San Francisco Vigilance Committee of 1856 | Page 4

lives. More than one had
suffered in his person the penalty of his allegiance to truth and duty;
until at length intimidated and desponding, they had ceased to struggle
with the spirit of evil ....
One man upon whom public attention was now turned, and whom the
people of the City and State began to regard as their champion and
deliverer, was James King of William, and he was no common man. He
was born in Georgetown, D. C., in January, 1822, and was therefore
thirty-four years old at the time of his death. Having received a
common school education, he was placed at an early age in the banking
house of Corcoran & Riggs at Washington City where he remained
many years. His health at length failing from steady application to
business and conscientious devotion to his employer's interests, he was
induced to seek its restoration in the invigorating climate of California.
He arrived in the country just previous to the discovery of gold. The
marvelous growth of City and State soon required facilities for the
transaction of business, and he became a resident of San Francisco, and
established the first banking house in that City. For several years he
was eminently successful in business; and his strict honesty and

integrity secured for him the abiding confidence and respect of the
business community. But the sudden and extreme depression in
business in 1855 closed his doors as well as those of many other
bankers and merchants. By the surrender to his creditors of all he
possessed, even his homestead, which, to the value of five thousand
dollars, the laws of California allowed him to retain, and which might
well be coveted by him as a home for his wife and six children; every
claim against him was promptly met and discharged. Retaining amidst
all his reverses, the respect of all who knew him, he engaged as a clerk
in the banking house of Adams & Co. where most of his old customers
followed him, induced to do so by their confidence in him. After the
failure of that firm, he was for some time out of active employment.
But compelled by the necessities of a large family to seek it, he
determined to establish a daily newspaper and take upon himself the
editorial charge of it. For such an undertaking, his large experience in
business, his resolute spirit, his sound judgment, his keen insight into
character, his lofty scorn and detestation of meanness, profligacy,
peculation and fraud, eminently fitted him. The paper, the Evening
Bulletin, was first issued on the eighth day of October, 1855. From that
day to the day of his death, he devoted all his faculties most faithfully
and conscientiously to the exposure of guilt, the laying bare gigantic
schemes for defrauding the public, the denouncing villains and villainy
in high or low station, and the reformation of the numerous and
aggravated abuses under which the community was and had long been
groaning. Day after day did he assail with dauntless energy the open or
secret robbers, oppressors or corruptors of the people. Neither wealth
nor power could bribe or intimidate him. It would be difficult to
conceive the enthusiasm with which the People hailed the advent of so
able a champion, and the intense satisfaction with which they witnessed
his steadfast perseverance in the cause of truth and the right.
At length, on the fourteenth day of May 1856, the anxious fears and
gloomy forebodings of his family and friends were realized .... His
assassin, James P. Casey, was well-known and of evil repute in the City.
Bold, daring, and unscrupulous, his hand was ever ready to execute the
plans of villainy which his fertile brain had conceived. Sentenced in
New York to imprisonment for grand larceny in the State Prison at Sing
Sing for the term of two years, and discharged when that term had

nearly expired; he soon after sailed for California. Shortly after his
arrival, he was chosen Inspector of Elections in the Sixth Ward of San
Francisco. Here he presided over the ballot box, and was generally
believed to have accomplished more ballot box staffing, ticket shifting
and false returns than any other individual in the City or State. He made,
as was generally believed, his office a means of livelihood, and held the
City and County offices in his hands to be disposed of in such manner
as might best promote his interest or fill his pockets. Year after year by
this means he was accumulating money, until he was reputed to have
made a fortune, although never known by the people to have been
engaged in any honest industrial occupation in California. For the
purpose perhaps of adding the levy of blackmail to his other modes of
accumulation, he established a