Talk:San Francisco Vigilance Movement
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[edit] NPOV Stub
This article doesn't even metion the 1851 Committee, which was specifically founded to FIGHT racial attacks (on Chileans). As Stewert noted in his book on the 1851 Committee, "Committee of Vigilance" -- the overwhelming ideological makeup was abolitionist. Four of the 800 members of the 1851 Committee became Union Army generals, another was a colonel killed at Gettysburg.
Their primary opponents were the "Chivs" -- the so-called "Chivalry Democrats" e.g., the pro-south faction in the state. The Irish pols simply aligned themselves with the Chivs.
Exactly who were the 1851 guys racist against? Australians?Scott Adler 03:20, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Needs Expansion
This article on the vigilance movement needs serious expansion. The vigilance movement was not limited to San Francisco and extended well beyond the gold rush and into the continental railroad construction.
While there probably was racism involved, you hear slightly different stories. I have personally read (from a book I conside to be pretty good, and not fiction) that the chinese were exempt from being hanged. Get the snot beaten out of them yes, but for some reason this book on the Tong wars claimed no chinese was ever lynched for any reason. ?????--71.193.3.242 02:59, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
Did a little checking on Wikipedia. There are several articles on vigilance/vigilantes. There is a lot of overlap w this article. Suggest the title should not include San Francisco and it would be beneficial to roll the several articles into one (w a bunch of links to reach that article in case someone actually LOOKS for "San Francisco" vigilance.24.10.102.46 18:45, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
[edit] NPOV
At the very least there should be documentation of ant alleged racist action. Based upon the links, we're taking the word of a retired alternative ecologist versus the San Francisco City Museum. ~
I agree, this is quite poorly sourced at the present time.
Also, the ecologist source appears to take the conspiratorial view of history. For instance, most of the historical sources that it references are presented to the reader not as available facts, but as examples of alleged "pro-vigilante propaganda of the era". While we should certainly not censor such a valuable alternate perspective, it should nevertheless be presented alongside of some more mainstream interpretations.
I am editing the half-sentence on Casey, to make it agree more with the historical sources from both websites (in spite of the ecologist source's claim that the historical sources are propagandist in nature). I am changing "Casey, a newspaper editor, had been involved in a duel as the result of an accusation of libel", to, "Casey had murdered a rival newspaper editor, shortly after the man published an editorial exposing Casey's criminal record in New York." Perhaps an additional sentence could be added by someone, detailing yet keeping separate the conspiratorialist viewpoint. FrederickU 07:20, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
Murder was committed by the San Francisco vigilantes. Each committee committed 4 murders at a time and place where there were established law enforcement in effect. I host the webpage cited that supposedly is non-mainstream. I spent 6 years in research, examined actual newspapers fragmenting from age in my hands, viewed microfilm of others which were only surviving copies because they were photocopied before they crumbled to dust, read rare books in the SF reading room.
Sam Brannan went to trial as soon as he landed in San Francisco in 1848, having impounded property of others by "law of the sea" and by contract that he was the settler's leader and had absolute arbitrary authority. The Mormon Church wrote a history of their attempting to recover property seized by him. He founded the first and was active in the second vigilante movement. I spoke with the voices of the dead who cry out for truth. I visited the graves of Sullivan, Casey and Cora in the Mission Dolores cemetery. There were no goodguys on either side of the nooses, but the history that some goodguys existed was more false than true -- the greater evil was the Chamber of Commerce Murders, not the mostly petty crooks that they lynched.
The victors write the history. The Chamber of Commerce Murders were committed by men made wealthy in unsavory deals. They hired the best historian available, a man who has a main street in Berkeley named after him and a hall at UCB named after him. Bancroft was known then and easily confirnmed now as a person who wrote bogus histories for wealthy clients. Another historian, Royce, was bounced on the knee as a child by chief vigilante Coleman, of '56. If you want neutral POV you have to deal with their biases and make them mainstream, so that the contradictory facts found in their own writings no longer condemns them as whitewashers of broad-daylight murder.
If you read it all, there is delicious controversy, nothing at all like the bland whitewash history, and the fascination of the sordidness draws you to read more sources to finally really knoiw what the ttruth is at the bottom of it all. Painting a whitewash on people who have been dead for 100 years is as useless as describing Bluebeard the pirate in neutral terms.
I started out as an enthusiast for the vigilantes, and ended up disgusted with their brutality and deviousness. These are no more candidates for historical pedestals than Josef Mengele.
You don't tell the drama in your boring recitation of the dullest factoids. You don't have the 3,000 men surrounding the county jail to take Casey with a loaded cannon rolled up to the front door of the jail. Nor do you have enough of interest that somebody living in San Francisco would want to go visit the site and try to picture that scene that day. The spot where Casey shot King of Edward is now the Transamerica Pyramid, the largest tombstone ever erected, historically interesting because it was the place where the bay was first filled in. Nothing left after your desperate attempt to weed out any speck of interest would inspire me to walk across the street to try to find the spot. You took real human beings lives and turned them into nothing more than some lazy high schooler's pre-written homework assignment that they can just copy and paste and get a "C" grade on. I'm just glad you don't have a page on my life, and may I have the good fortune to die before you ever do. Who ever told you that life was supposed to be bland, or that it actually is?
[edit] POV
I expanded the article, basically just paraphrasing one source; it could use further expansion with more diverse sources. I also linked a 1921 book that's still fairly authoritative in the academic world. I also removed the POV tag because a) I don't see much that's left, and b) judging from the above discussion, folks need to get over whether the vigilantes were heroes or villains. It's not our job to "inspire" readers. It's an encyclopedia, after all, not a romantic adventure story. When's the last time anyone read an Encyclopedia Britannia entry and were so touched by the human experience of the subject that they were moved to tears or action? As a reader, it's insulting to be told how I should feel about a subject or how facts should be interepreted. Just give the facts, and if there's controversy over how the facts are interpreted in the historiography, just say so. bobanny 22:07, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
