Black Fire: The True Story of the Original Tom Sawyer

by Robert Graysmith

  Though Irish born, like most of Broderick’s men, Mulligan spent his youth in New York as an apprentice barrel maker, ward heeler, and gunman. When he was jailed in 1846, Warden Sutton of the Tombs, practically spitting in his fury and disgust, categorized Mulligan as “a professional blackleg” and “as desperate a character as could be found among the hoods of New York.” The New York Times called Billy “the wild, tremendous, roaring, tearing, fighting Mulligan.” He escaped to New Orleans, enlisted in the Louisiana Mounted Volunteers, and saw action in the Mexican War, where he earned the title of colonel for bravery. He arrived in San Francisco in 1848 and quickly became known as “a philosophic villain.” On February 9, he had gotten into a shoot-out at a dance with young Billy Anderson. Both gunhawks unleashed a fusillade of eighteen slugs. The first dozen killed an old man in the street. The last six wounded a Mexican girl in the next room and shattered Anderson’s knee. The seemingly minor injury turned out to be a fatal wound. Anderson died three weeks later. The first time an Alta reporter laid eyes on Mulligan was at the Bella Union when Billy confronted a much taller man, Bingham the actor, and said, “Stand straight up and take it, sir, or blast your soul to blazes I’ll make a hole through you.” Bingham took it. Like everyone else, he feared Mulligan too much to disobey him.

  When Mulligan was wounded in the shoulder at Coyote Hill while dueling gunfighter Jimmy Douglass, he hobbled to the bar and raised his glass to the man who had just plugged him with a Colt Pocket Navy five-shooter at twelve paces. He called it a scratch shot. Mulligan had bet several adobes, fifty-dollar gold pieces, that neither of them would be hit, and he lost them. Douglass gave a blowout and the two enemies shook hands and toasted each other. “You mustn’t think Jimmy can’t shoot good because he shot so poor today,” he said. “We’d both like to have done better, but somehow we couldn’t, I’m sorry to say. We’ll do better some other time, when we’re in a better fix. Don’t you think we will, Jimmy?” “We will that, Billy!” Jimmy replied and raised his glass.

  Billy Mulligan was fiercely protective of Broderick. One Independence Day, they were at the Union Hotel bar celebrating when a local bully, Big Jim Campbell, began insulting Broderick. Mulligan, though elegantly attired for a fireman’s ball, grasped Campbell’s head with both hands, head-butted him into near unconsciousness, downed his drink and, covered in blood, returned home to fetch a fresh white shirt.

  If Mulligan always was on edge, Dutch Charley was edgier. The blinding rages that came upon him frequently caused him to be jailed. Each time his friend Broderick used his political connections as a new state senator to bail him out. He needed such a tough battler. Though Dutch Charley had Whig tendencies, he had immediately attached himself to Broderick’s Democratic political camp as a shoulder striker. Always up for a little “fist duty,” he could deliver a thousand votes any election day by having Broderick’s adherents vote three times in different sections of the town, a feat accomplished by herding voters from precinct to precinct and chasing away the opposition. He got into his most serious trouble when he attended a ball at the French Theater with a few members of the Lafayette Volunteer Company. He entered without a ticket, battering the attendant who stopped him. During the evening Amedee Fayolle, an actor and manager of the troupe, nudged Dutch Charley while he was dancing. When he tried to apologize, Dutch Charley went for him, but the Lafayette volunteers restrained him. At the end of the night Fayolle approached Dutch Charley again, but because he did not speak English only gestured instead. Dutch Charley took it the wrong way, jabbed him twice, knocked down his two friends when they intervened, and turned back to Fayolle to stomp his head. As Fayolle crawled to the door, he reached out for the knob. “The sonavbitch’s got a pistol!” Dutch Charley cried and shot him in the back. The bullet lodged in the actor’s abdomen and they rushed him to the French Hospital.

  Placidly, Dutch Charley waited at the dance for the police. At the jail he took time out to help them beat a prisoner in the station house basement. No one thought to ask what an arrested man was doing assisting the police in obtaining a confession, but Dutch Charley, who held a grudge against the prisoner, was not put out at all. Broderick got him released on $15,000 bail. At his trial there was a hung jury. Broderick spent $50,000 to induce witnesses not to testify in the next trial, tucked some cash into Fayolle’s breast pocket, and booked passage for him to France whether he wanted to go or not. With the prosecuting witness unavailable to testify, the case against Duane was dropped.

  Dutch Charley visited Broderick in San Jose during a storm. After a hard ride, Dutch Charley arrived in San Jose about daybreak. He went to the hotel where Broderick was staying and found him seated in his room reading a paper. “I was wet through and through from the rain,” Dutch Charley recalled, “and Broderick insisted on putting me to bed in his room and getting dry clothes for me. He would not hear of me attending to the business on which I had gone down there until I had taken a rest.” With no visible means of support, he lived like a king on credit through the largesse of his benefactor, Broderick. A man of such lightning rages was unbeatable outside the ring due to a style of fighting learned in a lifetime of “bloody mills.” While his foe was still speaking, Dutch Charley would deck him with an open hand or head butt, deliver a kick to the chest, and, the instant his victim was flat on the ground, leap up and down on him. With this method he was undefeated. Dutch Charley’s fatal flaw was that he could not ignore an insult or perceived challenge. Any word might provoke his hair-trigger fury; anyone might become the target of his wrath. Odd things set him off. He once shot a dog that had bitten him, grabbed the officer who came to arrest him, choked him, and then stomped him in the stomach. Once he attacked a citizen because he was “quiet.” Another time he thrashed a fat man because his belly shook while he was dancing.

  At least he was honest. Manhattan Two elected the swindler Con Mooney as their foreman. Mooney had a penchant for barroom brawls. During one confrontation, someone shot off Con’s third finger. “Now it’s my turn to shoot,” Mooney said, shaking off the blood. He paused. “Why don’t you shoot?” a bystander asked. “You’re a crack shot.” “Oh, pshaw,” Mooney said, tossing his gun to the saloon floor, “I don’t want his life.” Soon after, Tim McCarthy, the prizefighter, challenged him to a bare-knuckle fight—London prize-ring rules and to a finish. “It’s all right with me,” Mooney said, “but the stump of my finger would interfere with my every punch. If you give me time till I get this finger amputated,” he said, “I’ll fight you.” “Con feared nobody and nothing,” stated Barney Farley, his fight manager. In Virginia City, where he ran a saloon and billiard parlor with Joe Coburn, then the American heavyweight champion, Mooney’s quiet appearance belied his gameness as one of the coolest and best firemen in the city. He never allowed his men to enter a fire scene without first going in himself to see if there was any danger. When he was not fighting fire, he conducted violent cock and dog fights at the Pony Express Saloon for $2,500 purses and held barbaric rat-baiting contests in a big room with rows of benches set around a pit full of rats. The frightened albino rats (blood showed better on white fur) tried to escape, but the smooth pit walls prevented them. When a pitter threw a ratter, a fierce dog trained to kill rats, into the pit, the audience wagered on how many rats it could kill in a fixed amount of time. Jenny Lind, an English bull terrier, once killed five hundred in an hour. Because Mooney lacked Broderick’s moral fiber and political savvy, the likable nine-fingered volunteer would never rise higher than assistant chief. This remained his greatest disappointment.

  Thirty years in the future Mooney would still be taking the suckers. When he noticed that San Franciscans were flocking to the seaside via the new Ocean Railway, he and his cronies offered various amusements at the beach and sold the bathers parcels of real estate. There were two drawbacks: Con didn’t own the lots he sold and the parcels he unloaded were twenty feet under the Pacific Ocean. When the Council received too many complaints, they ripped down Mooney’s shant
ytown at the beach, tore down his house and his confederates’ homes for good measure, and closed down his illegal enterprises until he was forced to go straight. “I’ll go along with it,” he complained, “but honesty is against my better judgment.” His sister brought in a good income as landlady of the unusual Niantic Hotel, originally a three-story vessel with masts sitting curiously on land among two- and three-story buildings. San Francisco was packed with grafters, thieves, get-rich-quick schemers, and political sharpsters like Mooney, though his thirst for graft paled beside that of Sam Brannan, who had robbed John Sutter, whose gold ore had ignited the Gold Rush. In a city of thieves only the volunteer firemen represented any heroes. But not all the firemen were heroes at Manhattan Two, nor even at Broderick One. Not by a long shot.

  James “Yankee” Sullivan, political shoulder striker, former World Heavyweight Champ, and “the Ugliest Man in San Francisco,” was the last of Broderick’s principal rogues. One morning at Broderick One, George Oakes was arguing with another fireman, Kelly, assuring him that “Woolly Kearney is much uglier than Yankee Sullivan.”

  “Horse feathers!” Kelly replied. “Yankee’s the homeliest looking mortal I ever saw in town—in California—for gosh sakes—in the world.” He banged down his cup. “What do you think?” Oakes said, turning to Bob Cushing, later foreman of Engine Company Ten. “I never met Mr. Sullivan,” Cushing said, “and am at a loss to compare him to Mr. Kearney because I never met him either.” He got a chance the next day when Woolly showed up at the firehouse. Oakes had not exaggerated. Woolly’s battered, flattened nose, gnarled as an oak root, twisted to every compass point; and at every corkscrew turn it became more hideous. “Say, Woolly,” James O’Meara once said, “when you blow your nose, I can’t understand why you don’t blow the dratted thing off.” “If Woolly looks this bad,” Cushing thought, “what does Yankee Sullivan look like?” Woolly Kearney, like Broderick’s other stalwarts, was a scoundrel, but a fearless scoundrel with stern stuff in his heart. In October, when a Placerville mob tried to lynch “Irish Dick” Cronin, he was the only one to stand up to them, though they hanged Irish Dick anyway. In February, Woolly fought a twenty-five-round bare-knuckle battle, a combined wrestling and punching match, against an Australian on Yerba Buena Island. Though thirty pounds lighter than his opponent, Woolly won the grueling fight and retired to take up running the Ripton House on Old Mission Road.

  Cushing was on Montgomery Street checking on fire conditions when he observed a man jogging toward him along a short stretch of irregular planked sidewalk. His stovepipe hat was cocked over one eye and he was waving a shillelagh. Despite being obviously drunk, he darted effortlessly in and out of doorways and around posts, making a noise like a steam engine. “Puff, puff, puff!” he wheezed. “Whiff, whiff, whiff!” went his air punches. “He must be simpleminded,” Cushing thought as the shadow boxer feinted past his ear and began circling and throwing phantom punches just above his head. “Whiff, whiff, whiff!” He estimated him at five feet ten and about 160. He had a round compact chest and the clean, well-turned shoulders of a seasoned athlete. His features were lost among a minefield of scars, red irregular bumps, blemishes, and calluses. His nose, a level lump carelessly thrown down between two cauliflower ears, was as flat as his smashed right cheek. One nostril was cut away, so every breath for him was a struggle. His thin, bluish lips were smashed and swollen to one side. Many of his teeth were missing. Ridges of gristle and broken cartilage surrounded two black eyes so slitlike he had to squint painfully just to see. He stopped dancing and wiped his forehead with a handkerchief painted with an American flag. “Hear it?” he wheezed and cocked one cauliflower ear filled with blood. “Bells, all going off at once—cheerin,’ chimin’ and tollin’—bells! There must be a fire nearby or a fight. I’m Yankee Sullivan. Heard of me?”

  “The former heavyweight champ,” Cushing said. “You’re Woolly Kearney’s friend.” Yankee Sullivan, the first great bare-knuckle champ in the United States, had come to join the Gold Rush. Tough and fast, he hit hard with both fists. His real name was either Francis (or Frank) Murray or James Ambrose or Frank Martin. At this point could even he be sure? He had been born April 12 (or April 2), 1813 (or 1815), in County Cork, Ireland, or was it March 10, 1811, in Brandon, south of Cork? Twelve years earlier, convicted of burglary (or the accidental drunken killing of his wife, depending on which report you read), he had been sentenced to the island of Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania). A year later he escaped the penal colony at Botany Bay and fled to the United States, where he adopted the name of James Sullivan and became a fighter. Irish and English immigrants had spread the more formal English style of boxing to the states by fighting for bets. Boxing was illegal in New York State, thus a fighter could not be paid in cash. If he won his match, he could be awarded a prize, usually a watch, which never left the premises. After the bout a “commissioner” would technically buy the prop watch from the winner for a fixed sum, usually $25 to $50. In September 1842, Sullivan, convicted as a fourth-degree accessory to manslaughter as a promoter of the Chris Lilly–Tom McCoy debacle, fled to London, where he fought in Limehouse under the name Liverpool Jack against Jack “Hammer” Lane. Yankee got his nickname because he always entered the ring with an American flag wrapped around his waist. After he returned to New York, he worked as a butcher, political strong-arm boy, and proprietor of a popular Bowery saloon, the Sawdust House, on Walker Street. There he became friendly with Tammany Hall committee members and firefighters Billy Mulligan and Dutch Charley Duane. Sullivan, like those brawlers, had a reputation as a street fighter prone to fight at a second’s notice. He once staggered into a New York oyster bar at Park Place and Broadway where he spotted Tom “Young America” Hyer, his twenty-two-year-old rival. With only five formal fights, Hyer claimed he was the American champ. Hyer, broad chested, nearly five inches taller and twenty-five pounds heavier than Yankee, got him in a headlock. When a policeman arrived, Hyer was standing over the semiconscious Sullivan and placing a percussion cap upon the nipple of his pistol, ready to fire. After he was overwhelmed and arrested, the two enemies trained for weeks for a fierce grudge match.

  On February 7, 1849, spectators caught steamboats to Rock Point, Maryland, on Stillpond Creek, the secret location of the championship fight. When police intervened, the fight was moved to Roach’s Point, on the Chesapeake. Political ward bosses and volunteer fire companies provided most of the $10,000 prize money. Rounds were unlimited with no fixed time limit and only a half-minute rest between rounds. Snow was falling at 4:30 P.M. when Yankee, in emerald green and white, walked out of a farmhouse wrapped in an American flag to literally throw his hat in the ring. Hyer entered, tied his colors—red, white, and blue—to the ropes, and at sunset the fight began. Yankee was clotted with gore when Hyer caught him with a left and right to his face that was so devastating he could not return. Finally they hauled Yankee away unconscious to a Baltimore hospital and placed him in intensive care. The fight had lasted less than ten minutes. When Yankee left New York, 8 of the 163 passengers on the South Carolina were backers of David Broderick. In San Francisco, Yankee conferred with Dutch Charley, then set out to tour the mining country and stage boxing exhibitions with his friends Woolly Kearney, another Tammany acquaintance, and Billy Mulligan. When English pugilist George Thompson came west to prospect, Dutch Charley sent him up to a mine in El Dorado County while he arranged a fight. After only a few days Thompson sent down word he had a prizefight on hand. The Thompson–Big Jack Willis bout at the Brighton racetrack near Sacramento was the biggest fight of the Gold Rush period. “Naturally, I had the fight fixed,” Dutch Charley said. “I wanted Thompson to win the fight.” Thompson won and they equally divided $8,400.

  Yankee, a sad, complex man, had heart. He was fearless, afraid only when he was sober. He was also filled with rambunctious good humor. He once brought his pet beer-drinking goat into the lobby of Lucky Baldwin’s opulent hotel. And he was patriotic. Yankee’s painted flag was not window
dressing. The tough, scarred, and astonishingly ugly Irishman really loved America. Sober or drunk, he was most loyal to Broderick, who employed him, along with Dutch Charley, Billy Mulligan, and Woolly Kearney, as an electioneering ruffian to direct henchmen to vote repeatedly, stuff ballot boxes, bully the opposition, rough up citizens who protested, and destroy existing ballots. Broderick had learned the four lessons of Tammany Hall—patronage, bribery, perjury, and vote rigging—from Boss Tweed, another fireman. He placed as many of his ruffians on the public payroll as he could and subsidized the rest out of his own pocket. Broderick’s method of running his machine was no secret. He put public offices up for sale—alderman, district attorney, judge, or assessor. “The job you want is worth so many thousand dollars a year in ‘perquisites,’ ” he would say. “Give me half and I will see you are nominated and elected. I need the money to grease the wheels of the machine that will put you in office and keep you there.”

  Broderick needed his organization of repeat voters and ballot stuffers to get the votes to put his plans for change in motion. No one was better at this than Yankee. When he was elected head of the First Ward, the most corrupt precinct in San Francisco, Sullivan’s name was not even on the ballot. As judge of elections, he controlled the ballot boxes and direct precinct voting. “Here, you,” he would tell a voter, raising his huge fist and scrunching up his horrible face, “take a walk! You can’t vote here.” Once a man voted in Sullivan’s precinct, but when election returns were published, the name of the man he had voted for did not appear on the list. Yankee had counted out all votes for that particular candidate.