Demagogue editor fired up readers, revolutionaries

July 25, 2014
James King of William  No photo credit ..   Photo added  05/28/1974


As a 16-year-old boy growing up in Washington, D.C., James King thought his name was too ordinary. So, using his father's first name, he changed it to James King of William. It was under this unusual moniker that he sailed to California in 1848, where his brief, fiery journalistic career would lead to a revolution in the streets of San Francisco.

After failing at prospecting, King opened a small bank on Montgomery Street. He made a quick fortune, but the collapse of larger banks wiped him out.

In 1854, at age 32 and with a wife and six children, King found himself unemployed and broke. Enraged at the big financiers whom he blamed for his ruin, he started a newspaper, the Evening Bulletin, that became the most ferociously outspoken daily in the city.

King was humorless and self-righteous, used a bludgeon instead of a stiletto, and specialized in character assassination. But his moralizing struck a nerve. The Bulletin pioneered the sensationalistic "yellow journalism" techniques later to be used by William Randolph Hearst's Examiner, and it soon became the most popular newspaper in the state, selling 10,000 copies a day.

"To the majority of San Franciscans, (King) was an unprecedentedly popular reform demagogue, and his political impact was devastating," Roger Lotchin wrote in "San Francisco 1846-1856: From Hamlet to City."

"He flayed the politicians, the prostitutes, the barbarous custom of dueling, the defaulting bankers, the gamblers, the toughs, the police, and just about everything else in sight while championing the home, the church, the school, and reform - and the city loved him for it," Lotchin wrote.

"King convinced San Franciscans that they were a band of innocents crushed by a steadily worsening tyranny."

In November 1855, a gentlemanly professional gambler named Charles Cora and his mistress, Belle Ryan, the most beautiful and famous prostitute in San Francisco, attended the opening of the American Theater. The wife of a U.S. marshal named William Richardson complained about Ryan's presence in the box behind her.

When management refused to eject her, the Richardsons stormed out. It was the quintessential encounter between old and new San Francisco, and it was to have momentous consequences.

Richardson later accosted the gambler on Montgomery Street. Cora shot him dead, under ambiguous circumstances that strongly suggest he acted in self-defense. His trial resulted in a hung jury, but six months later he was still in jail.

King called for Cora to be hanged and threatened dire consequences if Sheriff Billy Mulligan should let him escape. One headline simply read, "Hang Billy Mulligan."

Seeking vengeance

With the town still seething over the Cora case, King revealed that a corrupt San Francisco supervisor and hack editor named James Casey had once been imprisoned in New York state for repossessing his mistress' furniture.

The night of May 14, 1856, an enraged Casey waited on Montgomery Street for the editor to leave his office.

In his paper, King repeatedly dared his adversaries to confront him on the street, publishing the route he took to his home at Pacific and Mason and adding, "God help anyone who attacks me."

That night, as was his wont, King stopped in at a cigar store at the corner of Montgomery and Washington, then began to walk up Washington toward his house.

Fatal gunshot

Casey, standing about 40 feet away, warned him to defend himself, then fired. King fell, mortally wounded.

The shooting jolted the city like an electric shock. That night, a newspaper ad called for a mass meeting at the Know-Nothing Hall at 105 1/2 Sacramento St. Hordes of men showed up.

In the following days, an observer recalled "the long rows of men standing ... in single file in Sacramento Street awaiting their turn for examination and admission."

It was the start of the Second Committee of Vigilance - the largest vigilante movement in American history.

The First Vigilance Committee had been formed in 1851, responding to San Franciscans' perception that crime was out of control. It hanged four men and banished dozens before disbanding. The Second Committee of Vigilance had many of the same leaders, but it was concerned about more than crime.

One of its broadsides called for "a thorough and fundamental reform of the social and political body." It was, in short, a revolutionary movement.

Within days, the committee's leaders had organized companies of 100 men each, acquired cavalry and artillery from sympathetic captains of ships in the bay, and begun drilling 2,500 men.

Fort in the city

They mounted a cannon on the rooftop of the committee's headquarters at 41 Sacramento St. and stacked sandbags against it 10 feet high and 8 feet thick. The building became known as Fort Gunnybags.

On May 18, 1856, 2,500 armed vigilantes converged on the jail on Broadway, where the Beat Museum now stands. As an estimated 15,000 people watched from Nob Hill, Telegraph Hill and other vantage points, the vigilantes pulled up a cannon and trained it at the lockup's entrance.

The police capitulated, and vigilantes seized Casey and Cora and took them back to Fort Gunnybags.

They were tried by the vigilantes - each man received counsel and was allowed to call witnesses - and were convicted. Two days later, they were taken out onto platforms with trap doors that had been rigged outside Fort Gunnybags' second-story windows.

As the hangman put a white hood over Casey, he leaned over and whispered a gloating comment in his ear. Then he released the trap doors and sent the two men plunging to their deaths.

Vengeance had been carried out in the name of the people. But the career of the Second Committee of Vigilance had just begun. It would end with the people of San Francisco standing in open insurrection against the state and the federal governments.

Next week: San Francisco's revolution.

Editor's note

Every corner in San Francisco has an astonishing story to tell. Every Saturday, Gary Kamiya's Portals of the Past will tell one of those lost stories, using a specific location to illuminate San Francisco's extraordinary history - from the days when giant mammoths wandered through what is now North Beach, to the Gold Rush delirium, the dot-com madness and beyond.

Trivia time

Last week's trivia question: What 1879 play anticipated the furor over Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ"?

Answer: "The Passion," a play about Jesus, was closed after a week following accusations of blasphemy.

This week's trivia question: What street was known as Pauper's Alley?

Gary Kamiya is the author of the best-selling book "Cool Gray City of Love: 49 Views of San Francisco," awarded the 2013 Northern California Book Award in creative nonfiction. All the material in Portals of the Past is original for The San Francisco Chronicle. E-mail: