Part 27 (2/2)
Both of these nations were suspected of coveting the California province; and the hope of getting possession of it, especially of San Francis...o...b..y, was doubtless in the background of our national consciousness as one motive of the Mexican War. It was felt by our country that the United States must own the west coast or be pot-bound later on. The Government offered to buy the territory from Mexico, but the proposal was refused.
Gradually it came to be known that the United States, fearing similar action by European powers, was to seize and hold California in the event of a war with Mexico. With the vexed question of motive and action this is not the place to deal. But in 1846, after the Mexican War had fairly started, Fremont, pursuing a scientific exploration in California, received secret Government advices, and, gathering troops in the North, urged a declaration of independence. Commodore Sloat, in command of a frigate at Monterey, in July, 1846, raised the American flag in place of the Spanish nopal and eagle standard, declaring California a part of the United States.
The next day, following the order of Sloat, our flag was set flying in the plaza at Yerba Buena by the captain of a frigate in the bay, accompanied by an escort of soldiers and marines. No opposition was offered by the Mexicans. Portsmouth, the name of the vessel, was given to the plaza, and Montgomery, the name of the captain, was given to the street, then along the water front, but now pushed back a half a dozen blocks by the filling in of the cove.
The first alcalde of Yerba Buena under the American flag was Was.h.i.+ngton Bartlett. Hearing that a new town, Francesca, was to be established farther up the bay, and fearing injury to his own from one with a name so similar to that of the bay, Alcalde Bartlett proceeded, in 1847, to cast the plebeian name of his pueblo. He declared the name Yerba Buena insignificant and unknown to the world; proclaimed that henceforth the settlement should bear the name of the fostering bay beside it. This somewhat tardy edict was accepted by all, and San Francis...o...b..came a name to conjure with.
The village nucleated a little back of the cove about its inevitable Spanish plaza, which was to be the scene of wild and whirling days to come.
Telegraph Hill, the old observation station, rose on the north of it, and Rincon Hill was off toward the south. When California was ceded to the United States in 1848, San Francisco was fairly afoot upon her triumphant way. Brannan had established a newspaper, _The Star_, and had sent two thousand copies East, describing the new land, and, curiously enough, prophesying the gold and the wheat of the future--the first ”boom” note from California. A school was flouris.h.i.+ng; churches were building; two hundred houses were on the hills, and the population was about eight hundred.
And now sweeps into the story the dominant major--the finding of the gold.
Told of in Indian legend and in Spanish tradition, the s.h.i.+ning sands of Pactolus were found at last in a Californian canon. San Franciscans, hearing the tale, felt again the wander spirit, and were off to the mountains, seeking quicker fortunes. Soldiers and sailors deserted from the bay. The school closed; the newspaper suspended. Business was at a standstill: there was no one to work or to buy.
A wind of excitement pa.s.sed across two hemispheres. The tidings of the gold flashed from city to city, swift as the signal fires of Agamemnon telling that Troy had fallen. The faces of men turned expectantly toward this land at the edge of the world. Everywhere were heard the sounds of preparation and farewell, as adventurers by land and sea, by craft and caravan, set out for El Dorado.
By 1849 immigrants from the ends of the earth were pouring in; and the bare, brown hills and curving sh.o.r.es of San Francisco were whitening with tents. Goods were piled high in the open air, and all available walls were covered with grotesque signs and placards speaking in all languages.
By the winter of '49, the drowsy, droning Spanish town had expanded into a little excited city. Everywhere were springing up nondescript lodging and boarding houses, drinking houses, and gambling saloons. Twenty-five thousand people thronged the thoroughfares. There was scarcely such a thing as a home. Crowds of people slept wedged together on floors and tables, in rows of cots or in bunks fastened in tiers to the walls. The streets, full of sticky clay and miry sand, were thronged with struggling horses, mules, and oxen; and crowds of men from all nations and all levels of life jostled by, laughing, railing, or cursing. A whirlwind had rushed in upon the sleepy town. Old habits of life were broken through. Lawyers were turned into draymen and bootblacks; doctors into merchants and carpenters; soldiers into waiters and auctioneers. All men could find work; and none, however rich, could wholly evade it. Gambling was the chief amus.e.m.e.nt; speculation in a hundred forms was pressing forward, and fortunes were changing hourly.
In all this rude democracy, there was one mark of an aristocracy--high prices. Workmen charged twenty dollars a day; lumber was five hundred dollars a thousand; flour was forty dollars a barrel; eggs were a dollar apiece.
All unready for this tumultuous rise in population and precipitation of business, the infant city had to evolve on the moment accommodation for man and beast and craft, and organization for civic safety. To add to the perplexities, in the first years of the city, fire after fire devoured its flimsy fabric of canvas and s.h.i.+ngle. The fourth and worst fire, in May, 1851, destroyed seven million dollars' worth of property. The recurrent devastation made a demand for fireproof buildings, which gave a certain stability and dignity to the city. The bay began to fill with the new clipper s.h.i.+ps, which brought steadier crews and more rational cargoes than did the older clumsy s.h.i.+ps now rotting at the docks. Secure wharf.a.ge, pa.s.sable streets, an efficient fire-department began to give a feeling of prosperity and permanence.
San Francisco was the stopping-place of every comer and goer; the Egypt of the corn, the depot of supplies for the gold territory. Naturally, forces of good and evil streamed into the young city and came into collision.
Strange new conditions were in the environment. The old primitive safeguards of the early mission era were outgrown. The population, representing every form of tradition and government, found itself removed from well-nigh all restraints, all bolstering-up of church and state. Each man of worth, while bent to his private task, had forced upon him the problem of helping to build up a social fabric and of holding it secure.
The Anglo-Saxon has an elastic genius for government. Wherever he goes, finding new conditions, he finds new ways for maintaining the public safety. The reaction of his spirit under the conditions about him in early California furnishes an interesting study in social dynamics.
By 1850, California was running under a State const.i.tution and the city had a charter. The old stable forces of home, and school, and church, the Argonaut soon evolved about him. However, great freedom of action and opinion prevailed, and a tolerance of evil that well-nigh blunted the distinctions between right and wrong. ”Sydney coves,” and other unruly spirits took advantage of this laxity. Abuses thickened, and anxious problems of public order were upon the young metropolis.
The affair of ”The Hounds” was one of the organized outrages that confronted the munic.i.p.ality. A band of lawless ex-convicts, affiliated for mutual protection in evil designs, grew very obnoxious in their bold defiance of authority, their open and wanton outrages upon citizens, especially foreigners. The community, having no munic.i.p.al organization, rose against the law-breakers, put twenty on trial, and half of these into prison. This show of public indignation quieted the pack for a time. But there was no strong authority to conserve the public good. What was the concern of all found an executive in none.
Yet, finally, out of this sagging and sinking of the public order and its adjustment sprang the most spectacular popular uprising and the most notable object-lesson in self-government known to the West or perhaps to any other land,--the Vigilance Committee of 1852-56. The occasion of this citizens' uprising was a series of unpunished crimes of arson, murder, rapine, and burglary. The perpetrators of these outrages, owing to lax administration of law by corrupt or careless officials, seemed immune from apprehension or punishment. The many fires that had devastated the infant city had without doubt been of incendiary origin. Over a hundred murders had occurred in a few months and not a single capital punishment had followed.
Feeling that this insecurity of life and property was intolerable, and fearing that it would draw down the perils and uncertainties of mob law, a party of prominent citizens, all above suspicion of self-interest, organized a defensive league against the allied rabble. They determined to take the law into their own hands, and to administer it with equal and exact justice, with swiftness and finality.
[Ill.u.s.tration SEAL OF THE VIGILANCE COMMITTEE.]
The first and most exciting case handled by this extraordinary court of justice came swiftly to judgment. Upon the night of organization, in June, 1852, an ex-convict was seized in an act of theft. He was tried in the presence of eighty members sitting with closed doors; was convicted, sentenced, and hanged in Portsmouth Square that night. The general public, sensitive and suspicious, dreading mob tactics, was troubled at first by this summary show of power. But the Committee came out with a complete list of its members, each member a.s.suming equal share of responsibility, each avowing the public welfare as the only end in view, each pledging his life, his fortune, his honor, for the protection of his city and the upholding of the public safety. A profound impression was made by the manifesto of this self-const.i.tuted protectorate. When it was found that no secret society, but, instead, a band of the solid men of the city was at the head of the movement, the community rallied to its support with enthusiasm. The Committee quietly kept at its work of investigation and punishment. Its calm, swift justice, its lack of personal bias, its righteous vengeance terrified evil-doers. Many were banished by formal warning. Three other well-known criminals were hanged. Crime rapidly diminished, and for the first time in years people began to feel secure in person and possessions.
After thirty days the occupation of the Vigilance Committee was gone. It did not disband, but existed for years a merely nominal tribunal.
By 1854, the growth of San Francis...o...b..gan to slacken. Inflation began its inevitable counter-movement of collapse. The days of picking up gold were over. Immigration fell off. A large part of the city's population scattered, returning East, or going into the country to try life on ranch or range. Disorder increased; the old suppressed crimes leaped into evil eminence.
A new journal, _The Bulletin_, edited by James King, of William, a.s.sailed the rising corruption, political and personal, social and individual, public and private.
In 1856, without warning, King was shot down in the street by a man who had writhed under the torment of the _Bulletin_ pens,--an unscrupulous ex-convict, James Casey, a rival editor, and a man lately elected supervisor. This murder precipitated public opinion, and exploded the lazy optimism that had waited for things to right themselves. Casey was at once jailed, by chance escaping lynching. It was inevitable that heroic measures should be set in operation. And so there came about a second administration of the Vigilance Committee, this unique social providence, this people's protectorate. But this time it had before it not only the purging of the city's crime, but also a struggle with jealous and sluggish authority vested in city and State officials. In a few days 2500 men had enrolled as Vigilantes, and were drilling in arms, under their former trusted President, William T. Coleman. Meantime the Governor of the State was summoned by the Anti-Vigilantes, representing chiefly the conservative officeholders and the people affiliated in some way with the lawless element. These Anti-Vigilantes came to be known in derision as the Law-and-Order Party. The Know-Nothing Governor swayed first from one side to another. He had no power behind him, for the militia were deserting to the popular cause.
The Vigilantes took charge not only of Casey, but also of one Cora who had wantonly shot a United States marshal and had evaded punishment. After a dispa.s.sionate trial, with all form and ceremony, the two criminals were sentenced to death and hanged on the day of King's funeral. It may be worth remembering that this man Cora was defended in his first trial by the eloquent Col. E.D. Baker.
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