San Francisco Vigilance Movement
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The Vigilance Movements of 1851 and 1856 were popular militia movements that arose in San Francisco during the California Gold Rush in response to crime and government corruption, but also had a strong element of anti-immigrant violence, and arguably created more lawlessness than they eliminated.
A Committee of Vigilance was formed in 1851, and again in 1856. These militias lynched 12 people, kidnapped hundreds of Irishmen and government militia members, and forced several elected officials to resign. Each Committee of Vigilance formally relinquished power after it decided the city had been "cleaned up," but the anti-immigrant aspects of its mob activity continued, later focusing on Chinese immigrants and leading to many race riots in the period leading up to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.
A great deal of historical controversy exists about the vigilance movements. The 1856 lynchings of Charles Cora and James Casey, for example, are open to interpretation. Both were lynched by the Committee of Vigilance as murderers, after killing men in duels. Cora had shot a U.S. Marshall, who had insulted Cora's mistress while drunk; Casey had murdered a rival newspaper editor, shortly after the man published an editorial exposing Casey's criminal record in New York. Cora's first trial had ended in a hung jury, and there were rumors that the jury had been bribed. Casey's friends snuck him into the jail precisely because they were afraid that he would be lynched. This lynching could be seen either as a response by frustrated citizens to ineffectual law enforcement, or as their unwillingness to accept the possibility that due process would result in acquittals.
The Vigilance Movement was also responsible for the imprisonment (and probably the death) of Irish immigrant and boxer, Yankee Sullivan.
[edit] External links
The following two links appear to be biased in opposite directions:
- The 1856 Committee of Vigilance - A treatment of the San Francisco vigilante movement, sympathetic to the vigilantes.
- The San Francisco Committee of Vigilance of 1851, and the San Francisco Committee of Vigilance of 1856 - an opposing perspectiveTemplate:STUB
