.
The so-called Southern chivalry called this affair a “fight.” Indeed the _Herald_ in its issue of the next morning, mistaking utterly the times, held boldly along the way of its sympathies. It also spoke of the assassination as an “affray,” and stated emphatically its opinion that, “now that justice is regularly administered,” there was no excuse for even the threat of public violence. This utter blindness to the meaning of the new movement and the far-reaching effect of King’s previous campaign proved fatal to the paper. It declined immediately. In the meantime, attended by his wife and a whole score of volunteer physicians, King, lying in a room in the Montgomery block, was making a fight for his life.
Then people began to notice a small advertisement on the first page of the morning papers, headed _The Vigilance Committee_.
“The members of the Vigilance Committee in good standing will please meet at number 105-1/2 Sacramento Street, this day, Thursday, fifteenth instant, at nine o’clock A.M. By order of the COMMITTEE OF THIRTEEN.”
People stood still in the streets, when this notice met the eye. If this was actually the old Committee of 1851, it meant business. There was but one way to find out and that was to go and see. Number 105-1/2 Sacramento Street was a three-story barn-like structure that had been built by a short-lived political party called the “Know-Nothings.” The crowd poured into the hall to its full capacity, jammed the entrance ways, and gathered for blocks in the street. There all waited patiently to see what would happen.
Meantime, in the small room back of the stage, about a score of men gathered. Chief among all stood William T. Coleman. He had taken a prominent part in the old Committee of ’51. With him were Clancey Dempster, small and mild of manner, blue-eyed, the last man in the room one would have picked for great stamina and courage, yet playing one of the leading roles in this crisis; the merchant Truett, towering above all the rest; Farwell, direct, uncompromising, inspired with tremendous single-minded earnestness; James Dows, of the rough and ready, humorous, blasphemous, horse-sense type; Hossefross, of the Committee of ’51; Dr. Beverly Cole, high-spirited, distinguished-looking, and courtly; Isaac Bluxome, whose signature of “33 Secretary” was to become terrible, and who also had served well in 1851. These and many more of their type were considering the question dispassionately and earnestly.
“It is a serious business,” said Coleman, summing up. “It is no child’s play. It may prove very serious. We may get through quickly and safely, or we may so involve ourselves as never to get through.”
“The issue is not one of choice but of expediency,” replied Dempster. “Shall we have vigilance with order or a mob with anarchy?”
In this spirit Coleman addressed the crowd waiting in the large hall.
“In view of the miscarriage of justice in the courts,” he announced briefly, “it has been thought expedient to revive the Vigilance Committee. An Executive Council should be chosen, representative of the whole body. I have been asked to take charge. I will do so, but must stipulate that I am to be free to choose the first council myself. Is that agreed?”
He received a roar of assent.
“Very well, gentlemen, I shall request you to vacate the hall. In a short time the books will be open for enrollment.”
With almost disciplined docility the crowd arose and filed out, joining the other crowd waiting patiently in the street.
After a remarkably short period the doors were again thrown open. Inside the passage stood twelve men later to be known as the Executive Committee. These held back the rush, admitting but one man at a time. The crowd immediately caught the idea and helped. There was absolutely no excitement. Every man seemed grimly in earnest. Cries of “Order, order, line up!” came all down the street. A rough queue was formed. There were no jokes or laughing; there was even no talk. Each waited his turn. At the entrance every applicant was closely scrutinized and interrogated. Several men were turned back peremptorily in the first few minutes, with the warning not to dare make another attempt. Passed by this Committee, the candidate climbed the stairs. In the second story behind a table sat Coleman, Dempster, and one other. These administered to him an oath of secrecy and then passed him into another room where sat Bluxome behind a ledger. Here his name was written and he was assigned a number by which henceforth in the activities of the Committee he was to be known. Members were instructed always to use numbers and never names in referring to other members.
Those who had been enrolled waited for some time, but finding that with evening the applicants were still coming in a long procession, they gradually dispersed. No man, however, departed far from the vicinity. Short absences and hastily snatched meals were followed by hurried returns, lest something be missed. From time to time rumors were put in circulation as to the activities of the Executive Committee, which had been in continuous session since its appointment. An Examining Committee had been appointed to scrutinize the applicants. The number of the Executive Committee had been raised to twenty-six; a Chief of Police had been chosen, and he in turn appointed messengers and policemen, who set out in search of individuals wanted as door-keepers, guards, and so forth. Only registered members were allowed on the floor of the hall. Even the newspaper reporters were gently but firmly ejected. There was no excitement or impatience.
At length, at eight o’clock, Coleman came out of one of the side-rooms and, mounting a table, called for order. He explained that a military organization had been decided upon, advised that numbers 1 to 100 inclusive should assemble in one corner of the room, the second hundred at the first window, and so on. An interesting order was his last. “Let the French assemble in the middle of the hall,” he said in their language–an order significant of the great numbers of French who had first answered the call of gold in ’49, and who now with equal enthusiasm answered the call for essential justice. Each company was advised to elect its own officers, subject to ratification by the Executive Committee. It was further stated that arrangements had been made to hire muskets to the number of several thousands from one George Law. These were only flintlocks, but efficient enough in their way, and supplied with bayonets. They were discarded government weapons, brought out some time ago by Law to arm some mysterious filibustering expedition that had fallen through. In this manner, without confusion, an organization of two thousand men was formed–sixteen military companies.
By Saturday morning, May 17, the Committee rooms were overwhelmed by crowds of citizens who desired to be enrolled. Larger quarters had already been secured in a building on the south side of Sacramento Street. Thither the Committee now removed _en masse_, without interrupting their labors. These new headquarters soon became famous in the history of this eventful year.
In the meantime the representatives of the law had not been less alert. The regular police force was largely increased. The sheriff issued thousands of summonses calling upon citizens for service as deputies. These summonses were made out in due form of law. To refuse them meant to put oneself outside the law. The ordinary citizen was somewhat puzzled by the situation. A great many responded to the appeal from force of habit. Once they accepted the oath these new deputies were confronted by the choice between perjury, and its consequences, or doing service. On the other hand, the issue of the summonses forced many otherwise neutral men into the ranks of the Vigilantes. If they refused to act when directly summoned by law, that very fact placed them on the wrong side of the law. Therefore they felt that joining a party pledged to what practically amounted to civil war was only a short step further. Against these the various military companies were mustered, reminded of their oath, called upon to fulfill their sworn duty, and sent to various