Author: Nancy J. Taniguchi
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806157054
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 434
Book Description
The California gold rush of 1849 created fortunes for San Francisco merchants, whose wealth depended on control of the city’s docks. But ownership of waterfront property was hotly contested. In an 1856 dispute over land titles, a county official shot an outspoken newspaperman, prompting a group of merchants to organize the San Francisco Committee of Vigilance. The committee, which met in secret, fed biased stories to the newspapers, depicting itself as a necessary substitute for incompetent law enforcement. But its actual purpose was quite different. In Dirty Deeds, historian Nancy J. Taniguchi draws on the 1856 Committee’s minutes—long lost until she unearthed them—to present the first clear picture of its actions and motivations. San Francisco’s real estate comprised a patchwork of land grants left from the Spanish and Mexican governments—grants that had been appropriated and sold over and over. Even after the establishment of a federal board in 1851 to settle the complicated California claims, land titles remained confused, and most of the land in the city belonged to no one. The acquisition of key waterfront properties in San Francisco by an ambitious politician motivated the thirty-odd merchants who called themselves “the Executives” of the Vigilance Committee to go directly after these parcels. Despite the organization’s assertion of working on behalf of law and order, its tactics—kidnapping, forced deportations, and even murder—went far beyond the bounds of law. For more than a century, scholars have accepted the vigilantes’ self-serving claims to honorable motives. Dirty Deeds tells the real story, in which a band of men took over a city in an attempt to control the most valuable land on the West Coast. Ranging far beyond San Francisco, the 1856 Vigilance Committee’s activities affected events on the East Coast, in Central America, and in courts throughout the United States even after the Civil War.
Dirty Deeds
Author: Nancy J. Taniguchi
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806157054
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 434
Book Description
The California gold rush of 1849 created fortunes for San Francisco merchants, whose wealth depended on control of the city’s docks. But ownership of waterfront property was hotly contested. In an 1856 dispute over land titles, a county official shot an outspoken newspaperman, prompting a group of merchants to organize the San Francisco Committee of Vigilance. The committee, which met in secret, fed biased stories to the newspapers, depicting itself as a necessary substitute for incompetent law enforcement. But its actual purpose was quite different. In Dirty Deeds, historian Nancy J. Taniguchi draws on the 1856 Committee’s minutes—long lost until she unearthed them—to present the first clear picture of its actions and motivations. San Francisco’s real estate comprised a patchwork of land grants left from the Spanish and Mexican governments—grants that had been appropriated and sold over and over. Even after the establishment of a federal board in 1851 to settle the complicated California claims, land titles remained confused, and most of the land in the city belonged to no one. The acquisition of key waterfront properties in San Francisco by an ambitious politician motivated the thirty-odd merchants who called themselves “the Executives” of the Vigilance Committee to go directly after these parcels. Despite the organization’s assertion of working on behalf of law and order, its tactics—kidnapping, forced deportations, and even murder—went far beyond the bounds of law. For more than a century, scholars have accepted the vigilantes’ self-serving claims to honorable motives. Dirty Deeds tells the real story, in which a band of men took over a city in an attempt to control the most valuable land on the West Coast. Ranging far beyond San Francisco, the 1856 Vigilance Committee’s activities affected events on the East Coast, in Central America, and in courts throughout the United States even after the Civil War.
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806157054
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 434
Book Description
The California gold rush of 1849 created fortunes for San Francisco merchants, whose wealth depended on control of the city’s docks. But ownership of waterfront property was hotly contested. In an 1856 dispute over land titles, a county official shot an outspoken newspaperman, prompting a group of merchants to organize the San Francisco Committee of Vigilance. The committee, which met in secret, fed biased stories to the newspapers, depicting itself as a necessary substitute for incompetent law enforcement. But its actual purpose was quite different. In Dirty Deeds, historian Nancy J. Taniguchi draws on the 1856 Committee’s minutes—long lost until she unearthed them—to present the first clear picture of its actions and motivations. San Francisco’s real estate comprised a patchwork of land grants left from the Spanish and Mexican governments—grants that had been appropriated and sold over and over. Even after the establishment of a federal board in 1851 to settle the complicated California claims, land titles remained confused, and most of the land in the city belonged to no one. The acquisition of key waterfront properties in San Francisco by an ambitious politician motivated the thirty-odd merchants who called themselves “the Executives” of the Vigilance Committee to go directly after these parcels. Despite the organization’s assertion of working on behalf of law and order, its tactics—kidnapping, forced deportations, and even murder—went far beyond the bounds of law. For more than a century, scholars have accepted the vigilantes’ self-serving claims to honorable motives. Dirty Deeds tells the real story, in which a band of men took over a city in an attempt to control the most valuable land on the West Coast. Ranging far beyond San Francisco, the 1856 Vigilance Committee’s activities affected events on the East Coast, in Central America, and in courts throughout the United States even after the Civil War.
California, from the Conquest of 1846 to the Second Vigilance Committee in San Francisco [1856]
Author: Josiah Royce
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : California
Languages : en
Pages : 546
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : California
Languages : en
Pages : 546
Book Description
Committee of Vigilance
Author: George R. Stewart
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : San Francisco (Calif.)
Languages : en
Pages : 360
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : San Francisco (Calif.)
Languages : en
Pages : 360
Book Description
Memoirs of General William T. Sherman
Author: William Tecumseh Sherman
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Generals
Languages : en
Pages : 428
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Generals
Languages : en
Pages : 428
Book Description
Vigilantes in Gold Rush San Francisco
Author: Robert M. Senkewicz
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780804712309
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 272
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780804712309
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 272
Book Description
Bloody Bay
Author: Darren A. Raspa
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1496217535
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 314
Book Description
Bloody Bay follows the history of policing in nineteenth-century San Francisco, exploring the city’s culture of popular justice, its multi-ethnic environment, and how the unique relationships formed between informal and formal policing created a more progressive policing environment than anywhere else in the nation.
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1496217535
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 314
Book Description
Bloody Bay follows the history of policing in nineteenth-century San Francisco, exploring the city’s culture of popular justice, its multi-ethnic environment, and how the unique relationships formed between informal and formal policing created a more progressive policing environment than anywhere else in the nation.
California, 1849-1913; Or, The Rambling Sketches and Experiences of Sixty-four Years' Residence in that State
Author: L. H. Woolley
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 3368333879
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 98
Book Description
Reproduction of the original.
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 3368333879
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 98
Book Description
Reproduction of the original.
The Vigilance Committee of 1856
Author: James O'Meara
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Lynching
Languages : en
Pages : 64
Book Description
Describes the actions of the San Francisco Committee of Vigilance that resulted in the lynching of James P. Casey and Charles Cora following the murder of James King.
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Lynching
Languages : en
Pages : 64
Book Description
Describes the actions of the San Francisco Committee of Vigilance that resulted in the lynching of James P. Casey and Charles Cora following the murder of James King.
San Francisco, 1846-1856
Author: Roger W. Lotchin
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252066313
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 460
Book Description
Kathleen Gregory Klein traces female paid, professional private investigators in British, Canadian, and American novels, revealing that the detective novel is both a reflection of and potential barrier to social change for women. This edition adds sixty new female private eyes to the roster and includes an afterword that assesses the current state of the genre's new and old novels. A comprehensive bibliography and a character list update the field through mid-1994.
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252066313
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 460
Book Description
Kathleen Gregory Klein traces female paid, professional private investigators in British, Canadian, and American novels, revealing that the detective novel is both a reflection of and potential barrier to social change for women. This edition adds sixty new female private eyes to the roster and includes an afterword that assesses the current state of the genre's new and old novels. A comprehensive bibliography and a character list update the field through mid-1994.
California, In-doors and Out
Author: Eliza Wood Farnham
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 542
Book Description
During her three years as matron of the Female Prison at Sing Sing, 1844-1848, Eliza Burhans Farnham (1815-1864) tried to institute reforms based on phrenology. Discharged from the post, she soon learned that her lawyer-husband had died in California, leaving her with affairs to settle there. Farnham set about organizing a pioneer party of single, educated women to join her in the voyage round the Horn. California, in-doors and out (1856) opens with a description of her harrowing voyage round the Horn in 1849. In 1850 Farnham and her children moved to El Rancho La Libertad, the Santa Cruz farm left to her by her husband. She describes her experiences as a farmer, the position of women in California, mining life, the history of the Donner Expedition based on interviews with survivors, and the 1856 San Francisco Vigilance Committee.
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 542
Book Description
During her three years as matron of the Female Prison at Sing Sing, 1844-1848, Eliza Burhans Farnham (1815-1864) tried to institute reforms based on phrenology. Discharged from the post, she soon learned that her lawyer-husband had died in California, leaving her with affairs to settle there. Farnham set about organizing a pioneer party of single, educated women to join her in the voyage round the Horn. California, in-doors and out (1856) opens with a description of her harrowing voyage round the Horn in 1849. In 1850 Farnham and her children moved to El Rancho La Libertad, the Santa Cruz farm left to her by her husband. She describes her experiences as a farmer, the position of women in California, mining life, the history of the Donner Expedition based on interviews with survivors, and the 1856 San Francisco Vigilance Committee.