l tradition of the State.
Gold Rush and the Outbreak of Violence in San Francisco
According to Hollon, "the discovery of gold on the American River in January 1849 touched off a rush to the Pacific Coast that was unprecedented in the history of the world" (57). The prospectors came from all ends of the earth and created the spirit of the '49ers which early historian Williams quoted as "raging, seething, red hot pandemonia" (432). They came overland on the trails and by sea through the port of San Francisco, which the United States Army had seized from the local Mexicans or Californios in 1846. San Francisco was hardly more than a village with a variegated, predominantly male population which increased from 800 hundred in 1848 to about 36,000 in 1852 (Royce 40; Byington 227). The city became a major financial and shipping center in which fortunes were made and lost quickly. It was administered by federal troops and a local elected alcalde, a combination of mayor, sheriff, justice of the peace and tax collector. Although California was admitted to the Union in September, 1850, Congress largely left it to its own devices in the 1850s and thereby contributed to the problem of public order.
According to Beals, San Francisco's dwellings were mostly tents and shacks, teeming with recent immigrants and vagrants of all descriptions, the city at night featured "gambling halls, saloons, dance halls, whore houses [which] ruled every street" (209). In 1849, a non-white race hating group called the Hounds, which was made up of discharged American soldiers, many of whom were Irish, and some Australian criminals, preyed on the local citizenry, waylaid passers by and raided the local Chilean community. They were suppressed by the authorities, which then consisted of only 75 policemen, with the help of voluntary citizen groups, who were the progenitors of the San Francisco Vigilance Committee of 1851.
A rash of murders (more than 100) a...