It was so now.  The Law and Order party persuaded Governor Johnson to order a parade of state troops in the streets of San Francisco.  The argument used was that such a parade of legally organized forces would overawe the citizens.  The secret hope, however, which was well founded, was that such a display would promote the desired conflict.  This hope they shared with Howard, after the Governor’s orders had been obtained.  Howard’s vanity jumped with his inclination.  He consented to the plot.  A more ill-timed, idiotic maneuver, with the existing state of the public mind, it would be impossible to imagine.  Either we must consider Terry and Howard weak-minded to the point of an inability to reason from cause to effect, or we must ascribe to them more sinister motives.

By now the Law and Order forces had become numerically more formidable.  The lower element flocked to the colors through sheer fright.  A certain proportion of the organized remained in the ranks, though a majority had resigned.  There was, as is usual in a new community, a very large contingent of wild, reckless young men without a care in the world, with no possible interest in the rights and wrongs of the case, or, indeed, in themselves.  They were eager only for adventure and offered themselves just as soon as the prospects for a real fight seemed good.  Then, too, they could always count on the five hundred Texans who had been imported.

There were plenty of weapons with which to arm these partisans.  Contrary to all expectations, the Vigilance Committee had scrupulously refrained from interfering with the state armories.  All the muskets belonging to the militia were in the armories and were available in different parts of the city.  In addition, the State, as a commonwealth, had a right to a certain number of federal weapons stored in arsenals at Benicia.  These could be requisitioned in due form.

But at this point, it has been said, the legal minds of the party conceived a bright plan.  The muskets at Benicia on being requisitioned would have to cross the bay in a vessel of some sort Until the muskets were actually delivered they were federal property.  Now if the Vigilance Committee were to confiscate the arms while on the transporting vessel, and while still federal property, the act would be piracy; the interceptors, pirates.  The Law and Order people could legally call on the federal forces, which would be compelled to respond.  If the Committee of Vigilance did not fall into this trap, then the Law and Order people would have the muskets anyway.[7]

[7:  Mr. H.H.  Bancroft, in his Popular Tribunals, holds that no proof of this plot exists.]

To carry out this plot they called in a saturnine, lank, drunken individual whose name was Hube Maloney.  Maloney picked out two men of his own type as assistants.  He stipulated only that plenty of “refreshments” should be supplied.  According to instructions Maloney was to operate boldly and flagrantly in full daylight.  But the refreshment idea had been rather liberally interpreted.  By six o’clock Rube had just sense enough left to anchor off Pueblo Point.  There all gave serious attention to the rest of the refreshments, and finally rolled over to sleep off the effects.