"Bang!" It was a pistol-shot, and very near me—not thirty feet away. I turned and saw a man stagger and fall to the pavement. Then the streets began to grow dark with people hurrying toward the scene of the tragedy. I fled in fright; I had had my fill of horrors. The pistol-shot was familiar enough: it punctuated the hours of day and night out yonder. But I had never witnessed a murder, and this was evidently one.
When I reached home I was dazed. On the witness stand, under oath, I could have told nothing; but very shortly the whole town was aware that James King—known as James King of William (i.e., William King was his father)—the editor of the Evening Bulletin had been shot in cold blood by James Casey, a supervisor, the editor of a local journal, an unprincipled politician, an ex-convict, and a man whose past had been exposed and his present publicly denounced in the editorial columns of the Bulletin.
This climax precipitated a general movement toward social and political reform in San Francisco. It was James P. Casey, a graduate of the New York state-prison at Sing Sing, who stuffed a ballot-box with tickets bearing his own name upon them as candidate for supervisor, and as a result of this stuffing declared himself elected. Casey was hurried off to jail by his friends, lest the outraged populace should lynch him on the spot. A mob gathered at the jail. The mayor of the city harangued the people in favor of law and order. They jeered him and remained there most of the night. One leading spirit might have roused the masses to riot; but the hour was not yet ripe.
In 1851 a Vigilance Committee had endeavored to purge the politics of the town and rid it of the criminals who had foisted themselves into office. Some ex-members of this committee became active members of the committee of 1856. Chief among them was William T. Coleman, a name deservedly honored in the annals of San Francisco.
James King of William was shot on Tuesday, the 14th of May. He died on the following Monday. That fatal shot was the turning-point in the history of the metropolis of the Pacific. A meeting of the citizens was immediately called; an executive committee was appointed; the work of organization was distributed among the sub-committees. With amazing rapidity three thousand citizens were armed, drilled, and established in temporary armories; ample means were subscribed to cover all expenses. Several companies of militia disbanded rather than run the risk of being called into service against the Vigilantis; they then joined the committee, armed with their own muskets. Arms were obtained from every quarter, and soon there was an ample supply. A building on Sacramento Street, below Battery, was secured and made headquarters of the committee. A kind of fortification built of potato sacks filled with sand was erected in front of it. It was known as Fort Gunny Bags. This secured an open space before the building. The fort was patrolled by sentinels night and day; military rule was strictly observed.
All things having been arranged silently, secretly, decently and in order—the members of the committee were under oath as well as under arms—they decided to take matters into their own hands; and in order to do this Casey must be removed from jail—peaceably if possible, forcibly if necessary—and given a lodging and a trial at Fort Gunny Bags.
On Sunday morning, the 19th of May, chancing be under the weather, and consequently at home sitting by a window, I saw people flocking past the house and hastening toward the jail. We were then living on Broadway, below Montgomery Street; the jail was on Broadway, a square or two farther up the street; between us was a shoulder of Telegraph Hill not yet cut away, though it had been blasted out of shape and an attempt had been made to tunnel it. The young Californian of that day was keen-scented and lost no opportunity of seeing whatever was to be seen. Forgetting my distemper, I grabbed my cap and joined the expectant throngs. We went over the heights of the hill like a flock of goats: we were used to climbing. On the other edge of the cliff, where we seemed almost to overhang the jail and the street in front of it, we paused and caught our breath. What a sight it was! It seems that on Saturday twenty-four companies of Vigilantis were ordered to meet at their respective armories, in various parts of the city, at nine o'clock on Sunday morning. Orders were given to each captain to take up a certain position near the jail. The jail was surrounded: no one could approach it, no one escape from it, without leave of the commanders of the committee.
The streets glistened with bayonets. It was as if the city were in a state of siege; so indeed it was. The companies marched silently, ominously, without music or murmur, to their respective stations. Citizens—non-combatants but all sympathizers—flocked in and covered the housetops and the heights in the vicinity. A hollow square was formed before the jail; an artillery company with a huge brass cannon halted near it; the cannon was placed directly in front of the jail and trained upon the gates. I remember how impressive the scene was: the grim files of infantry; the gleaming brass of the cannon; one closed carriage within the hollow square; the awful stillness that brooded over all.
