Talk:San Francisco Committee of Vigilance

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Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 08:38, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

NPOV Stub

This article doesn't even metion the 1851 Committee, which was specifically founded to FIGHT racial attacks (on Chileans). As Stewert noted in his book on the 1851 Committee, "Committee of Vigilance" -- the overwhelming ideological makeup was abolitionist. Four of the 800 members of the 1851 Committee became Union Army generals, another was a colonel killed at Gettysburg.

Their primary opponents were the "Chivs" -- the so-called "Chivalry Democrats" e.g., the pro-south faction in the state. The Irish pols simply aligned themselves with the Chivs.

Exactly who were the 1851 guys racist against? Australians?Scott Adler 03:20, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Needs Expansion

This article on the vigilance movement needs serious expansion. The vigilance movement was not limited to San Francisco and extended well beyond the gold rush and into the continental railroad construction.

While there probably was racism involved, you hear slightly different stories. I have personally read (from a book I conside to be pretty good, and not fiction) that the chinese were exempt from being hanged. Get the snot beaten out of them yes, but for some reason this book on the Tong wars claimed no chinese was ever lynched for any reason. ?????--71.193.3.242 02:59, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Did a little checking on Wikipedia. There are several articles on vigilance/vigilantes. There is a lot of overlap w this article. Suggest the title should not include San Francisco and it would be beneficial to roll the several articles into one (w a bunch of links to reach that article in case someone actually LOOKS for "San Francisco" vigilance.24.10.102.46 18:45, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

NPOV

At the very least there should be documentation of ant alleged racist action. Based upon the links, we're taking the word of a retired alternative ecologist versus the San Francisco City Museum. ~

---

I agree, this is quite poorly sourced at the present time.

Also, the ecologist source appears to take the conspiratorial view of history. For instance, most of the historical sources that it references are presented to the reader not as available facts, but as examples of alleged "pro-vigilante propaganda of the era". While we should certainly not censor such a valuable alternate perspective, it should nevertheless be presented alongside of some more mainstream interpretations.

I am editing the half-sentence on Casey, to make it agree more with the historical sources from both websites (in spite of the ecologist source's claim that the historical sources are propagandist in nature). I am changing "Casey, a newspaper editor, had been involved in a duel as the result of an accusation of libel", to, "Casey had murdered a rival newspaper editor, shortly after the man published an editorial exposing Casey's criminal record in New York." Perhaps an additional sentence could be added by someone, detailing yet keeping separate the conspiratorialist viewpoint. FrederickU 07:20, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Murder was committed by the San Francisco vigilantes. Each committee committed 4 murders at a time and place where there were established law enforcement in effect. I host the webpage cited that supposedly is non-mainstream. I spent 6 years in research, examined actual newspapers fragmenting from age in my hands, viewed microfilm of others which were only surviving copies because they were photocopied before they crumbled to dust, read rare books in the SF reading room.

Sam Brannan went to trial as soon as he landed in San Francisco in 1848, having impounded property of others by "law of the sea" and by contract that he was the settler's leader and had absolute arbitrary authority. The Mormon Church wrote a history of their attempting to recover property seized by him. He founded the first and was active in the second vigilante movement. I spoke with the voices of the dead who cry out for truth. I visited the graves of Sullivan, Casey and Cora in the Mission Dolores cemetery. There were no goodguys on either side of the nooses, but the history that some goodguys existed was more false than true -- the greater evil was the Chamber of Commerce Murders, not the mostly petty crooks that they lynched.

The victors write the history. The Chamber of Commerce Murders were committed by men made wealthy in unsavory deals. They hired the best historian available, a man who has a main street in Berkeley named after him and a hall at UCB named after him. Bancroft was known then and easily confirnmed now as a person who wrote bogus histories for wealthy clients. Another historian, Royce, was bounced on the knee as a child by chief vigilante Coleman, of '56. If you want neutral POV you have to deal with their biases and make them mainstream, so that the contradictory facts found in their own writings no longer condemns them as whitewashers of broad-daylight murder.

If you read it all, there is delicious controversy, nothing at all like the bland whitewash history, and the fascination of the sordidness draws you to read more sources to finally really knoiw what the ttruth is at the bottom of it all. Painting a whitewash on people who have been dead for 100 years is as useless as describing Bluebeard the pirate in neutral terms.

I started out as an enthusiast for the vigilantes, and ended up disgusted with their brutality and deviousness. These are no more candidates for historical pedestals than Josef Mengele.

You don't tell the drama in your boring recitation of the dullest factoids. You don't have the 3,000 men surrounding the county jail to take Casey with a loaded cannon rolled up to the front door of the jail. Nor do you have enough of interest that somebody living in San Francisco would want to go visit the site and try to picture that scene that day. The spot where Casey shot King of Edward is now the Transamerica Pyramid, the largest tombstone ever erected, historically interesting because it was the place where the bay was first filled in. Nothing left after your desperate attempt to weed out any speck of interest would inspire me to walk across the street to try to find the spot. You took real human beings lives and turned them into nothing more than some lazy high schooler's pre-written homework assignment that they can just copy and paste and get a "C" grade on. I'm just glad you don't have a page on my life, and may I have the good fortune to die before you ever do. Who ever told you that life was supposed to be bland, or that it actually is?

POV

I expanded the article, basically just paraphrasing one source; it could use further expansion with more diverse sources. I also linked a 1921 book that's still fairly authoritative in the academic world. I also removed the POV tag because a) I don't see much that's left, and b) judging from the above discussion, folks need to get over whether the vigilantes were heroes or villains. It's not our job to "inspire" readers. It's an encyclopedia, after all, not a romantic adventure story. When's the last time anyone read an Encyclopedia Britannia entry and were so touched by the human experience of the subject that they were moved to tears or action? As a reader, it's insulting to be told how I should feel about a subject or how facts should be interepreted. Just give the facts, and if there's controversy over how the facts are interpreted in the historiography, just say so. bobanny 22:07, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

This article is still rather biased against the vigilantes. Aldrich Hanssen (talk) 21:35, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

It was a coup d'etat, plain and simple. Adding selective quotes from Vigilante propaganda (which needs a cite, btw) and changing "lynching" to "hanging" to misleadingly make it look like they were acting legally and with constitutional authority doesn't help the article at all. By "biased against the Vigilantes" I assume you mean the article isn't gushingly pro-vigilante? The tag says the content is being disputed, but if you don't make the case as to why it's biased, there's no dispute, just your judgment. Please give reasons for your disagreements so they can be addressed.

Federal shipment?

I removed "federal" from the description of the shipments (there were three) of arms the Vigilants seized in the week of June 15–22. Bancroft’s Popular Tribunals is rather unclear on the source of the arms, but Gen. Wool’s correspondence with Washington has been preserved and he was expressly forbidden to take a side in the conflict or to make Federal arms available to either side. (He then had to explain to the governor why his promise of aid wasn't really a promise of aid.) Sherman was disgusted by the failure of the federal arsenal to assist in the matter. There was the suspicion that some of the arms that the Law and Order party tried to ship across had been stolen from the Federal Arsenal (see C.E. Wetmore’s June 19 letter to the Vigilance Committee), and the shipments clearly weren't authorized by the federal government since the guards on the shipment that Wetmore exposed had been worried that word would get back to Gen. Wool.

Unless there is some source that contradicts Gen. Wool’s correspondence and refusal to help, I think it is best to leave the source vague since the arms were almost certainly either from the State or stolen from the Arsenal, but were not a federal action.

I'd be interested in discussing this issue, as the precise source of the arms matters for my own research.

-Fenevad (talk) 08:14, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

Unsourced paragraph in Controversy removed

In February 2015, an unsigned editor added a new paragraph to the beginning of the Controversy section. This paragraph had multiple errors of fact and formatting and contained no sources. I did some brief research and found no sources to support the information written in that paragraph; in fact, a glance at online copies of newspaper accounts and trial transcripts suggest that much of what was in that paragraph was incorrect. I've removed the entire paragraph. Clockster (talk) 14:00, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

Samuel Longley

• http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~npmelton/scblong.htm
• http://www.plazaview.com/Bickford's/BickfordStory3-4.html
• http://www.plazaview.com/Bickford's/BickfordStory5-6.html
• https://books.google.com/books?id=tBurAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA304&lpg=PA304&dq=%22Samuel-Longley%22
• Recollections of a long and somewhat uneventful life, by Stephen A. Bemis
• Recollections of a long and somewhat uneventful life, by Stephen A. Bemis

Xb2u7Zjzc32 (talk) 18:24, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

?

• https://archive.org/details/historyoftownofs00chan
• https://archive.org/details/shirleyuplandsin00bolt

12:50, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

Dutch Charley's Fight Against the Vigilantes

• John Boessenecker. Dutch Charley's Fight Against the Vigilantes Wild West Magazine, February 2001, Vol. 13, Issue 5, Page 24.

  The two largest movements of vigilantism in the American West occurred in 1851 and 1856 San Francisco during the California Gold Rush. Not in favor of the Committee was Charles P. ("Dutch Charley") Duane. In '51, the Committee of Vigilance banished Dutch Charley from San Francisco, saying he would face a penalty of death if he returned. Seems he had been involved in at least seven brawls, including the beating and shooting of a French actor named Amedee Fayolle. When the vigilantes disbanded that fall, Duane was soon back in town and making trouble again. During the next several years, he was involved in at least half a dozen violent incidents. When the San Francisco Committee of Vigilance formed in 1856, it targeted Dutch Charley and once again warned him to leave and never to return under penalty of death. However, Dutch Charley was also a fearless fireman. He played a courageous role in saving much of the St. Francis Hotel from a fiery fate in October 1853 and, less than two months after that, was elected chief engineer of the fire department. When the heat died down after his 1856 banishment from San Francisco, Duane returned to town early in 1860 and, within weeks, was honored during a fire department meeting. Dutch Charley would stay put, become involved in politics again (he had once been a chief henchman for the politically powerful David C. Broderick), and outlast most of his drinking buddies.
  http://www.maritimeheritage.org/news/SF02151849.html

Xb2u7Zjzc32 (talk) 17:27, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

• "Dutch Charley" — California Digital Newspaper Collection
• Book Review: Against the Vigilantes: (edited and introduction by John Boessenecker) - HistoryNet
• Charles Patrick "Dutch Charley" Duane (1827 - 1887) - Find A Grave Memorial
• John Boessenecker. Duane, Charles P. "Dutch Charley" San Francisco Gunfighter San Francisco Museum and Historical Society.
• The Murder of Senator David Broderick
• General William T. Sherman and the 1856 Committee of Vigilance
• http://www.nytimes.com/1860/02/25/news/senator-broderick-sketch-life-political-career-late-dc-broderick.html?pagewanted=all
• http://www.nytimes.com/1860/04/28/news/california-refreshing-variety-weather-fiery-dragons-sky-official-reception.html?pagewanted=all

  You must remember CHARLEY DUANE. He was once Chief of the San Francisco Fire Department. He left here under the suggestion of the Vigilance Committee, and lately returned. He suddenly turns up at Sacramento, where the Assembly has passed an act paving him $2,872 for expenses on the Department in 1855. The bill, which was one of "Sundries," was in 1856 before our local boards, and an ordinance passed recommending the payment of one half of it. CHARLEY could not wait in his haste to be off to collect all his dues. The Democratic Legislature, always willing to show San Francisco that it has a great contempt for its Vigilance Committee, is only too anxious to double the amount and pass the bill with all haste. GLAUCUS.

• Sherman and the San Francisco Vigilantes: Unpublished Letters of Major General William Tecumseh Sherman, California Militia The Century Magazine, December 1891.
• O'Meara, James. (1825-1903) The vigilance committee of 1856 1887. (archive.org)

Xb2u7Zjzc32 (talk) 18:48, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

• O'Meara, James. (1825-1903) "Charley Duane" from The vigilance committee of 1856 1887. (books.google)
• Dutch Charley and the History of Alamo Square Park
• The notorious Charley Duane Brooklyn Evening Star: Brooklyn, New York. July 2, 1856.
• LETTER FROM NEW YORK. Sacramento Daily Union, Volume 18, Number 2683, 2 November 1859 . "...Charley Duane, etc, parade Broadway in the afternoon, and at night stand in delightful little knots at the corners of Broadway and Houston..."
• http://guardiansofthecity.org/sffd/chiefs/duane.html
• J. Parker Whitney Reminiscences of a Sportsman ("Charley Duane", p.8)
• Our San Francisco Correspondence: ("Charley Duane", p.3) NY Herald June 30, 1856.
• E. W. ROBERTS. HISTORICAL SKETCH OF ROUGH & READY TOWNSHIP BEAN'S HISTORY & DIRECTORY OF NEVADA COUNTY, CALIFORNIA. 1867. "W. G. Ross, lately killed by Charley Duane"
• The San Francisco Vigilantes (Continued From Page Five) East Oregonian : (Pendleton, Umatilla Co., Or.) September 25, 1914, ROUND-UP SOUVENIR EDITION, Page 14. "...There were Charley Duane. Milly Mulligan. Bill Carr, Wooley Kearney, and several others. These men were tried and sentenced to banishment, and on a certain night, when a steamer was ready to depart for Panama, a strong guard was seen taking them..."
• Bell, Horace, 1830-1918; Reminiscences of a ranger : or, early times in Southern California Yarnell, Caystile & Mathes, printer. 1881. "...Now it so happened that Charley Duane organized a big crowd of hard..."
• Louis John Stellman. Port O' Gold. "Ned McGowan, James P. Casey, Sheriff Scannell and his aid, Billy Mulligan, had frequent conferences in the offices of Casey's Sunday Times. Broderick held more or less aloof from his political subordinates these troublous days. But Charley Duane, former chief engineer of the fire department, was their frequent consort.
• Evening star. (Washington, D.C.), June 20, 1856, Page 1. "Charley Duane"
• The New York herald. › June 29, 1856 "Charley Duane"

Xb2u7Zjzc32 (talk) 21:36, 24 February 2017 (UTC)