The San Francisco Committee of Vigilance Essay

Introduction

The American West was one of the last regions to be discovered and explored. When the Americans came there from the East Coast and the Midwest, they found a lot of land and natural resources, the paramount of which was gold. Gold Rush began, and many settlements and communities sprang up quickly, with already established towns flooded with migrants looking for jobs and money. However, state institutions, such as law enforcement authorities, were comparatively much slower to appear and build their network and structure on the West Coast due to long distances and lack of developed logistics and communications. Gold and weak legal power-wielding agencies gave rise to widespread crime and corruption. As Allitt notes, “in the gold camps, hundreds of men lived and worked side by side, fearing that the gold they found might be stolen.”¹Locals formed their own, like the San Francisco Committee of Vigilance, Due to the lack of qualified human resources and infrastructure in legal organizations responsible for protecting ordinary people from criminals and corrupted politicians.

Motivations

The drivers and motivations for creating the San Francisco Committee of Vigilance were political and socio-economic prerequisites such as high crime rates, the organizers’ desire to preserve their assets and platforms, and citizens’ dissatisfaction with local policymakers. California, San Francisco specifically, was the geographic center of the Gold Rush, and Americans and foreigners migrated there en masse these in hopes of getting rich and finding decent jobs.² Jobs and places were quickly filled, causing crime, social tensions and conflicts, and locals’ discontent with domestic and international newcomers to skyrocket. Then, according to Alexander, “San Francisco merchants established the “Committee of Vigilance” in 1851.”³ They managed to prevent social chaos by holding public hangings, mostly of thieves. This volunteer organization existed for about a year and reemerged in 1856. At that time, the main driver for their reappearance was municipal corruption and an attempt by “a gang of organized political plunderers” to establish their authoritarian rule within the city.⁴ They successfully purged the San Francisco political system, followed by the cheers of the public.

San Francisco’s Geography and Committee of Vigilance

The question that arises when studying the history of the San Francisco Committee of Vigilance is why it was San Francisco that became the place of origin of this social phenomenon of self-organization and local resistance. The primary reason is the discovery of large deposits of gold in the region now known as California. According to Alexander, “California’s Gold Rush transformed the small Spanish settlement of San Francisco into a boomtown as thousands of men flocked to California to make their fortunes.”⁵ Moreover, it is a coastal city, which made it easy for foreigners, Australians and Chinese especially, to travel there by ocean. Since its inception, San Francisco has become a multi-cultural, multi-lingual, and multi-ethnic place. Combined with its remoteness from the then infrastructure and political centers of the United States, weak law enforcement forces, and a much more prejudiced population than today, the city became a perfect geographical spot for societal mayhem. Simply put, the emergence of the San Francisco Committee of Vigilance was one of the natural outcomes of intertwining intensifying socio-economic processes in the city.

Hopes of the San Francisco Committee of Vigilance

From the viewpoint of modern morality, the San Francisco Committee of Viligance pursued both righteous and immoral ones by executing, kidnapping, and exiling criminals and municipal politicians. Among the right things they wanted to achieve, the primary one was to end “social and political uncertainty” finally.⁶ By forming the Committee of Vigilance, they created a sufficiently radical yet necessary tool capable of solving critical and deeply rooted socio-political problems that were deteriorating exponentially. To be more specific, they wanted criminals to fear civil society and its wrath in 1851. In 1865, their hopes were the return of political transparency, fair municipal elections, and no threats and killings of journalists and newsmakers. It was James King’s murder that served as a trigger for the second emergence of the San Francisco Committee of Vigilance.⁷ Their desire, which many today consider immoral, was to stop immigration to the city. For example, they sent more than 25 newly arrived Australians forcibly back to their homes.⁸ Moreover, their actions toward migrants were much crueler than those toward the locals.

Conclusion

Driven by a rapidly expanding socio-economic crisis in 1851 and a political one in 1856, people dissatisfied with high crime, a weak law enforcement institution, and poor immigration policy formed the San Francisco Committee of Vigilance two times in history. Their desires and hopes were a safe city, a transparent and fair municipal system without corruption, and slowing down and stopping migration. They also wanted to preserve their economic platform and assets that the phenomena listed above were destroying rapidly. Back then, California was a global region with a tremendous number of gold deposits. People of various cultures, races, and languages traveled there to try their luck and escape poverty, which eventually led to a relatively violent reaction from the locals.

Bibliography

Alexander, Kathy. “San Francisco Vigilantes.”Legends of America.

Allitt, Patrick N. “Vigilante Justice in the American Wild West.”Wondrium Daily.

Obert, Jonathan, and Eleonora Mattiacci. “Keeping Vigil: The Emergence of Vigilance Committees in Pre-Civil War America.”Perspectives on Politics 16, no. 3 (2018): 600-616.

Footnotes

1. Patrick N. Allitt, “Vigilante Justice in the American Wild West,” Wondrium Daily. Web.
2. Kathy Alexander, “San Francisco Vigilantes,” Legends of America. Web.
3. Alexander, “San Francisco Vigilantes”. Web.
4. Alexander, “San Francisco Vigilantes”. Web.
5. 5Allitt, “Vigilante Justice in the American Wild West”. Web.
6. Jonathan Obert and Eleonora Mattiacci, “Keeping Vigil: The Emergence of Vigilance Committees in Pre-Civil War America.” Perspectives on Politics 16, no. 3 (2018): 600-616. Web.
7. Alexander, “San Francisco Vigilantes”. Web.
8. Alexander, “San Francisco Vigilantes”. Web.