The public spirit with which the merchants came forward and gave time and money to the cause of order is worthy of all praise, and the rapidity with which the organization of a new government was carried through is an instance of the singular power of our race for building up the machinery of self-government under conditions the most unpromising. Instead of the events of 1856 having been a case of opposition to law and order, they will stand in history as a remarkable proof of the law-abiding character of a people who vindicated justice by a demonstration of overwhelming force, laid down their arms, and returned in a few weeks to the peaceable routine of business life.
If, in the merchant founders of the Vigilance Committees of San Francisco we can see the descendants of the justice-loving Germans of the time of Tacitus, I found in another class of vigilants the moral offspring of Alfred‘s village aldermen of our own Saxon age. From Mr. William M. Byers, now editor of the Rocky Mountain News, I had heard the story of the early settlers’ land-law in Missouri; in Stanton‘s office in Denver City, I had seen the records of the Arrapahoe County Claim-club, with which he had been connected at the first settlement of Colorado; but at San José, I heard details of the settlers’ custom-law—the Californian “grand-coûtumier,” it might be called—which convinced me that, in order to find the rudiments of all that, politically speaking, is best and most vigorous in the Saxon mind, you must seek countries in which Saxon civilization itself is in its infancy. The greater the difficulties of the situation, the more racy the custom, the more national the law.
When a new State began to be “settled up”—that is, its lands entered upon by actual settlers, not landsharks—the inhabitants often found themselves in the wilderness, far in advance of attorneys, courts, and judges. It was their custom when this occurred to divide the territory into districts of fifteen or twenty miles square, and form for each a “claim-club” to protect the land-claims, or property of the members. Whenever a question of title arose, a judge and jury were chosen from among the members to hear and determine the case. The occupancy title was invariably protected up to a certain number of acres, which was differently fixed by different clubs, and varied in those of which I have heard the rules from 100 to 250 acres, averaging 150. The United States “Homestead” and “Pre-emption” laws were founded on the practice of these clubs. The claim-clubs interfered only for the protection of their members, but they never scrupled to hang willful offenders against their rules, whether members or outsiders. Execution of the decrees of the club was generally left to the county sheriff, if he was a member, and in this case a certain air of legality was given to the local action. It is perhaps not too much to say that a Western sheriff is an irresponsible official, possessed of gigantic powers, but seldom known to abuse them. He is a Cæsar, chosen for his honesty, fearlessness, clean shooting, and quick loading, by men who know him well: if he breaks down, he is soon deposed, and a better man chosen for dictator. I have known a Western paper say: “Frank is our man for sheriff, next October. See the way he shot one of the fellows who robbed his store, and followed up the other, and shot him too the next day. Frank is the boy for us.” In such a state of society as this, the distinction between law and lynch-law can scarcely be said to exist, and in the eyes of every Western settler the claim-club backed by the sheriff‘s name was as strong and as full of the majesty of the law as the Supreme Court of the United States. Mr. Byers told me of a case of the infliction of death-punishment by a claim-club which occurred in Kansas after the “Homestead” law was passed allowing the occupant when he had tilled and improved the land for five years, to purchase it at one and a quarter dollars an acre. A man settled on a piece of land, and labored on it for some years. He then “sold it,” which he had, of course, no power to do, the land being still the property of the United States. Having done this, he went and “pre-empted” it under the Homestead Act, at the government price. When he attempted to eject the man to whom he had assumed to sell, the club ordered the sheriff to “put the man away,” and he was never seen again. Perhaps Mr. Byers was the sheriff; he seemed to have the details at his fingers’ ends, and his later history in Denver, where he once had the lynching rope round his neck for exposing gamblers, testifies to his boldness.
Some of the rascalities which the claim-clubs were expected to put down were ingenious enough. Sometimes a man would build a dozen houses on a block of land, and, going there to enter on possession after they were complete, would find that in the night the whole of them had disappeared. Frauds under the Homestead Act were both many and strange. Men were required to prove that they had on the land a house of at least ten feet square. They have been known to whittle out a toy-house with their bowie, and, carrying it to the land, to measure it in the presence of a friend—twelve inches by thirteen. In court the pre-emptor, examining his own witness, would say, “What are the dimensions of that house of mine?” “Twelve by thirteen.” “That will do.” In Kansas a log-house of the regulation size was fitted up on wheels, and let at ten dollars a day, in order that it might be wheeled on to different lots, to be sworn to as a house upon the land. Men have been known to make a window-sash and frame, and keep them inside of their windowless huts, to swear that they had a window in their house—another of the requirements of the act. It is a singular mark of deference to the traditions of a Puritan ancestry that such accomplished liars as the Western landsharks should feel it necessary to have any foundation whatever for their lies; but not only in this respect are they a curious race. One of their peculiarities is that, however wealthy they may be, they will never place their money out at interest, never sink it in a speculation, however tempting, when there is no prospect of almost immediate realization. To turn their money over often, at whatever risk, is with these men an axiom. The advanced-guard of civilization, they push out into an unknown wilderness, and seize upon the available lots, the streams, the springs, the river bottoms, the falls or “water-privileges,” and then, using their interest in the territorial legislature—using, perhaps, direct corruption in some cases—they procure the location of the State capital upon their lands, or the passage of the railroads through their valleys. The capital of Nebraska has been fixed in this manner at a place two hundred and fifty miles from the nearest settlement. A newspaper appeared suddenly, dated from “Lincoln City, center of Nebraska Territory,” but published in reality in Omaha. To cope with such fellows, Western sheriffs must be no ordinary men.
Thanks to the Vigilance Committees, California stands now before the other far-western States. Rowdyism is being put down as the God-fearing Northerners gain ground. It may still be dangerous to stroke your beard in a bar-room at Placerville or El Dorado; “a gentleman in the loafing and chancing line” may still be met with in Sacramento; here and there a Missourian “Pike,” as yet unhung, may boast that he can whip his weight in wild cats,—but San Francisco has at least reached the age of outward decorum, has shut up public gaming-houses, and supports four church papers.
In Colorado lynch law is not as yet forgotten: the day we entered Denver the editor of the Gazette expressed, “on historical grounds,” his deep regret at the cutting down of two fine cottonwood-trees that stood on Cherry Creek. When we came to talk to him we found that the “history” alluded to was that of the “escape up” these trees of many an early inhabitant of Denver City. “There‘s the tree we used to put the jury under, and that‘s the one we hanged ’em on. Put a cart under the tree, and the boy standing on it, with the rope around him; give him time for a pray, then smack the whip, and ther’ you air.”
In Denver we were reserved upon the subject of Vigilance Committees, for it is dangerous sometimes to make close inquiries as to their constitution. While I was in Leavenworth a man was hanged by the mob at Council Bluffs for asking the names of the Vigilants who had hanged a friend of his the year before. We learned enough, however, at Denver to show that the committee in that city still exists; and in Virginia and Carson I know that the organizations are continued; but offenders are oftener shot quietly than publicly hanged, in order to prevent an outcry, and avoid the vengeance of the relatives. The verdict of the jury never fails to be respected, but acquittal is almost as unknown as mercy to those convicted. Innocent men are seldom tried before such juries, for the case must be clear before the sheriff will run the risk of being shot in making the arrest. When the man‘s fate is settled, the sheriff drives out quietly in his buggy, and next day men say when they meet, “Poor ——‘s escaped;” or else it is, “The sheriff‘s shot. Who‘ll run for office?”
It will be seen from the history of the Vigilance Committees, as I heard their stories from Kansas to California, that they are to be divided into two classes, with sharply-marked characteristics—those where committee hangings, transportations, warnings, are alike open to the light of day, such as the committees of San Francisco in 1856, and the Sandwich Islands in 1866, and those—unhappily the vast majority—where all is secret and irresponsible. Here, in San Francisco, the committee was the government; elsewhere, the organization was less wide, and the members, though always shrewdly guessed at, never known. Neither class should be necessary, unless when a gold rush brings down upon a State the desperadoes of the world; but there is this encouragement even in the history of lynch law: that, although English settlements often start wild, they never have been known to go wild.
The men who formed the second Vigilance Committee of San Francisco are now the governor, Senators, and Congressmen of California, the mayors and sheriffs of her towns. Nowadays the citizens are remarkable, even among Americans, for their love of law and order. Their city, though still subject to a yearly deluge from the outpourings of all the overcrowded slums of Europe, is, as the New Yorker said, the best policed in all America. In politics, too, it is remarked that party organizations have no power in this State from the moment that they attempt to nominate corrupt or time-serving men. The people break loose from their caucuses and conventions, and vote in a body for their honest enemies, rather than for corrupt friends. They have the advantage of singular ability, for there is not an average man in California.