Crisis and Response.

Before civil and judicial institutions could be firmly established, frontier law was often enforced by vigilantes who, without legal authorization, took the law into their own hands. In San Francisco in the 1850s these bodies were known as vigilance committees. The city was a rough-hewn little settlement prior to the discovery of gold in January 1848. Over the course of the next year the Gold Rush drew eighty thousand people to the territory. With them came a wave of competition, greed, overcrowding, fear, violence, and crime that local authorities could not control.

The Public Court.

A store robbery in San Francisco's business district in February 1851 left the proprietor, C. J. Jansen, badly beaten. Besides the assault the robbers stole $2,000. The police arrested two Australians for the crime, and an angry crowd quickly gathered. One of the men present, a merchant named William...