Sooner or later, someone will try to excuse the election shenanigans that have come to light in the 9th Congressional District of North Carolina by arguing that mishandling absentee ballots is part of a long-standing American tradition of dodgy practices in elections. It’s a statement that’s true, as far as it goes, but history shows us that the anti-democratic consequences of election manipulation are no small matter. Election fraud is so pernicious because its perpetrators generally use anti-democratic means to subvert not just the will, but also the interests, of the people at large.
This is the story of election fraud, politics, land disputes, murder, and vigilantism in San Francisco in 1856, in the waning days of the California Gold Rush. The election fraud then served the interests of parties attempting to secure large land holdings, which could have turned California into practically a feudal State. The fraud spilled over into violence, which led to the emergence of the 1856 San Francisco Committee of Vigilance — vigilance as in vigilantes.
During the California Gold Rush, political operatives in San Francisco developed ballot box stuffing into an art form. Their favorite technique involved a ballot box with a false bottom. Before delivering the ballot box to the polling place, operatives would fill the hidden compartment in the box with ballots already made out for their favorite candidate. They would later be sure to open the box in such a way as to include the bogus ballots in the count. At times, the number of votes cast in some San Francisco elections seemed to exceed the number of eligible voters, but nobody could be quite sure, because during the Gold Rush the population of San Francisco was fluid, and constantly increasing.
One of the leading practitioners of the dark art of ballot box stuffing was a character named James P. Casey. Like so many of those that came to San Francisco during the Gold Rush, Casey came to California to reinvent himself, leaving behind his former life in the east. The past Casey was escaping was a criminal one. While most people in San Francisco didn’t know it, he had served two years in Sing Sing for Grand Larceny. He was released from that prison on September 4, 1851, and left New York for San Francisco not long after that.
Casey was a violent man. His name appeared in the papers with some frequency in connection with brawls and duels. One of his most notable altercations was the subject of an item in the San Francisco Daily Alta California of August 22, 1855. [The newspapers are available through UC Riverside’s California Digital Newspaper Collection] It illustrates how Casey mixed politics and violence:
Murderous Affray — Shooting and Stabbing at the Polls.
At about 6 o'clock on yesterday afternoon, a dispute arose at the polls of the Sixth Ward, on Kearny street, between Messrs. J. P. Casey and J. W. Bagley. It is stated that Casey called upon Bagley to follow him, and crossed over to the other side of the street. That Bagley joined him and afterwards returned, but upon the epithet coward being applied by some one in the crowd, crossed over again to Casey. A firing then ensued and Mr. Bagley was shot in the side, the ball passing round to the back, perhaps not injuring the lung, but inflicting a most dangerous wound. A tumult and general firing then ensued. Knives were drawn and wounds given and received. An eye witness stated that some twenty shots were fired, and it is strange and fortunate that many lives were not sacrificed.
Casey and Bagley seem to have had ongoing difficulties — the two had fought a duel the previous year.
Casey’s involvement in politics went beyond strong-arming political opponents and stuffing ballot boxes on behalf of others. He also sought office himself. A month after the Bagley affray, Casey appeared at a meeting of the San Francisco County Board of Supervisors, expecting the Board to seat him as a member. (Prior to 1856, San Francisco County included both San Francisco and what is now San Mateo County to the south of the City. The City of San Francisco and San Francisco County had separate governments.) Casey expected to replace Supervisor William J. McLean, who protested Casey’s recent election, in the following terms:
I herewith enter my protest against your declaring the result of the election held for Supervisors at the last general and county election from the 1st [Casey’s] and 2d district, from the following reasons…
2d. That the said James P. Casey was not a candidate before the election of the 1st district, as can be satisfactorily proven to you or any court having jurisdiction in the matter.
3d. That the said James P. Casey never was, nor ever has been, an elector in the 1st elective district, for he has voted the last three years in the Sixth Ward and has served as an officer of the election, and at this election he served as Inspector, as the returns will show his signature affixed thereto. …
Your petitioner holds himself ready and willing to prove the foregoing charges, and many others of the same nature equally bad in their character, should the said James P. Casey desire to contest the seat of the subscriber as a member of the Board of Supervisors. (Signed) Wm. J. McLean
[Daily Alta California, September 22, 1855]
Casey, it seems, had decided to avail himself of his own prowess at election fraud to place himself on the San Francisco County Board of Supervisors, from a district in which he had not even been a candidate, and in which he was not a qualified voter. After some debate, the Board voted to seat him, and required McLean to resign.
The Broderickites.
Casey had powerful, if corrupt, political allies in San Francisco. An offshoot of New York’s Tammany Hall had established itself in the city as a potent, if dissident, branch of the Democratic Party. As in New York, their principal front organizations — through which they recruited, communicated, and established legitimacy — was a system of volunteer fire companies. Casey headed one of these companies.
The principal political objective of the Tammany-lite branch of the Democratic Party was the election of David Broderick, himself originally a New Yorker, to the US Senate. They had tried (also at least partially through bribery and fraud), but failed, to push through Broderick’s election for the term beginning in 1855 (remember that State Legislatures chose US Senators then). They could not elect Broderick, but they were able to block all other candidates, and so one of California’s Senate seats stood vacant for two years. The Legislature did finally elect Broderick to serve the term that began in 1857. At that time they also returned the State’s other Senator, William W. Gwin, to serve the balance of the term that had begun with the seat vacant in 1855. Historians still debate charges made at the time that Gwin and Broderick struck a corrupt bargain to assure that both would go to Washington.
The Broderickites’ base of support, particularly financial support, derived from large, landed interests, who were trying to establish in California what would have amounted to a system of feudal estates. The legal basis for this effort was the system of Spanish and Mexican land grants that created ranchos — large properties, typically encompassing about 55 square miles — in the years prior to 1846. When California became part of the United States in 1848, the governing Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican-American War, stated that the United States would recognize existing private land claims. But while many of the claims were clear, many more were not. Some older claims had poor or missing documentation; some claims conflicted or at least overlapped; and some turned out simply to have been fraudulent. Having a friend in the US Senate could have been immensely helpful to those advancing the more dubious land claims.
While a specially-established Land Commission and the Courts were adjudicating the more difficult claims, emigrants continued arriving in California by the tens of thousands, many of them seeking riches in the gold diggings, and all of them needing places to live. The new arrivals were many, the rancheros few — so many of the large land-owners found significant numbers of squatters, whom they had no means to evict, living on their land. Perhaps they could turn these squatters into tenants…
The controversy was particularly acute in San Francisco. A few parties, including Joseph C. Palmer, the banker who was Broderick’s main financial backer, asserted ownership of property that encompassed the entire city in three large claims (Palmer claimed to own, among other parts of San Francisco, the Presidio). Meanwhile, not only had a large number of people squatted in the City, but many more had also purchased building lots in what they (and the City) had believed were legitimate transactions. If the Courts should invalidate the sale of those lots on the grounds that the City had no authority to plat and sell lots in those large holdings, the result would be unimaginable chaos.
James King of William.
The reason that the Broderickites had to resort to election fraud, of course, is that not everyone in San Francisco agreed with their goals — in fact, most did not. One prominent citizen in opposition was a crusading newspaper editor with the unusual name of James King of William. King was from Washington, DC, and grew up in Georgetown. He was born James King, but evidently decided that name was too bland, and at some point he appended “of William” to it. In San Francisco he was James King of William to one and all. King came to San Francisco in 1849, and quickly realized that the banking business offered significant opportunities. He returned to Washington long enough to establish a correspondent banking relationship with the Washington house of Corcoran & Riggs (forerunner of Riggs Bank), and returned to California to set up shop. He ultimately abandoned the banking business (another interesting story, but too long to tell here), and re-invented himself as the editor of the San Francisco Evening Bulletin, which began publication in October 1855.
King was a fundamentally honest man, but he also had a way of being both sanctimonious and snarky. As a consequence, he had a knack for cultivating implacable enemies. One of those enemies was James P. Casey. At about the same time King was launching the Bulletin, Casey also launched a newspaper, the Sunday Times. By May of 1856, King had evidently had enough of Casey. On May 14, 1856, he published an editorial, ostensibly about Casey’s political rival Bagley. The Marysville Daily Herald picked up the editorial as part of its coverage of the events that followed. King’s editorial said, in part:
[W]hile [Bagley’s friends] are unanimous in saying that Bagley behaves himself very well at present, yet when we ask them, for instance, about the fight with Casey, they cannot explain it satisfactorily. Our impression at the time was, that in the Casey fight Bagley was the aggressor. It does not matter how bad a man Casey had been, nor how much benefit it might be to the public to have him out of the way, we cannot accord to any one citizen the right to kill him, or even beat him, without justfiable personal provocation. The fact that Casey has been an inmate of Sing Sing Prison, New York, is no offence against the laws of this State. Nor is the fact of his having stuffed himself through the ballot box as elected to the Board of Supervisors from a district where it is said he was not even a candidate, any justification for Mr Bagley to shoot Casey, however richly the latter may deserve to have his neck stretched for such fraud on the people.
Casey by no means missed the point of King’s indirect attack, and he visited King in his office on Montgomery street that afternoon to object. Casey complained particularly about the revelation that he had been an inmate at Sing Sing. King, knowing that what he had published about Casey was true, sent him on his way. At about 5pm that day, King left his office to go home for dinner, but Casey was waiting for him. Casey stepped out from behind a cart near the corner of Montgomery and Washington streets (near where the Transamerica Pyramid stands today), challenged King, and shot him. The ball struck King in the left breast, exiting near the shoulder. King staggered into a nearby express office, and Casey immediately submitted to arrest — knowing that he would be safer in the custody of the Sheriff than at large. King lingered for several days, but he received spectacularly incompetent medical care. The ball apparently severed his subclavian vein, and he bled profusely. The doctors, it seems, decided that the damage was to the subclavian artery, which likely would have caused him to bleed out quickly. Nevertheless, they decided to enclose a sponge into the wound to stanch the internal bleeding, and several days later King died, presumably from sepsis.
The 1856 San Francisco Committee of Vigilance.
When Casey shot King, all hell broke loose in San Francisco. Large mobs threatened to storm the jail holding Casey, demanding that the authorities surrender Casey to them, so that they could hang him. A group of San Franciscans began to organize a Committee of Vigilance, recalling a similar group that had ruled in the City for a time during 1851. Under the leadership of William Tell Coleman, one of the leading merchants in the City and President of the vigilantes’ Executive Committee, the Committee of Vigilance enrolled some thousands of San Franciscans, determined to take justice into their own hands. The Committee appropriated a building on Sacramento street for an office, meeting hall and jail, and since they fortified it with gunny bags, they dubbed it “Fort Gunnybags.”
Governor J. Neely Johnson attempted to call up a militia to oppose the Committee of Vigilance, commissioning Mexican War veteran and San Francisco banker William Tecumseh Sherman as Major General in command. Sherman accepted the commission, but quickly realized that he would never be able to raise sufficient force to oppose the Committee of Vigilance, and he eventually stood down. Federal authorities provided tepid support to the State, but since no transcontinental telegraph yet existed, seeking instructions or resources from Washington would have taken at least two months, and the Federal authorities already in California did little.
The Vigilance Committee, which had organized its members into companies, assembled in military formation and marched on the jail holding Casey and another notorious murderer, Charles Cora, forming up in front of the jail and aiming at it a field piece they had obtained. Facing such a force, the Sheriff surrendered Casey and Cora to the Vigilance Committee, who took them and imprisoned them in Fort Gunnybags. The Committee made a show of granting Casey and Cora a trial, in which they convicted the two and condemned them to hang.
The funeral for James King of William was on May 22. It was a grand and solemn affair. On the same day, the Vigilance Committee hanged Casey and Cora from platforms they had erected on the face of Fort Gunnybags. Nearly the whole City, it seems, witnessed the funeral, the hangings, or both.
The Committee of Vigilance and the Land Controversy.
The assassination of James King of William provided the emotional spark for the organization of the 1856 San Francisco Committee of Vigilance, but the Committee had much more on its mind than meting out vigilante justice to Casey and Cora. Recent scholarship, based on an analysis of the minute books of the Executive Committee of the Committee of Vigilance, argues that the Committee’s real agenda was quite different. What the Executive Committee really cared about was the land controversy. (The best work in this area is Nancy J. Tanaguchi, Dirty Deeds: Land, Violence, and the 1856 San Francisco Vigilance Committee, (Norman: U. of Oklahoma Press), 2016. No, I have never met Dr. Tanaguchi.)
After the hanging of Casey and Cora, the Vigilance Committee mostly lost their taste for violence, preferring to detain their enemies and then force them to leave California. The Executive Committee also increasing focused on the land controversy. They actively sought to invalidate the large land claims in San Francisco, and support the confirmation of the titles of the small holders that had bought lots from the City.
To support their position, the Executive Committee relied heavily on their assertion that the City’s authority to plat and sell lots derived from an earlier Mexican Governor’s proclamation establishing the “Pueblo de San Francisco,” an incorporated municipality, whose authority over the land within its boundaries (which were quite similar to the boundaries of San Francisco today) superseded any individual claim. Establishing the legitimacy of the Pueblo claim would settle the matter in favor of the small landowners and their tenants, and provide relief to squatters on public land as well. The Executive Committee believed that the parties claiming large land grants in San Francisco knew of, and were suppressing, documents supporting the establishment of the Pueblo — the “Pueblo Papers.” The Committee wanted those papers, and they knew that a man named Alfred A. Green had them.
During the summer of 1856, the Vigilance Committee made numerous arrests, and forced a number of their enemies to return to the Atlantic States. But Coleman realized that they had created a problem for themselves when they arrested and detained David S. Terry, Justice of the California Supreme Court. Terry had stabbed a Vigilance Committee operative in an altercation, and he was also with the Broderickites on the land question. (Ironically, Terry, who was originally from Texas, shot and killed Broderick in a duel in 1859, over a dispute concerning the other burning issue of the day in California politics — slavery.) Coleman feared that they might have overreached.
The Committee redoubled their efforts to obtain the Pueblo Papers, finally securing them in September by paying cash to Green, with whom they negotiated while holding him in Fort Gunnybags. The major activities of the Committee of Vigilance wound down toward the end of the summer of 1856, but the Executive Committee remained active, both in politics and the land controversy. The Executives eventually succeeded in establishing the Pueblo claim, and setting aside the large land claims. But their efforts did not necessarily serve the broader public. Coleman and other members of the Executive Committee ended up with “a domain which might have been sold for millions of dollars, or given in small lots to ten thousand poor citizens, anxious to secure homes, [but which] was bestowed upon a few.” [John S. Hittell, A History of the City of San Francisco, 1878, quoted in Tanaguchi]
As Tanaguchi points out, however, the development of San Francisco after the Civil War moved the City’s economic center of gravity away from the old Plaza (Portsmouth Square, where the parking garage between the Transamerica Pyramid and Chinatown is today), and the Executives’ property subsequently lost much of its value. (Robert Louis Stevenson dubbed Coleman “The Lion of the Vigilantes.” Years later, Coleman developed borax mines in Death Valley. He was the one that realized that the way to bring borax out from there was to use a team of twenty mules. After decades as a successful merchant, he suddenly failed when Congress removed the tariff on imported borax.)
The Corrosive Influence of Election Fraud.
James Casey’s election fraud was part of a broader pattern of anti-democratic efforts to subvert the will and interests of the broader population of San Francisco. Casey was not necessarily part of any explicit conspiracy to promote fraudulent land claims, but his allies included a number of important actors in the pursuit of those lands. But his frauds stimulated opposition; that opposition led to violence; and that violence led to vigilantism. The Vigilance Committee hanged Casey, and then went after the fraudulent land claims. But even once they were successful, the leaders of the Committee of Vigilance turned the fruits of their efforts to their own benefit.
Anti-democratic actions undermine more than the functioning of our elections. They thwart the will and subvert the interests of the people at large, and, carried on long enough they stimulate strong — sometimes violent — reactions. But even those reactions can have anti-democratic results. Far better to defend and safeguard our democratic institutions in the first place.