



Produced by David Schwan







A SKETCH OF THE CAUSES, OPERATIONS AND RESULTS OF THE SAN FRANCISCO
VIGILANCE COMMITTEE IN 1856


By Stephen Palfrey Webb


1874


Stephen Palfrey Webb was born in Salem on March 20, 1804, the son of
Capt. Stephen and Sarah (Putnam) Webb. He was graduated from Harvard
in 1824, and studied law with Hon. John Glen King, after which he
was admitted to the Essex Bar. He practiced law in Salem, served as
Representative and Senator in the Massachusetts Legislature, and was
elected Mayor of Salem in 1842, serving three years. He was Treasurer of
the Essex Railroad Company in the late forties.

About 1853, he went to San Francisco, where he resided several years,
serving as Mayor of that city in 1854 and 1855. It was during this time
that he witnessed the riotous mobs following the Gold Rush of 1849, and
upon his return Salem made notes for a lecture, which he delivered in
Salem; and later, with many additions, prepared this sketch, probably
about 1874. He was again elected Mayor of Salem, 1860-1862, and City
Clerk, 1863-1870. He died in Salem on September 29, 1879. On May 26,
1834, he married Hannah H. B. Robinson of Salem.

There have been several accounts of the activities of the Vigilance
Committee, but this is firsthand information from one who was on the
ground at the time, and for this reason it is considered a valuable
contribution to the history of those troublous days. It certainly is a
record of what a prominent, intelligent and observing eye-witness saw
regarding this important episode in the history of California. The
original paper is now in the possession of his granddaughter, Mrs.
Raymond H. Oveson of Groton, Massachusetts.

Many of the evils which afflicted the people of San Francisco may be
traced to the peculiar circumstances attendant upon the settlement of
California. The effect all over the world of the discovery of gold at
Sutter's Mill in 1848 was electric. A movement only paralleled by that
of the Crusades at once commenced. Adventurers of every character and
description immediately started for the far away land where gold was to
be had for the gathering. The passage round Cape Horn, which from the
earliest times had been invested with a dreamy horror, and had inspired
a vague fear in every breast, was now dared with an audacity which only
the all absorbing greed for gold could have produced. Old condemned
hulks which, at other times, it would not have been deemed safe to
remove from one part of the harbor to another, were hastily fitted up,
and with the aid of a little paint and a few as deceptive assurances of
the owners, were instantly filled with eager passengers and dispatched
to do battle, as they might, with the storms and perils of the deep
during the tedious months through which the passage extended. The
suffering and distress consequent upon the packing so many human beings
in so confined a space; the miserable quality and insufficient quantity
of the provisions supplied; the weariness and lassitude engendered by
the intolerable length of the voyage; the ill-temper and evil passions
so sure to be roused and inflamed by long and forced companionship
without sympathy or affection, all tended to make these trips, for the
most part, all but intolerable, and in many cases left feelings of hate
and desire for revenge to be afterwards prosecuted to bloody issues.

The miseries generally endured were however sometimes enlivened
and relieved by the most unexpected calls for exertion. A passenger
described his voyage from New York to San Francisco in 1849, in company
with several hundred others in a steamer of small size and the most
limited capacity in all respects, as an amusing instance of working
one's passage already paid for in advance. The old craft went groaning,
creaking, laboring and pounding on for seven months before she arrived
at her destination. Short of provisions, every sailing vessel that
was encountered was boarded for supplies, and almost every port on the
Atlantic and Pacific was entered for the same purpose. Out of fuel,
every few days, axes were distributed, and crew and passengers landed to
cut down trees to keep up steam for a few days longer. He expressed his
conviction that every point, headland, island and wooded tract on the
coast from the Cape to San Francisco had not only been seen by him, but
had resounded with the sturdy blows of his axe during the apparently
interminable voyage. His experience, with the exception of the axe
exercise, was that of thousands.

The extent to which the gold fever had impelled people on shipboard
may be judged by the facts that from the first of January, 1849, five
hundred and nine vessels arrived in the harbor of San Francisco; and the
number of passengers in the same space of time was eighteen thousand,
nine hundred and seventy-two. Previous to this time, one or two ships
in the course of a year found their way through the Golden Gate and
into the beautiful harbor of San Francisco in quest of hides, horns and
tallow, and gave languid employment to two or three Americans settled
on the sand hills, and engaged in collecting these articles of trade and
commerce. In the closing days of 1849, there were ninety-four thousand,
three hundred and forty-four tons of shipping in the harbor. The stream
of immigration moved over the Plains, likewise; and through privation,
fatigue, sickness, and the strife of the elements, passed slowly and
painfully on to the goal of their hopes.

Thus pouring into California in every direction and by every route,
this strange and heterogeneous mass of men, the representatives of every
occupation, honest and dishonest, creditable and disgraceful; of every
people under the sun, scattered through the gulches and ravines in the
mountains, or grouped themselves at certain points in cities, towns and
villages of canons or adobe. Perhaps never in the world's history did
cities spring into existence so instantaneously, and certainly never was
their population so strangely diverse in language, habits and customs.
Of course gamblers of every kind and color; criminals of every shade and
degree of atrocity; knaves of every grade of skill in the arts of fraud
and deceit abounded in every society and place. In these early times
gold was abundant, and any kind of honest labor was most richly and
extravagantly rewarded. The honest, industrious and able men of every
community, therefore, applied themselves strictly to business and would
not be diverted from it by any considerations of duty or of patriotism.
Studiously abstaining from politics; positively refusing to accept
office; shirking constantly and systematically all jury and other public
duty, which, onerous in every community, was doubly so, as they thought,
in that new country, they seemed never to reflect that there was a
portion, and that the worst, of the population, who would take advantage
of their remissness, and direct every institution of society to the
promotion of their own nefarious purposes.

Absorbed in their own pursuits, confident that a short time would enable
them to realize their great object of making a fortune and then leaving
the country, the better portion of the community abandoned the control
of public affairs to whoever might be willing or desirous to assume
it. Of course there was no lack of men who had no earthly objection to
assume all public duties and fill all public offices. Politicians void
of honesty and well-skilled in all the arts of intrigue, whose great end
and aim in life was to live out of the public treasury and grow rich by
public plunder, and whose most blissful occupation was to talk politics
in pot houses and groggeries; men of desperate fortunes who sought
to mend them, not by honest labor, but by opportunities for official
pickings and stealings; bands of miscreants resembling foul and unclean
birds which clamor and fight for the chance of settling down upon and
devouring the body to which their keen scent hag directed them; all were
astir and with but little effort obtained