The Vigilance Committee of '56.
By a Pioneer California Journalist
[James O'Meara]
[Updater's note: There was no indication of the locationof Chapter VI in this file]
| I | II | III | IV | V | VI | VII |
Chapter I.
Many accounts of the Vigilance Committee of San Francisco have beenpublished, but all of them, so far as I have seen, were from the pen ofmembers of that organization, or else from persons who favored it. As aconsequence their accounts of it were either partial, to a greater orless degree, or imperfect otherwise; and much has been omitted as wellas misstated and misrepresented otherwise. I was not a member of theVigilance Committee, nor was I a member of the opposing organization,known as the Law and Order body, of which General Sherman was the headand Volney E. Howard next in rank. I have never been in favor of mob orlynch-law in any form, and, therefore, had neither sympathy with nordisposition to join the Vigilance Committee. And while I was earnestlyin support of Law and Order, I did not feel that I could better subservethat cause by joining the organization formed at that time, for theavowed purpose of maintaining the one and enforcing the other. I hadmany friends on each side, and I also knew many in each organization whowere unworthy of fellowship in any good or honorable cause orassociation; and some of these bore prominent rank in each organization.As was said of the Regulators of Texas, who directed their energieschiefly against horse thieves and robbers, that some of the worst andmost guilty of them hastened to join the band, in order to savethemselves from arrest and the rope or bullet, likewise were there someprominent in the Vigilance Committee of 1856, who undoubtedly joined itfor similar reasons—to escape the terrors of the organization; and theExecutive Committee was not exempt from these infamous characters.
The Executive Committee, forty-one in number, was thus composed inmembership: William T. Coleman, James Dows, Thomas J. L. Smiley, John P.Monrow, Charles Doane, James N. Olney, Isaac Bluxome, Jr., WilliamMeyers, Charles Ludlow,—Christler, Richard M. Jessup, Charles J.Dempster, George R. Ward, E. P. Flint, Wm. Rogers, Aaron M. Burns, MiersF. Truitt, W. H. Tillinghast, W. Arrington, Charles L. Case, J. D.Farwell, W. T. Thompson, Eugene Dellesert, J. K. Osgood, J. W. Brittan,Jules David, C. V. Gillespie,