Vigilantes in Gold Rush San Francisco.
Senkewicz, Robert M. Vigilantes in Gold Rush San Francisco. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1985. ix, 272 pp. Publisher's red cloth, fine in near fine dust jacket. Internally clean. $20. * A reexamination of the social, economic, and legal dynamics underlying the famous San Francisco Vigilance Committees of 1851 and 1856. Moving away from traditional romanticized narratives of frontier justice, Senkewicz analyzes how a powerful elite of merchants and business leaders bypassed established municipal courts and extrajudicially seized political control to protect their economic interests during a period of severe market instability. The text offers an essential framework for understanding the fragility of formal legal institutions and the manipulation of popular sovereignty on the early American frontier.
Price: $20.00
Book number 86800