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California Vigilance Committees

Many of the vigilance activities were an outgrowth of the miners' courts that sprang up in the California camps following the discovery of gold. One camp, Dry Diggings, had its name changed to Hangtown after miners had hanged three bandits from branches of a tree near the center of the camp. The name stuck until a later change converted it to Placerville.

In California during the era of the gold rush, the Spanish system of administering a town government with a so-called alcalde - a combined mayor and judge - proved ineffective. The miners had to set up their own courts to settle disputes over claims, punish thieves and put dangerous gunmen out of the way. Since the camps had no jails, the most common penalties were banishment, whipping and hanging.

Those who saw the miners' courts in action respected them for their vigor and their fairness. Bayard Taylor, world traveler and author, spent six months in the mining areas in 1849, and he wrote that the decisions of the informal courts were carried out faithfully and that the just penalties deterred crime. The Sacramento Transcript said that, in the camps, "this is the only sure means of administering justice."

California's vigilance activities, which began in the mining camps, flowered in the mushroom city of San Francisco. This port, which had had few more than eight hundred people when gold was discovered, quickly became a sprawling and almost lawless metropolis. With the miners and adventurers came a large influx of pickpockets, thugs, highwaymen, and other desperadoes. Soon San Francisco had a vast underworld that included many released prisoners from Australia.

The Australian ruffians, called Sydney Coves or Sydney Ducks, lived in tents and shacks at Clark's Point or Sydney Town, on the fringe of the city. Many existed by robbing miners in the streets at night or stabbing men in saloons and gambling halls and then picking their pockets. They were accused of setting fires that destroyed parts of the city. More than a hundred murders occurred in a few months and many citizens feared to go out at night. Often the desperadoes who were arrested had to be released because no one dared testify against them.

In the spring of 1851, Sam Brannan, with other businessmen, formed a committee of vigilance to protect life and property in the city. This was a formal organization with a constitution and bylaws signed by about two hundred men, including some of the most prominent in the city.

The committee, whose membership was not secret, gave notice through the newspapers that it would take direct action to punish criminals. It called attention to the laxity and corruption of public officials, the insecurity of jails, and the quibbling and technicalities of lawyers. The members announced that they would meet in emergency session whenever they heard two strokes on one of the fire-station bells, repeated at intervals of one minute.

With ink barely dry on their signatures, they were summoned to a night session to try John Jenkins, an Australian with a criminal record, who had been caught stealing a safe. Jenkins was convicted on indisputable evidence and punished before a street crowd by hanging, which was the statutory penalty for grand larceny at that time. San Francisco newspapers approved.

The committee's next action was to deport some thugs to Australia. It also refused landing permits to others on incoming ships. In July the committee tried James Stuart, who had been banished from England to Australia and who in California had a record as a horse thief, a burglar, and the murderer of a merchant in a mining camp. Stuart was hanged on the Market Street wharf as men in the crowd bared their heads and ships in the harbor raised their flags and fired their cannons. The governor issued a perfunctory objection to the hangings, which was ignored. A judge asked a grand jury to indict the committee members, but the jury, which included members of and sympathizers with the committee, refused.

Next the committee apprehended two other ruffians, Sam Whittaker, an ex-convict from Australia, and Robert McKenzie, an Englishman who had come from New Orleans. Both were sentenced by the committee to be hanged. Before their execution, however, the sheriff took these prisoners from the vigilantes and placed them in the city jail.

On the following Sunday, when all prisoners came out of their cells for divine services, the vigilantes invaded the jail, recaptured the two men, forced them into a carriage and whipped down the street to the committee rooms. A crowd followed the galloping hoofs. Sam Brannan appeared at an open window and announced that both men had confessed to serious crimes. The two were hanged from the beams projecting above the committee rooms on Battery Street.

This double hanging caused some of the Sydney Coves and other desperadoes to leave San Francisco. It also spurred city and county officials into more vigorous action against crime. As a result, the committee gradually became less active and was discontinued early in 1853

More criminals kept coming in, however. Not only did crime become prevalent again but the city government seemed to depend on criminal votes to stay in power. In the spring of 1855 the San Francisco Herald demanded a return of the "good old days of the vigilance committee."

In November, Italian-born Charles Cora, who was a notorious gambler and ballot-box stuffer, shot and killed an unarmed man, General William H. Richardson, outside the Cosmopolitan Saloon. Cora was taken to jail, but his mistress, a prostitute, hired able lawyers, and at his trial the jury disagreed. Newspapers protested, claiming that the delay in justice was clue to corruption, a "rigged" court and bribed jurors. Some called for a reorganization of the vigilance comrnittee. Meanwhile, Cora remained in jail.

The next disturbance came in May, 1856. The editor of the Bulletin dared state that James P. Casey, a city supervisor and machine politician, had been an inmate of Sing Sing Prison, New York. Although this fact had been admitted by Casey and reported in the papers, the Bulletin editor had been more outspoken than others in his attacks on San Francisco's corrupt city administration. Casey, feeling perhaps that he had administration backing, shot and killed the editor as he walked home through a fog.

That night great crowds milled through downtown San Francisco's streets. Some filled the corridors of the jail where Casey was lodged, while others climbed on the roof. The city was alive with rumors that the 1851 committee of vigilance would be revived.

These rumors proved true. Several who had been members of that committee drafted one of their number to reorganize it. He was William T. Coleman, a successful merchant and a civic leader. Citizens were called to meet in a vacant hall the next evening to form the committee, whose membership reached 5,500 in two days.

On Sunday, May 18, Charles Doane, chief marshal of the committee, rode a white horse at the head of 500 marching vigilantes with rifles and bayonets. Stopping in front of the jail, they pointed a cannon at the hoosegow and threatened to destroy it unless the sheriff surrendered both Cora and Casey within five minutes. As the gunner waved his fuse, the sheriff ordered the door opened. Coleman and another vigilante entered and brought out the two murderers. The prisoners were taken to the vigilante court as the mayor and the governor watched helplessly from a hotel roof.

Two days later the defendants received as dignified a trial as the legal one Cora had received earlier. Both men were condemned to hang. They were dropped from hinged wooden platforms extended from windows of the committee's second-story quarters.

The committee remained active for three months, increasing its membership to more than eight thousand. But, although on July 29 it hanged two murderers, Joseph Hetherington and Philander Brace, it did not have much other work beyond giving ruffians one-way tickets on outbound ships. Murders, which had numbered more than a hundred during the six months prior to the committee's formation, practically ceased. In fact there were only two during the three month jurisdiction of this vigilance committee.

On adjourning its activities, August 18, 1856 - though it was not formally disbanded until November 3, 1859 - the leaders disclaimed any desire for public office. "It is seldom," noted the London Times, "that self constituted authorities retire with grace and dignity, but it is due to the vigilance committee to say that they have done so."

By that time, elected officials were able to enforce laws against crime more vigorously than had been the case earlier. One incentive was the knowledge that, if they became lax, another committee might be formed. Three years after the 1856 committee had disbanded, a visitor in San Francisco asked a resident what had become of the vigilantes. The answer came quickly: "Toll the bell, sir, and you shall see."

Jay Monaghan. Necktie Parties. The Book of the American West. Simon & Schuster New York, NY 1969.

Gold Dust and Gunsmoke: Tales of Gold Rush Outlaws, Gunfighters, Lawmen, and Vigilantes With virtually no police protection on the frontier, vigilance committees took justice into their own hands. Six penalties were traditionally handed down: hanging, whipping, ear-cropping, head shaving, branding, or banishment. Since few people in this transient society knew each other, vigilantes sought ways of physically marking criminals, cropping their ears or branding their cheek with an "R" for robber, or "H.T." for horse thief.

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