The spokesman, a great man of affairs, told me that I was trusted, that I had been selected as one to lead in an affair of great peril, an enterprise on which the future of the South might depend, and asked me if I were ready to risk life and fortune on the turn. I answered with an eagerness that satisfied my hearers and took an oath, of which I have a copy, reading as follows:
“Do you, in the presence of Almighty God, swear that what I may this night say to or show you shall be kept secret and sacred, and that you will not by hint, action or word reveal the same to any living being, so help me God?”
The answer, of course, being an affirmative, I repeated after the spokesman the following objuration:
“Having been brought to this room for the purpose of having a secret confided to me and believing that to divulge such secret would imperil the lives of certain Southern men as well as injure the cause of the Southern States, I do solemnly swear in the name of the Southern States, within whose limits I was born and reared, that I will never, by word, sign or deed, hint at or divulge what I may hear to-night. Not to my dearest friend, not to the wife of my bosom will I communicate the nature of the secret. I hold myself pledged, by all I hold dear in heaven or on earth, by God and my country, by my honor as a Southern gentleman, to keep inviolate the trust reposed in me. I swear that no consideration of property or friendship shall influence my secrecy, and may I meet at the hands of those I betray, the vengeance due to a traitor, if I prove recreant to this my solemn obligation. So help me God, as I prove true.”
This oath was committed to memory by every member. At subsequent meetings it was solemnly recited by all, standing and with right hand uplifted, before proceeding to further business. Several years afterwards, while it was still fresh in my recollection, I set it down in writing and preserved it to the present day. Thus I became one of a society of thirty members, pledged to carry California out of the Union.
I might say here, in parenthesis, that I have long been a reconstructed “rebel.” The old flag floats over my home on every national holiday and also on Labor day, for I take an interest in the ideas it represents. I am mighty glad now that my efforts to disrupt the Union failed and still gladder because it has been my good fortune to see the awful heritage of hate that so long divided two brave and generous people die out and disappear.
The Southern mind has a wonderful capacity for secret organization and for conducting operations on a vast scale behind a screen of impenetrable mystery. This had a fine illustration in the workings of the Ku-Klux-Klan, in reconstruction days, which destroyed carpet-bag rule and negro supremacy in the South and restored the government of the white race. The operations of the committee of thirty of which I became a member demonstrated the same peculiar trait.
The organization was simplicity itself. We were under the absolute orders of a member whom we called “General.” He called all the meetings, by word of mouth, passed by one of the members. Anything in the way of writing was burned before the meeting broke up. The General received the large contributions in private, never drew a check, settled all accounts in gold coin and accounted to himself for the expenditure.
Each member was responsible for the organization of a fighting force of say a hundred men. This was not difficult. California at that period abounded with reckless human material—ex-veterans of the Mexican war, ex-filibusters, ex-Indian fighters, all eager to engage in any undertaking that promised adventure and profit. Each member selected a trusty agent, or captain devoted to the cause of the South, simply told him to gather a body of picked men for whose equipment and pay he would be responsible, said nothing of the service intended, possibly left the impression that a filibuster expedition was in the wind. These various bands were scattered in out-of-the-way places around the bay, ostensibly engaged in some peaceful occupation, such as chopping wood, fishing or the like, but in reality waiting for the word to act. Each member of the committee kept his own counsel. Only the General knew the location of the various detachments.
Our plans were to paralyze all organized resistance by a simultaneous attack. The Federal army was little more than a shadow. About two hundred soldiers were at Fort Point, less than a hundred at Alcatraz and a handful at Mare Island and at the arsenal at Benicia, where 30,000 stand of arms were stored. We proposed to carry these strongholds by a night attack and also seize the arsenals of the militia at San Francisco. With this abounding military equipment, we proposed to organize an army of Southern sympathizers, sufficient in number to beat down any unarmed resistance.