San Francisco Vigilance Committees

This research paper explains the background of events and circumstances which gave rise to the San Francisco Vigilance Committees of 1851 and 1856, including a brief summary of their activities. It then discusses the view taken by various historians as to the legitimacy or illegitimacy, morality or immorality of those actions and examines their historical significance for California.

The Vigilance Committee of 1851 came about because of the adverse spillover effects of the 1848 Gold Rush on the City of San Francisco. Its illegal actions were almost inevitable, given the circumstances then prevailing, and cannot fairly be judged in retrospect to have been unjustified, as some 20th century historians have attempted to do. The Vigilance Committee of 1856 arose out of similar, but in important respects fundamentally different, conditions. It amounted to an insurrection by a small group of businessmen and others who usurped political power in the City to protect their own economic interests in the face of opposition from the federal and state government, as well as significant elements of the local population. Both Vigilance Committees represented strong reactions by some to economic and social disruptions which were characteristic of many American urban areas during the 1850s, including nativist prejudice against non-Anglo residents and immigrants, and which were occurring nationally. The longer range legacy of these Vigilan

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rganization steeped in graft and consisting mostly of Irish-Catholics. The Democratic leader was David Broderick who was said to take a 50 percent kickback on all municipal salaries (Beals 211). The predominance of the new immigrants in politics threatened the privileges and interests of the city's predominantly Anglo Protestant merchants. They were also opposed by various nativist elements which had obtained power in Sacramento under the aegis of the Know-Nothing Party, which had achieved control of various states in New England, parts of the South and in California and nominated a Presidential candidate in 1856, former President Millard Fillmore, before being absorbed into the new Republican Party. The Know-Nothings stood for the protectionism of small farmers and businessmen and all 100 percent native Americans (earlier settlers) whose security was threatened by industrialization and the mass wave of immigration which began in the 1840s. Holt says that "rapid social and economic change in the 1850s intensified anti-Catholicism . . . while it simultaneously created a hostility to politicians and an impatience with political parties" (116). He said that "Politically, the immigrants were believed to subvert the democratic proc
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Approximate Word count = 2920
Approximate Pages = 12 (250 words per page)