{"id":137711,"date":"2019-07-02T09:00:39","date_gmt":"2019-07-02T13:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=137711"},"modified":"2019-07-02T11:47:12","modified_gmt":"2019-07-02T15:47:12","slug":"dice-roll-civilization-dawns-in-san-francisco","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/07\/02\/dice-roll-civilization-dawns-in-san-francisco\/","title":{"rendered":"Dice Roll: Civilization Dawns in San Francisco"},"content":{"rendered":"

Michael LaPointe\u2019s monthly column,\u00a0Dice Roll<\/a>, focuses on the art of the gamble, one famous gambler at a time.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

\u00a9Ellis Rosen<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cMurder! murder most foul and dastardly has been committed in our streets, and the blood of the victim crieth aloud for vengeance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even regular readers of the Daily Evening Bulletin <\/em>had never seen its editor, James King of William, this angry. All through the winter of 1855\u201356, he\u2019d been calling for Charles Cora\u2019s death. \u201cHe must and will be hung!\u201d<\/em> he\u2019d written. And if the sheriff of San Francisco let Cora slip away? Then \u201chang him\u2014hang the Sheriff!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

But now, Cora had been caught, and the only thing hung was the jury. Rumor had it that Cora\u2019s lover, the madame of a Waverly Place parlor house who was known simply as Belle Cora, had influenced the jury with gold dust. Key witnesses were fleeing the city. The murder case was falling apart.<\/p>\n

\u201cHung be the heavens with black!\u201d cried King of William, quoting Shakespeare\u2019s Henry VI, Part 1. <\/em>He cursed Cora\u2019s \u201cobscene paramour\u201d; he wept for \u201cthe fame of the fair city.\u201d In the pages of his newspaper, he\u2019d already declared war in San Francisco, \u201cwar between the prostitutes and gamblers on one side, and the virtuous and respectable on the other.\u201d He viewed the hung jury as a patriotic humiliation.<\/p>\n

But he wasn\u2019t about to surrender. He ended his editorial with a threat that would\u2019ve chilled anyone who recalled the violent excess of the Committee of Vigilance: \u201cGamblers, we warn you! remember Vicksburg!\u201d <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

It all began with a breach of decorum. At the American Theater on November 19, 1855, the professional gambler Charles Cora escorted Belle Cora to a private box. Seating a Waverly Place madame in a box, rather than at the curtained-off back of the house, was taken as an insult to San Franciscan high society. When the gaping eyes of the audience turned toward the wife of U.S. Marshal William A. Richardson to see her reaction, the marshal had no choice but to protest La Belle Cora\u2019s presence. Harsh words were exchanged, and several days later, near the Blue Wing Saloon, Charles Cora shot the marshal dead.<\/p>\n

The case seemed cut and dried, but justice in San Francisco wasn\u2019t that simple. The fact that a professional gambler could even exist in the city, which had outlawed gambling in 1852, suggested the depth of the corruption. It has been said that, of a thousand murders committed from 1849\u201356, just one resulted in a legal conviction. Though he\u2019d gunned down a U.S. marshal, Cora could count on well-placed friends in government. His attire at the trial exposed the court as a rigged casino, with Cora \u201cjaunty in a fancy velvet waistcoat, light kid gloves, and his drooping black gambler\u2019s mustache curled and perfumed.\u201d<\/p>\n

But as evidenced by the popularity of the Evening Bulletin<\/em>, public opinion had turned against the gamblers. Issue after issue, its editor, James King of William, railed against \u201cthese fiends in human shape who earn their ill-gotten gains at the gambling table.\u201d In just a few furious months, the Bulletin <\/em>had become the voice of San Francisco\u2019s increasingly restless conscience.<\/p>\n

Born in Georgetown, D.C., in 1822, James King added the monarchical \u201cof William\u201d to his name to separate himself from thirteen other James Kings in his social circle. Full of the self-reliant spirit of the age, James and his six brothers were always seeking such distinctions. One brother, Henry, became a captain in John C. Fr\u00e9mont\u2019s exploratory expeditions in the West. He later led a group of men into the mountains, got snowbound, and was cannibalized.<\/p>\n

After a brief period prospecting for gold, James King of William founded a bank that went under, and then worked in another that also folded. Perhaps it was during his ill-fated experience in finance that he acquired his passionate hatred of gambling. As Petrarch once wrote, \u201cAll money is unstable,\u201d and King of William saw banking and gambling on a volatile continuum that victimized honest citizens.<\/p>\n

When a financial crisis in 1855 wiped out the fortunes of many Californians, he began publishing the Evening Bulletin<\/em>. In apocalyptic editorials, with froth at the corners of his mouth, he attacked the banks and published the locations of illegal gambling halls. The Bulletin <\/em>was charged with a righteous electricity, and it soon became the most popular paper in the west.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Antigambling crusades emerged in the nineteenth century wherever a community sought legitimacy. In his history of California, Hubert Howe Bancroft wrote of the eradication of gambling in San Francisco as a process of social evolution: \u201cAs a more refined civilization crept in and overwhelmed the low, the loose, and the vicious, gambling sank into disrepute.\u201d While the gambler\u2019s risk-taking spirit was essential to expansion on the American frontier, it was too primordial to secure a place in an advanced culture. As Thorstein Veblen wrote in The<\/em> Theory of the Leisure Class<\/em>, gambling is \u201can archaic trait \u2026 incompatible with the requirements of the modern industrial process.\u201d Gambling\u2019s challenge to capitalist civilization goes a long way toward explaining our abiding attraction to games of chance. With a roll of the dice, we escape to a time when superstition enchanted the world, and connect with our ancestors who tingled the same way as they braced for the outcome. This is, perhaps, as close to a universal experience as we have, for the one thing every person has felt is uncertainty.<\/p>\n

In the nineteenth century, where the destabilizing force of gambling couldn\u2019t be repressed by moral sermonizing, it was cleansed in blood. Hanging over the Cora affair were the events at Vicksburg, Mississippi, in 1835. In that bustling center of the slave trade and cotton industry, a confrontation at a Fourth of July barbecue between local citizens and a professional gambler spiraled into violence. A militia called the Vicksburg Volunteers circulated a notice expelling gamblers from the city, then seized gaming equipment and cast it on bonfires. When a raid on a gambling house resulted in a shoot-out, in which a local physician was killed, five gamblers were arrested and led into the woods. As the nooses were strung up, the Volunteers\u2019 band drowned out the gamblers\u2019 pleas for a jury trial. All five were hanged. Their bodies were left on display for twenty-four hours, then buried in a ditch.<\/p>\n

Most of the country expressed disgust with Vicksburg\u2014but not James King of William. In his war with the gamblers, he repeatedly invoked Vicksburg as the inevitable fate of his enemies. If justice were thwarted, he wrote in the Bulletin<\/em>, there would be \u201cmore fearful consequences than attended the expulsion of such parties from Vicksburg.\u201d King of William bemoaned the necessity of violence, while recklessly tempting its outbreak, essentially washing his hands of events he himself was writing into existence. \u201cGod forbid!\u201d there should ever be mob violence in San Francisco, he wrote. But then again, \u201cExtreme cases require severe remedies.\u201d<\/p>\n

And San Francisco already knew how to cure itself. Just a few years before the Cora affair, the so-called Committee of Vigilance had been formed to rid the city of criminality. Some have perceived the Committee as animated by nativist, anti-Irish sentiment; others have seen it as a check on the politics-by-any-means practiced by corrupt Democratic leaders with ties to New York\u2019s Tammany Hall. Regardless, the Committee was an extrajudicial force, private citizens who took the law into their own hands and executed four men for crimes ranging from burglary to murder.<\/p>\n

James King of William had been an early supporter of the Committee, and while it had receded to the background, its leaders continued to meet. As the Cora affair unfolded, the editor began warning his readers that another Committee might be needed: \u201cThe welfare of this community, and indeed the reputation of the State, is now at stake.\u201d<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

King of William had made powerful enemies. The consummate antigambler was probably galled to discover that bets were being taken as to whether he would live another twenty days (he did). But there was something of the death-drive about him, an impatient rush toward catastrophe. He published the route he took home from the office every night, and invited his enemies to take their grievances up with him there. \u201cIn case we fall,\u201d he wrote, \u201cour house is but a few hundred yards beyond, and the cemetery not much farther.\u201d<\/p>\n

With Charles Cora still in jail awaiting a new trial, King of William went after another high-profile associate of the gamblers. James Casey had been imported from New York by the local government to rig elections. He was promptly set up as the Inspector of Elections, and as one contemporary wrote, \u201cHe has probably done more stuffing and ticket shifting than any man in the world.\u201d After amassing a considerable fortune, Casey founded the Sunday Times <\/em>to rival King of William\u2019s Bulletin<\/em>. In the pages of the Times<\/em>, the fixer postured as a crusader against corruption.<\/p>\n

On May 14, 1856, King of William\u2019s editorial exposed Casey\u2019s criminal background. Readers learned that the sanctimonious editor of the Times <\/em>had served two years in Sing Sing for grand larceny before coming to California.<\/p>\n

It was hardly the most incendiary column ever published in the Bulletin<\/em>, but just hours after the issue came off the press, Casey stormed into King of William\u2019s office.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat do you mean by printing that article?\u201d<\/p>\n

And the editor archly replied, \u201cTo what article do you refer?\u201d<\/p>\n

King of William threw his rival out. But, later that night, when King of William left the office, Casey appeared outside Phil\u2019s Oyster Saloon. Wielding a navy revolver, he threw back his cape and fired. The bullet passed through King of William\u2019s left breast and exited out his back, and he crumpled to the street.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

San Francisco was thrown into a frenzy. As police conveyed Casey to the Broadway Jail, where Charles Cora was also being kept, they were pursued by crowds shouting, \u201cHang him! Hang all the gamblers!\u201d Observers had never seen a mob like this before, not even in the days of the Committee of Vigilance. Armed guards were stationed around the jail. The crowd kept multiplying. The mayor\u2019s limp speech couldn\u2019t get the people to disperse.<\/p>\n

With the mortally wounded King of William lying on a counter in the Pacific Express building, the leaders of the Committee of Vigilance convened. Was it time for a second Committee, a hand to guide the mass? A pamphlet signed \u201cBRUTUS<\/small>\u201d circulated: \u201cThe Law is here a MOCKERY<\/small>,\u201d it read. \u201cThe rich villain, the powerful gambler, supported by his rich confederates, laughs at the impotence of the law.\u201d The city\u2019s gunsmiths couldn\u2019t keep up with orders for sidearms and muskets. \u201cWe cannot favor mob law in any shape,\u201d wrote the editors of The Placer Herald<\/em>, \u201cbut could tolerate a violence of the kind, in this case.\u201d Newsboys delivering word of King of William\u2019s condition to women at home were told, \u201cIf the men don\u2019t hang [Casey], the ladies will!\u201d<\/p>\n

The Committee announced it would accept new recruits. The enlistment went on for thirty hours straight. Over two thousand men were organized into regiments, and this grassroots army marched to the Broadway Jail. A brass cannon loaded with powder was aimed at the door.<\/p>\n

Inside, the sheriff told Casey they were outnumbered about two thousand to thirty. There was no choice; he\u2019d have to go with the Committee. Someone had smuggled a bowie knife to the prisoner, who now threatened suicide if he wasn\u2019t promised a fair trial. The Committee readily agreed\u2014it was always quick to claim propriety\u2014and delivered both James Casey and Charles Cora to their headquarters on Sacramento Street.<\/p>\n

But how was a fair trial possible? Newspapers everywhere had proclaimed the guilt of Casey and Cora (\u201cJames King of William shot\u2014Probably Killed, by Jim Casey,\u201d read a typical headline), and the Vigilance Committee conducted the trial in total secrecy\u2014no reporters, no observers. Everyone involved was sworn never to discuss the proceedings.<\/p>\n

A little after noon on May 20, James King of William died. Black cloth draped the windows of the Bulletin <\/em>office. The news spread across the state, which one writer said became \u201cas solemn as the grave.\u201d Shortly after\u2014presumably because the victim must die for it to be murder\u2014guilty verdicts were rendered for Casey and Cora.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Huge crowds followed James King of William\u2019s funeral cortege to Lone Mountain cemetery. In their eulogies, clergymen castigated Casey, \u201cthe vicious, gambling, idle, cursing man,\u201d and proclaimed King of William \u201ca martyr to the cause of public virtue.\u201d The Committee of Vigilance promised to carry the spirit of the saintly editor forward. In the coming years, it would transform into the People\u2019s Party, which ruled the city for a decade before being absorbed into the Republican Party of California. When the crusade was finally over, San Francisco would be described by one historian as \u201cpeaceful as a rural village.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the afternoon of King of William\u2019s funeral, the regiments of the Committee gathered outside their headquarters. Around one o\u2019clock, the windows on the second story opened. Wooden boards shot out, with hinges in the middle. Hooks had been installed above the windows.<\/p>\n

Charles Cora was allowed to marry Belle Cora, who then watched the white cap being drawn over her husband\u2019s head, the heavy noose about his neck. He kissed the crucifix held out to him. Then the hinge gave way and he dropped five feet. His neck snapped instantly.<\/p>\n

Weak in the knees, James Casey had to be propped up. In a stammering voice, he addressed the crowd below. He didn\u2019t intend to commit murder, he said. He was only acting \u201caccording to my early education\u201d\u2014the gambler\u2019s ethic of how to avenge insult. \u201cOh God!\u201d he cried, when he saw it was no use. \u201cMy poor mother! Oh God!\u201d he cried, and he dropped. Dangling, he struggled for three minutes, and was still.<\/p>\n

The Committee left the bodies hanging for an hour. Thousands came to see that the rein of the gamblers was over. Civilization had dawned in San Francisco.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Michael LaPointe is a writer in Toronto.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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