Eternity Street

by John Mack Faragher

  Following Brown’s arrest, Stephen Clark Foster, mayor of Los Angeles, persuaded an incipient lynch mob to allow the legally constituted justice system “one more chance.” But less than a month later vigilantism threatened again in response to a murder in the Monte, the American settler community on the upper San Gabriel River. Ownership of the area—formerly part of the Mission San Gabriel estate—was in dispute. The lack of clear title encouraged settlers from Missouri, Arkansas, and Texas to stake out squatter’s claims, but also contributed to rampant conflict over boundaries. Samuel Knox, a recent arrival in the community, was appalled. “What a selfish creature man is,” he declared. “I have never seen so much of it as since I came to this place. There are scarcely any two men that pull the same way, and some there are who think they know it all, and when they have their mind made up it would seem that all creation could not change it.”

  On November 8, during a dispute such as Knox described, William B. Lee shot and killed his neighbor Frederick Leatherman. Hearing the report of her husband’s double-barreled shotgun, Lee’s wife, Martha Johnson, came running from the house. “What have you done,” she cried, “what have you done?” Lee attempted to calm her. “Hush, honey,” he said. “I did not shoot him to kill, I only shot him in the legs.” But the load of buckshot had torn into Leatherman’s belly, and he suffered a long, painful death. After Sheriff Barton arrested Lee, he was taken before Judge Hayes for examination, as an angry crowd milled about outside. Hayes ordered the accused jailed without bond while the grand jury considered his case. Lee “seems very indifferent as to result,” observed the Reverend James Woods, who was present in the courtroom. He “probably expects to be acquitted.”

  The Reverend Woods, a Presbyterian missionary, was attempting to organize the first Protestant congregation in Los Angeles. He had come from the mining supply town of Stockton in California’s Central Valley, where he had witnessed his share of frontier violence. But the turmoil in Los Angeles shocked him nonetheless. “This is a rough country, even for California,” he wrote in his journal. “Today I saw a young man, apparently a farmer, about leaving town. On his belt, conspicuous from having on no coat or vest, hung a revolver and bowie knife, and in his hand he carried a double barrel gun. Most of the people go armed for safety, some for fear, and some for fashion.” Editor James Waite of the Star, addressed himself to “newcomers” like Woods, who couldn’t understand why everyone carried arms. “Our roads are safe enough, if men will go armed and be prudent as to their associates,” wrote Waite, and he advised all residents to carry firearms and keep a watchful eye. Woods found that argument appalling. Surely the causes of violence could not be remedied by a resort to arms. “The name of this city in Spanish is the City of Angels,” he wrote, “but with much more truth might it be called at present the City of Demons.”

  JOHN OZIAS WHEELER replaced William Butts as editor of the Southern Californian in the fall of 1854, but he continued his predecessor’s campaign against violence. Wheeler, who would soon declare himself a Republican, announced his support of a municipal firearms ban, the measure the common council had rejected four years before. “We cannot but condemn in the strongest terms,” Wheeler wrote, “the practice of daily packing about the streets of our city a park of artillery.” Young men stalked the town like the hero of Donnybrook Fair—a character in a popular ballad of the day—who deliberately let his coattails drag on the ground in the hope that some fool would trample them, giving him an excuse to thrash the man. “How often has it been ours to witness the melancholy results of this practice in our city?” wrote Wheeler. “How often has what otherwise would have been a trifling dispute ended in a bloody affray?”

  Despite his advocacy of a weapons ban, Wheeler was a champion of popular justice. He rode with the Los Angeles Rangers and served proudly on the vigilance committee. When the legal justice system failed, Wheeler argued, the people had the right, indeed the duty, to administer justice in their own rough way, precisely the same argument made by Victor Prudon in 1836. The people—Juan Bautista Alvarado’s sleeping lion—must wake up and take charge. “Is it not incumbent upon us to be up and doing,” asked Wheeler, “to arm ourselves en mass for individual and general protection?” He endorsed a proposal made by Captain Alexander W. Hope of the Rangers to expand their mission, giving them the authority to arrest troublemakers.

  When that plan came to naught for lack of volunteers, a number of Angelenos once again petitioned the common council for the organization of a regular police force paid from the public treasury. The Star published a series of opinion pieces supporting that proposal, including two unsigned columns contributed by Judge Benjamin Hayes. “We do not agree with the few who are in favor of what is called a ‘Vigilance Committee,’ nor with those who insist upon something they style a ‘Voluntary Police,’ ” Hayes wrote. “Experience has shown that it is impossible to subject them to responsibility.” That was precisely the problem with the Rangers. The plague of violence in Los Angeles would not end, Hayes argued, until the council took positive action. But when the proposal came before the councilmen the following week it was tabled, and Hayes responded with a scathing anonymous commentary. The council declined to act, he believed, because of the opposition of property owners who wished to avoid higher taxes. “We hold that life is more precious than property,” Hayes declared. “Let the council consider the happiness of the many—not yield to the selfishness of the few.”

  Editor James Waite of the Star agreed. “Lynch law will not help,” he argued. “Lynch law has not improved San Francisco nor the mines, yet it has been tried there over and over again. Crime of the blackest dye is rampant as ever. Our true remedy is in electing faithful, industrious and vigilant officers.” He celebrated the good sense Angelenos had shown in endorsing Mayor Foster’s appeal for legally constituted authority. “It is but another evidence that our citizens are a law-abiding people,” he wrote. “We believe one judicial execution of more value than ten executions effected by the people outside of the law.” Waite remained confident that justice could be secured through legal process. “Our only hope is the strong arm of the law.”

  In the Southern Californian, Wheeler was more begrudging, welcoming the decision to try Brown in district court but also praising the vigilante impulse “to no longer wait for the tardy, tricky operations of the law—which had too often and too long robbed justice of her dues, by setting villains afloat in the midst of our people.” The people, he wrote, would not allow quibbling lawyers, lax judges, or corrupt juries to frustrate the ends of justice. “Should Brown be released from the charge by any neglect of the proper authorities,” he warned, “we would not vouch for the consequences.”

  On November 23, the day before the opening of Felipe Alvitre’s trial, Wheeler published a letter from a pseudonymous correspondent. “We are at a terrible crisis,” it began. “Murder and outrage have so long held sway in our midst that we are fast becoming a hissing and a byword.” Violent criminals went unpunished in Los Angeles because of the inefficiency and corruption of the justice system. “Are criminals to be punished by our constituted courts, or are we to form ourselves into one good Vigilance Committee, and Judge Lynch to visit every crime with prompt and condign punishment?” The writer sincerely hoped Judge Hayes’s court would secure justice. But, he cautioned, “if the time for action should come, let the merchant leave his ledger, the mechanic his shop, the farmer his plough, and come up to work.” The letter concluded with an extravagant peroration.

  By the bones of the traveler bleaching on our plains; by the cry of the widow and the fatherless, as the bloody corpse of a husband and father is brought before them; by the young man cut down in the morning of his days and hurried to the presence of his God; by the young mother and her unborn babe, pierced by the bullet of the midnight assassin; by all the holy ties that blend mankind together, thus rudely severed by the red hand of Murder; by the outraged feelings of the community, and the violated laws of the land; by our love
to those nearest and dearest, let us be ready when the time comes to act.

  FELIPE ALVITRE AND DAVID BROWN were found guilty by juries of their peers and sentenced to death by Judge Hayes. Both trials epitomized the orderly working of the American justice system, with carefully selected juries, strong representation for both the prosecution and the defense, a calm and rational presentation of evidence, and the examination and cross-examination of witnesses.

  With those proceedings concluded, Hayes took up the case of farmer William B. Lee, charged with the first-degree murder of Frederick Leatherman. It began with defense attorney Joseph Lancaster Brent’s motion for a change of venue, following the lead of Jonathan R. Scott, who had made the same motion during his defense of David Brown. Sensational coverage in the local press, Brent argued, made it impossible to seat a jury untainted by prejudice. Judge Hayes and attorney Brent had been friends and associates since their arrival in Los Angeles four years before. Both were natives of Baltimore, practicing Catholics, and committed Democrats. But when Hayes denied Brent’s motion—as he was bound to do, having previously denied Scott’s—their friendship came to an abrupt end. By virtue of his sterling credentials in the Californio community and the votes he could muster there, Brent had become the political boss of Los Angeles Democrats. Over the next several years he would do what he could to undercut Hayes’s authority.

  The trial proceeded with the defense taking exception to Hayes’s ruling, and on December 11 the jury returned a verdict of guilty. Hayes pronounced judgment the following day, sentencing Lee to death and setting his execution for February, a month after the scheduled hanging of Alvitre and Brown.

  These three murder trials, James Waite wrote in the Star, had “done more toward establishing the supremacy of the law and inspiring the confidence of this community than all the precedents which can be found recorded on the criminal docket of this county since it has been organized.” In the rival Southern Californian, John Wheeler predicted the verdicts would have “the desired effect upon this community in deterring, by the certainty of punishment, the commission of crime, creating a feeling of security in life and property, restoring and maintaining order and quietness, and redeeming our escutcheon from the blighting pall which has heretofore enshrouded it.”

  That was setting too high a standard. But in regard to murder, at least, the month of December exceeded Wheeler’s hopes. Heavy rain had blanketed the region during the trials, but once the verdicts were rendered the skies cleared, the days turned warmer, and Angelenos began the celebration of the approaching holidays with the usual round of bullfights, fandangos, and nightly performances of los pastores—groups of children, portraying the shepherds and the wise men, making the rounds of the townhouses near the Plaza, singing Christmas hymns and begging for sweets. “Peace and quietness reign on all hands,” Wheeler noted. “No single disturbance has come to our knowledge during the past few weeks, and we believe that the future will be as bright as the past has been mournful.”

  The calm ended abruptly in early January with another violent affray in the Monte that claimed the lives of two prominent American settlers. The King and Johnson clans had been feuding for some time over what John Wheeler in the Southern Californian described as “an old grudge,” almost certainly a dispute over land. The Johnsons had come from Kentucky in early 1852 and settled on the west bank of the upper San Gabriel River. Some weeks later they were followed by the Kings of Arkansas. Patriarch Samuel King purchased land from a ranchero who claimed title, then surveyed a site for a town he called Lexington. King’s speculation “enjoyed the good will of all,” wrote Wheeler, “with the exception of a few isolated persons, whose enmity were manifested towards him during the past two or three years in consequence of his steadfast adherence to the laws of meum and tuum.” Wheeler was not an impartial observer, for he had invested in King’s real estate venture. King’s challengers included the Johnsons, who believed they had established squatter’s rights to the location prior to King claiming it for himself.

  Prominent among King’s enemies was Micajah Johnson, a man with a reputation for violence as well as boorish behavior with women. Josiah Hart was one of several men who complained that Johnson had “interfered” with their wives. Hart confronted Johnson but he reacted aggressively, pulling his six-shooter from its scabbard and spinning the cylinder with his thumb. Hart got the message. He went home, armed himself with a double-barreled shotgun, and went looking for Johnson. He found him at a local tavern, and without so much as a word of warning, he let loose with a load of buckshot. Hart defended his conduct before a local justice of the peace. “I believed that he would have crawled up on me through the wild mustard and killed me privately,” he said, “and I thought I might as well die in defense of my life.” Fortunately for both men, Hart’s shot went wide. Samuel King stood bond for him, and Hart was released pending action by the grand jury, which declined to indict him, despite the premeditated nature of his attack.

  On Sunday morning, January 7, 1855, Johnson was sitting with a small group of men at a local tavern when Samuel Houston King, the youngest of Samuel King’s sons, walked in. Johnson began taunting him, denouncing his father and the entire King clan in vile and obscene language. The young man refused to take the bait and quickly left, candidly declaring as he exited the tavern that “he did not consider himself man enough for Johnson,” but adding that “he would find one who would.” A short time later, as Johnson was leaving, he saw Samuel King approaching on horseback with his three sons—not only the youngest, Houston, but his older brothers, Francis Marion and Andrew Jackson King, as well—all strapping young men. Johnson put spurs to his horse and took off, extending his middle finger at the Kings in a vulgar gesture of contempt. Not a man to be denied, the elder King pulled a pistol and fired a round in Johnson’s direction, missing his mark but spooking the horse, which reared and threw Johnson to the ground.

  He picked himself up and scrambled into a nearby house, positioned himself at a window, and taking deliberate aim with his six-shooter put a ball through the left side of Samuel King’s chest. The elder King calmly dismounted and collapsed onto the ground. “Boys, he has killed me!” he exclaimed to his sons. “Now, if you have any of my blood in your veins you will not let him live.” The three brothers rushed the house, braving Johnson’s fire and dragged him out, beating and kicking him mercilessly. Johnson struggled free, but the Kings pulled their revolvers and shot him repeatedly as he writhed on the ground. Johnson suffered four gunshot wounds, including one in the forehead that was instantly fatal. Samuel King, on the other hand, suffered for two days before dying. The King brothers were given leave to attend their father’s bedside, then they voluntarily surrendered to Sheriff Barton and were arraigned before Judge Hayes, who released them on bond. “Much excitement and feeling was manifested in their favor,” Wheeler wrote in the Southern Californian, “their house being guarded by some fifty men during the night, there being some fear that Johnson’s friends might attempt to revenge his death.” But the King brothers had plenty of supporters, and the grand jury declined to indict them.

  “We had hoped that a new and brighter era had ushered itself upon us,” wrote Wheeler, “but the late tragedy in the Monte shows the fallacy of our too eager expectations.” Micajah Johnson, it turned out, was the father-in-law of convicted murderer William B. Lee, a fact that amplified the shock. The Reverend Woods rode out to the Monte and sat with Lee’s pregnant wife. “Poor woman,” he wrote, “her husband about to be hung, her father shot dead on the spot, and she about to be confined. May the Lord have mercy on her.” These deadly conflicts all originated in the struggle over land. “Land is a natural element that no man can live without,” declared prominent Monte resident Daniel Sexton in a letter to the Star. “I have not words to express my contempt of them who will not defend their right to it. The greatest fertilizer that ever was sown broadcast over the land is the blood of those that try to suppress its cultivation.”

  Te
n days later, in a vineyard near the river, the corpse of an unidentified man was discovered, his head crushed with heavy stones and his body stripped of all but his socks. Nothing had changed. Tranquil December was forgotten as Angelenos began the new year of 1855, which would be the most violent year yet for Los Angeles County. Public fear found expression in a smoldering rage that threatened to rise to the point of ignition.

  ALVITRE, BROWN, AND LEE sat in the iron cages installed in the new county jail, their arms and legs shackled in irons. The Reverend Woods, who visited frequently to minister to the inmates, saw them there, “chained up like wild beasts.” Woods kept his distance from Alvitre, a “low Mexican” as well as a “Catholick, without the knowledge of God,” but he requested permission to minister to Brown and Lee. Brown refused, saying he would sooner invite a grizzly into his cell, but Lee was amenable. Woods flattered himself that their conversations might have an indirect effect on Brown in the adjoining cell. Yet as the fateful day of execution approached, the condemned man showed no sign of softening. One afternoon Woods spent an hour praying aloud with Lee. “Brown was asleep, or pretended to be,” he lamented. “Poor fellow, he does not believe in a future.”

  More likely, he was calculating his chances for survival. Three days before, on January 4, a stay of execution for Brown, signed by Chief Justice Hugh C. Murray of the California Supreme Court, had arrived on the steamer from San Francisco. Several days later the weekly mail brought a stay for Lee. The attorneys for all three convicted men had filed appeals and requested stays from the state’s highest court, but nothing arrived for Alvitre. Angelenos had no way of knowing it, but Chief Justice Murray had ordered the stay of all three executions. Alvitre’s papers, however, got delayed in transit. They would arrive, but too late.