The California Gold Rush and the Coming of the Civil War (30 page)

Broderick and Bigler also tried to gain control of Gwin’s Senate seat. They had mixed motives. Gwin, in their eyes, had sat on his hands during the gubernatorial election, and some of his men had sabotaged the party effort. Shouldn’t there be a price to pay for such treachery? Bigler and Broderick thought so. In addition—and far more important—Broderick wanted the seat for himself.

When the state legislature met in Benicia in January 1854, Gwin still had more than a year to serve. His term didn’t expire until March 1855. There was nothing in the law, however, to prevent the legislature from choosing a replacement a year in advance. Other states had done so. Why not California? The plan of action was simple. Since the Democrats controlled both houses of the legislature, all that was necessary was to get all the Democrats into caucus and make a decision. Should there be an early election or not?

Broderick worked diligently to force passage of an election bill. He organized, he intrigued, he bullied. He eventually managed to get forty assemblymen and fifteen senators to sign an address, probably written by his friend George Wilkes, that denounced party members who sat out the last election, “who tried to betray the party on the field of battle.” Meanwhile, a minority document was put forth, signed by eleven senators and twenty-six assemblymen, calling for the party to wait until 1855, the year Gwin’s term was over.
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As the procedure crept along, lawmakers received hundreds of letters and petitions for and against the proposal. Sixteen hundred residents of Tuolumne County thought an early election would be beneficial to them and the state. One Mexican leader told one of his compatriots that Broderick was their only “sincere” friend and deserved their full support. At the same time, others denounced Broderick as a “ruffian,” a “plunderer,” a “Bullying rowdy fireman,” and the keeper of “a three cent grogery.” Still others labeled him an abolitionist and thus dangerous to the South.
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The legislature initially planned to wrap up the entire matter by February 25. For on that day, they were scheduled to leave Benicia and move north to Sacramento. Surely, said many, the controversy would be settled by then. It wasn’t. It dragged on. Finally, on March 6, in their new quarters in Sacramento, the election bill passed the assembly. In the senate, the initial vote ended in a tie. The presiding officer then voted with the Broderick forces. The Broderick men celebrated long into the night.

The victory celebration was premature, however. For the next day, Jacob Grewell, a former Baptist minister who had voted for the bill, called for the bill’s reconsideration. His motion passed, and the senate then rejected the assembly bill, 17 to 14.

The Gwin men thus prevailed, but the rift in the Democratic Party was wider than ever before. It became wider still when the state Democratic convention met on July 18, 1854, at the First Baptist Church in Sacramento.

Hours before the meeting time, Broderick packed the church with his supporters, and then had the fire marshal order the doors closed. His followers then nominated and elected Edward McGowan, one of his closest associates, permanent chairman. The Gwin forces, however, refused to recognize this decision and chose the ex-governor John McDougal permanent chairman. Two sets of officers then tried to gain control of the podium. Neither side got the upper hand. One fracas followed another. The church trustees became alarmed. Might their church be destroyed? They finally decided to kick all the delegates out of the church.

The next day the Gwin men met at Musical Hall. They affirmed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, saying that it should have the backing of “every true lover of republican principles” and noting with “regret” that a “few who claim to be democrats” didn’t support it. They also endorsed Robert Walker’s Atlantic and Pacific Railroad, which would have linked California with the Deep South, as “the greatest national work of the age.” They then nominated two Southern men for Congress, Philemon Herbert, a twenty-eight-year-old from Alabama, and James W. Denver, a thirty-six-year-old native of Virginia. Two years earlier, in 1852, Denver had been involved in a duel with one of Broderick’s allies and one of the state’s first congressmen, the New York–born newspaper editor Edward Gilbert. The weapons had been Wesson rifles, at forty paces, and after two shots Denver had emerged victorious.

Meanwhile, at nearby Carpenter’s Hall, the Broderick forces met. They endorsed the party’s free-soil platform of 1853 and nominated for two more years in Congress the party’s sitting representatives, Milton S. Latham, a twenty-seven-year-old Ohioan, and James A. McDougall, a thirty-six-year-old New Yorker. They had no idea, however, if either man would accept a second term, as the two men were in transit back to California.
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The election campaign was even more divisive. With half the Democratic candidates campaigning as “Anti-Broderick Democrats,” half as “Broderick Democrats,” brawls and fistfights were the order of the day. Then, at the last minute, Latham withdrew, and the Gwin forces won easily, roughly 36,000 votes to 10,000. One of the two Chiv victors, Philemon Herbert, eventually disgraced his backers. After a night of debauchery in the nation’s capital, he went to Willard’s Hotel for breakfast, got into an altercation with Thomas Keating, an Irish waiter, and shot him dead. That ended Herbert’s legislative career. He later fought for the Confederacy.
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The other victor, James Denver, had a more illustrious career. He became an important figure in Democratic politics, and years later the city of Denver was named after him.

The Broderick forces not only got clobbered in the congressional elections of 1854. They then had to cope with the nativist crusade of the mid-1850s. Both the Know-Nothing Party and the San Francisco Vigilance Committee of 1856 singled out the Broderick men for attack. In doing so, they often had help from the followers of Gwin.

Vigilantism, which had been prevalent in 1851, enjoyed a rebirth in 1856 thanks largely to two incidents.
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One involved Gwin’s handpicked U.S. marshal, General William H. Richardson. The general took his wife to the opening of the American Theater in San Francisco. To his shock, the gambler Charles Cora and his mistress, Arabella Ryan, the wealthy owner of a notorious brothel, took a seat in a nearby box. Richardson was furious. Several days later, in a drunken rage, he accosted Cora with a drawn pistol, and Cora shot Richardson dead. Cora’s lawyers then argued that he had acted in self-defense, and the trial ended in a hung jury.

The other incident involved a supporter of Broderick. Thanks largely to Broderick, James P. Casey had more than his share of city posts, including deputy county treasurer for two years and inspector of elections. In the spring of 1856, he won a seat on the County Board of Supervisors. The editor of the San Francisco
Evening Bulletin,
James King of William, then went on an editorial rampage. Never one to mince words, he characterized Casey as a former Sing Sing convict who had been imported by Broderick from New York to stuff ballot boxes. Casey tried to get a retraction. Failing to do so, he then openly shot King on the street. Badly wounded, King died a slow death.

King had been a key member of the first Vigilance Committee of 1851. The very hour he was buried, a second committee came into being. Backed by over two thousand men, they seized Casey and Cora from an unresisting sheriff, tried them hastily, and publicly hanged them four days later. The hangman, Sydney Hopkins, reportedly gloated as he put a hood over Casey’s head. The vigilantes then forcibly seized arms from the state militia and held a huge parade, some six thousand strong. They also set about to purge the city of “corruption,” singling out twenty-nine “cancerous” men to be eliminated through hanging, prison, or exile.

Hanging of Charles Cora and James P. Casey. Reprinted from
The San Francisco Daily Town Talk,
May 25, 1856.

Nearly all twenty-nine were Democrats. Most were Irish Catholic and friends of Broderick’s. On the list was Edward McGowan, Broderick’s choice to head the 1854 state Democratic convention. Thanks to Broderick, he had also been a justice of the peace, associate justice of the San Francisco Court of Sessions, and commissioner of emigration. Also on the list were John W. Bagley, who had been an assemblyman in 1854; Charles P. Duane, chief engineer of the fire department; William Mulligan, collector of state and county licenses, deputy sheriff, and jailer; Billy Carr, member of the Charter Convention and general inspector and manager of the First Ward polls; Martin Gallagher, judge of elections in the First Ward; Terence Kelly, judge of elections at the Presidio; James Cusick, judge of elections in the Sixth Ward. Also to be banished were Michael Brannegan, John Cooney, John Crowe, T. B. Cunningham, James Hennessey, James R. Maloney, Billy Mulligan, and Thomas Mulloy.
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Broderick, along with everyone else of Irish ancestry, took the list seriously. Yet if his opponents thought that vigilantism would weaken his hold on the city, they were sadly mistaken. Within days, he and his men put together an organization to resist the Second Vigilance Committee. They called themselves the Law and Order Party. The rank and file of this party, according to the
Alta California,
were “without exception, natives of Ireland.” They especially detested the committee’s hangman, Sydney Hopkins, who they claimed was a lowlife who had once pimped for both his wife and his mother. They were soon joined by another largely Irish organization, the Jackson Guards, and gained the support of several notable San Franciscans, including William Tecumseh Sherman.
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In time, the Vigilance Committee overplayed their hand. Within a month, seventeen men had been deported, all Irish, all friends of Broderick’s. Then, in June, the committee called for the banishment of Thomas McGuire, the owner of the Jenny Lind Theater, with whom Broderick had once lived. To many San Franciscans, McGuire was a model citizen, a good, hardworking, law-abiding man. Why was he chosen for banishment? Was it because he was Irish and a friend of Broderick’s? Were the banishments politically inspired? Were the vigilantes simply doing dirty work for Gwin and the Chivs? For Foote and the Know-Nothings?

And then, on July 19, the committee ordered the arrest of Broderick himself. That convinced Gerritt W. Ryckman. A prominent leader of the 1851 committee, Ryckman was still a powerful man in San Francisco. He had also suspected all along that the leaders of the 1856 committee were politically motivated. Storming into their headquarters, he gave them an ultimatum. “I told you, you were going to make a political engine of it,” said Ryckman. “If you don’t rescind that order for the arrest of Broderick, I will tap the bell and order an opposition and arrest every damn one of you.” The committee leaders then rescinded the order, Broderick went to talk with them, and they treated him with kid gloves.
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In the short term, the Vigilance Committee and the Know-Nothings undoubtedly made life difficult for Broderick. In the long term, however, they probably strengthened his hand.

By the fall of 1856, many committee members thought the battle was all but over. They were certain that they had created a new San Francisco, that they had rid the city of “ruffians, shoulder-strikers, and ballot-box stuffers,” and that elections were now in the hands of “the most responsible men in the city.” If that was the case, they had used a sledgehammer to kill a flea. For in the fall elections, the changes were minimal. The men still congregated in taverns and marched to the polls in ranks. And out of twelve thousand votes cast, the difference from the previous election was fewer than two hundred votes.
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The Broderick men lost some key districts to the People’s Party, a new organization that had arisen during the vigilante crusade. But with the shift of a few votes in the next election, the Broderick organization would be back in full control. Broderick himself knew that was the case. Before the election, he reported the situation to Pablo de la Guerra, a political ally: “The efforts of my enemies, Gwin, Foote, Bailie Peyton, etc., to direct the aim of the Vigilance Committee against me, have signally failed, to their great discomfiture.”
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Of the same opinion was Milton Latham, the twenty-nine-year-old Ohio-born politician who had defected from Broderick’s ranks in the 1854 congressional election. Latham had spent his formative years in Alabama before moving to California, knew Southerners well, and now spent much of his time trying to line up Chiv support for a seat in the U.S. Senate. As he explained to one Chiv stalwart, Broderick still was in a position of power. Not only did he have the support of some thirty men in the state legislature, but these men were tied to him “in the most wonderful degree.” They would do anything for him. And with these thirty-odd men as his base, all he had to do was pick up a handful of votes to be in complete control.
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These words were hardly welcome in Chiv circles. The Chivs had been busy celebrating Broderick’s demise. One Chiv had indicated that Broderick had been shorn of his power in San Francisco, Sacramento, and Santa Clara. Another had said that several of his former “wirepullers” had become “Republican Blacks.” Gwin himself had been especially upbeat. After analyzing the makeup of the new legislature, he had predicted glorious days ahead. “We have the materials to achieve a complete and brilliant triumph,” wrote Gwin.
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