This great and hazardous experiment of Reforms thus brought to a
conclusion nearly six months after its inception, was planned by some of
the best men in the community....
Happily the right prevailed without civil war. The imminent danger of a
collision between the Committee and the United States authorities which
might have arrayed against them the whole military and naval force at
that station was surmounted by the exercise of consummate prudence. The
most deadly peril of all, the internal dissensions and excessive
exasperation in the ranks of the Committee consequent on the dismissal
of Judge Terry without punishment was, with prodigious effort, finally
averted. And then the determined front of the People thoroughly roused
in City and State to their support, awed and finally crushed the force
of organized ruffianism which had so long held sway, and run riot with
impunity ....
The approval or condemnation of the extraordinary movement described in
these pages will depend upon the answer given by every person
thoughtfully considering the subject, to the question whether, under our
peculiar institutions, when a community has lapsed into a condition in
which the bad element has become dominant and has succeeded in
paralyzing or perfecting law and justice so that brute force and
violence have full sway, and life and property are entirely insecure,
there is any other conceivable mode in which the well disposed,
industrious and orderly classes can assert their rights and secure their
liberties, than the one adopted by the San Francisco Vigilance Committee
in 1856? No other was suggested at the time, nor, so far as the writer
knows, has been since.
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