



Produced by David Schwan.  HTML version by Al Haines.










The Vigilance Committee of '56.



By a Pioneer California Journalist

[James O'Meara]




Chapter I.


Many accounts of the Vigilance Committee of San Francisco have been
published, but all of them, so far as I have seen, were from the pen of
members of that organization, or else from persons who favored it. As a
consequence their accounts of it were either partial, to a greater or
less degree, or imperfect otherwise; and much has been omitted as well
as misstated and misrepresented otherwise. I was not a member of the
Vigilance Committee, nor was I a member of the opposing organization,
known as the Law and Order body, of which General Sherman was the head
and Volney E. Howard next in rank. I have never been in favor of mob or
lynch-law in