Edward McGowan (March 12, 1813 - December 8, 1892) was an American lawyer, Pennsylvania assemblyman, Judge of the California Court of Quarter Sessions, poet, Fraser Canyon gold seeker

Fraser Canyon Gold Rush

The Fraser Canyon Gold Rush, began in 1858 after gold was discovered on the Thompson River in British Columbia at its confluence with the Nicoamen River. This was a few miles upstream from the Thompson's confluence with the Fraser River at present-day Lytton...

, adventurer, assistant sergeant-at-arms in the United States Congress, newspaper publisher and bon vivant instigator of the eponymous McGowan's War

McGowan's War

McGowan's War was a bloodless war that took place in Yale, British Columbia in the fall of 1858. The conflict posed a threat to the newly-minted British authority on the British Columbia mainland, which had only just been declared a colony the previous summer, at the onset of the Fraser Canyon Gold...

 in colonial British Columbia

Colony of British Columbia

The Colony of British Columbia was a crown colony in British North America from 1858 until 1866. At its creation, it physically constituted approximately half the present day Canadian province of British Columbia, since it did not include the Colony of Vancouver Island, the vast and still largely...

.

Pennsylvania: rise to power and descent to disgrace

Ned McGowan was born into an Irish-Catholic family in Philadelphia. In 1838 he was elected as a Democrat

Democratic Party (United States)

The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...

 to the post of clerk of Moyamensing, Philadelphia County, and in 1842 was elected to the House of Assembly of Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...

. McGowan was placed on the state committee on printing. John Bratton, a powerful Whig

Whig Party (United States)

The Whig Party was a political party of the United States during the era of Jacksonian democracy. Considered integral to the Second Party System and operating from the early 1830s to the mid-1850s, the party was formed in opposition to the policies of President Andrew Jackson and his Democratic...

 who owned a printing business that was in danger of losing government contracts, alleged in his newspaper that McGowan had accepted bribes to support a rival bid. When Bratton was permitted onto the floor of the Assembly, McGowan became enraged and attacked him. After Bratton stabbed him, McGowan hit Bratton with a chair on the head, all in front of the Pennsylvania legislators. The investigation which followed the fight was dominated by Whigs, and McGowan resigned rather than face an ignominious expulsion. Appointed as superintendent of police in Moyamensing, McGowan became embroiled in yet another controversy when he was implicated in a robbery and convicted in October 1848 on dubious evidence by a judge who, according to Donald Hauka, was either a Whig or a personal enemy.. The verdict was overturned on appeal by the Quarter Sessions Court.

California: troubles in San Francisco

In 1849 McGowan resolved to head west to California where the discovery of gold had led to the California Gold Rush

California Gold Rush

The California Gold Rush began on January 24, 1848, when gold was found by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California. The first to hear confirmed information of the gold rush were the people in Oregon, the Sandwich Islands , and Latin America, who were the first to start flocking to...

. In San Francisco he began a career running a roulette wheel on the second floor of a brothel, and made friends with David Broderick, a powerful Tammany Hall

Tammany Hall

Tammany Hall, also known as the Society of St. Tammany, the Sons of St. Tammany, or the Columbian Order, was a New York political organization founded in 1786 and incorporated on May 12, 1789 as the Tammany Society...

 Democrat of the northern Irish-Catholic "The Boys" faction. The Democrats managed to get McGowan appointed judge of the Court of Quarter Sessions for San Francisco County. An outbreak of arson, attributed to San Francisco's merchants hoping to convert a surplus of low-priced goods into insurance claims, created a groundswell of public clamour for the imposition of "law and order

Law and order (politics)

In politics, law and order refers to demands for a strict criminal justice system, especially in relation to violent and property crime, through harsher criminal penalties...

" to rid the town of the criminals thought to be behind the devastating fires. The merchant class joined the outcry and was instrumental in the creation of the San Francisco Committee of Vigilance. The vigilantes began to take the law into their own hands, even appearing at a courthouse on one occasion demanding the death sentence for a man who had slapped another at a party. The mob was quelled only when McGowan, the other judges and the state governor showed their own weapons.

The Committee of Vigilance operated as a secret society. As the activities of the Committee of Vigilance became increasingly outrageous, it was only a matter of time before there would be a showdown between Judge McGowan and committee members. Four persons were 'hung' or strangled by the committee following secret trial, however when the Committee of Vigilance did turn its sights on McGowan and tried to hound him from his position for the earlier bank robbery matter in Pennsylvania, McGowan forced the Committee to back down when he produced proof of his acquittal from the higher court. The Committee of Vigilance disbanded in 1851.

California: return of the Committee of Vigilance

In 1855 power shifted in California from the Democrats to the American Party

Know Nothing

The Know Nothing was a movement by the nativist American political faction of the 1840s and 1850s. It was empowered by popular fears that the country was being overwhelmed by German and Irish Catholic immigrants, who were often regarded as hostile to Anglo-Saxon Protestant values and controlled by...

, also known as the Know-Nothings, an anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant movement that had subsided in the East, but was still very much alive in frontier California. The shooting of U.S. deputy marshall General William H. Richardson in November 1855 was to set off a chain of events that would lead to McGowan having to abandon California altogether. Richardson was shot by a gambler named Charles Cora following a confrontation between the gambler and an angry, drunken, pistol-waving Richardson who had been angry at Cora because of a public fight between their respective wives. Cora claimed self-defence. James King of William, editor of the pro-merchant, pro-American Party Bulletin whipped the citizens into a frenzy over the possibility that Cora might not be hung for the death of Richardson, and was driven to frenzy when the jury in the trial couldn't reach a decision. The Sunday Times, published by a former Democrat turned Know-Nothing named James Casey, fanned the problem by including a defamatory insert attacking King of William's brother Tom and the morals of his wife, signed 'Caliban', a pen-name known to be used by McGowan. Tom King threatened James Casey. Casey appealed to Judge McGowan, who conveniently lent him his knife and Texas five-shooter. When King of William published a story libelling Casey, claiming he had spent time in prison for stealing furniture for his prostitute mistress, Casey and King of William had a run-in which resulted in King of William being shot by Casey with McGowan's pistol. King of William was not gravely wounded in the altercation, but still died a few days later, probably from dilatory medical care. The Committee of Vigilance was reactivated even before King of William died. A veritable army of 2500 was gathered instantly. The sheriff guarding the jail where Casey was being held called for help in the face of this build-up of the vigilante army, and McGowan was one of those who came forward. However the American Party state governor of California, James Neely Johnson, allowed the Committee of Vigilance access to the jail, and the committee members quickly seized both Casey and Cora. Notes arrived at McGowan's residence advising him that he was next, and when King of William died and Casey and Cora were summarily executed, Ned McGowan went into hiding.

McGowan escaped San Francisco, using a Mexican disguise, and hid out in various parts of California, narrowly escaping the Committee of Vigilance in Santa Barbara

Santa Barbara, California

Santa Barbara is the county seat of Santa Barbara County, California, United States. Situated on an east-west trending section of coastline, the longest such section on the West Coast of the United States, the city lies between the steeply-rising Santa Ynez Mountains and the Pacific Ocean...

, by having himself rolled into a carpet. Eventually his friends managed to have a special act passed in the California legislature to enable him to be tried in the Napa Valley, far enough away from San Francisco to ensure a fair jury. As expected, McGowan was acquitted, and subsequently founded two newspapers, the Phoenix and the Ubiquitous which he used to expose the sordid and criminal backgrounds of members of the Vigilance Committee. However the Committee of Vigilance remained powerful in San Francisco, and when McGowan tried to leave California in 1858, news of his departure reached committee members and when he reached San Francisco a warrant had been issued for his arrest and one of the police officers, Jim Boyce, pulled a gun and shot McGowan in front of the courthouse. Fortunately for McGowan the bullet had missed, and despite the general hostility of Vigilance-ridden San Francisco, McGowan managed to escape to the harbour and board the Victoria-bound steamer Pacific.

British Columbia: McGowan's War

Victoria in 1858 was a city that had seen itself transformed from a tiny village outpost of the British Empire

British Empire

The British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom. It originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At its height, it was the...

 to one of the principal staging centres for the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush

Fraser Canyon Gold Rush

The Fraser Canyon Gold Rush, began in 1858 after gold was discovered on the Thompson River in British Columbia at its confluence with the Nicoamen River. This was a few miles upstream from the Thompson's confluence with the Fraser River at present-day Lytton...

. Upon his arrival McGowan met in the street a member of the San Francisco Vigilance Committee (who tried to shoot him) and the colonial governor

James Douglas (Governor)

Sir James Douglas KCB was a company fur-trader and a British colonial governor on Vancouver Island in northwestern North America, particularly in what is now British Columbia. Douglas worked for the North West Company, and later for the Hudson's Bay Company becoming a high-ranking company officer...

 who warned him that he needed to obey Her Majesty's laws while in British territory. Once on the mainland, in the newly created Colony of British Columbia

Colony of British Columbia

The Colony of British Columbia was a crown colony in British North America from 1858 until 1866. At its creation, it physically constituted approximately half the present day Canadian province of British Columbia, since it did not include the Colony of Vancouver Island, the vast and still largely...

, McGowan met up with Democrat friends and sympathizers at Hill's Bar, while the Vigilance Committee members gathered around the settlement at Yale

Yale, British Columbia

Yale is an unincorporated town in the Canadian province of British Columbia. It was founded in 1848 by the Hudson's Bay Company as Fort Yale by Ovid Allard, the appointed manager of the new post, who named it after his superior, James Murray Yale, then Chief Factor of the Columbia District...

 up river. It wasn't long before McGowan was in trouble with the law (another fight, with Dr. Max Fifer, a Vigilance Committee member) and implicated in sheltering a man wanted for murder of a British subject at Yale. McGowan then became embroiled in the semi-comical dispute that broke out between the magistrates at Hill's Bar and Yale which saw the constable from Hill's Bar arrested by Peter Whannell, the magistrate at Yale, who was in turn arrested and convicted of contempt of court by George Perrier, the magistrate at Hill's Bar. All of this took place against a backdrop of a summer that had been very tense, with a series of bloody clashes between incoming miners from California, who were mostly American but included Europeans and Britons and others, and the Nlaka'pamux

Nlaka'pamux

The Nlaka'pamux , commonly called "the Thompson", and also Thompson River Salish, Thompson Salish, Thompson River Indians or Thompson River people) are an indigenous First Nations/Native American people of the Interior Salish language group in southern British Columbia...

 peoples of the Fraser Canyon

Fraser Canyon

The Fraser Canyon is an 84 km landform of the Fraser River where it descends rapidly through narrow rock gorges in the Coast Mountains en route from the Interior Plateau of British Columbia to the Fraser Valley...

, during events known as the Fraser Canyon War

Fraser Canyon War

The Fraser Canyon War, also known as the Canyon War or the Fraser River War, was an incident between the Nlaka'pamux people and white miners in the newly declared Colony of British Columbia, which later became part of Canada, in 1858. It occurred during the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush, which brought a...

. Parallel to this were a series of skirmishes along the route of the Okanagan Trail

Okanagan Trail

The Okanagan Trail was an inland route to the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush from the Lower Columbia region of the Washington and Oregon Territories in 1858-1859...

 with the Okanagan people

Okanagan people

The Okanagan people, also spelled Okanogan, are a First Nations and Native American people whose traditional territory spans the U.S.-Canada boundary in Washington state and British Columbia...

 of that region, which are seen as an extension of the contempaneous Yakima War

Yakima War

The Yakima War was a conflict between the United States and the Yakama, a Sahaptian-speaking people on the Northwest Plateau, then Washington Territory and now the southern interior of Eastern Washington, from 1855 to 1858.- Naming :...

 in Washington Territory

Washington Territory

The Territory of Washington was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from February 8, 1853, until November 11, 1889, when the final extent of the territory was admitted to the Union as the State of Washington....

. Governor Douglas had had enough, and when Whannell sent word of his arrest, warning that the country was in an uproar, and the Victoria correspondents of the San Francisco press (with many papers run by Vigilance Committee members) printing tales of Ned McGowan's outrageous excesses, the Governor decided to send the newly arrived Royal Engineers

Royal Engineers

The Corps of Royal Engineers, usually just called the Royal Engineers , and commonly known as the Sappers, is one of the corps of the British Army....

 under Colonel Richard Moody

Richard Moody

Major-General Richard Clement Moody was a Lieutenant-Governor, and later Governor, of the Falkland Islands, and the first Lieutenant-Governor of the Colony of British Columbia. While serving under this post, he selected the site of the new capital, New Westminster...

 to restore the Queen's Peace

Queen's peace

The Queen's peace is the term used in the Commonwealth realms to describe the protection the monarch, in right of each state, provides to his or her subjects...

. This was accomplished in relatively short order, and without bloodshed, although McGowan's supporters at Hill's Bar did fire upon the Royal Engineers as they made their way up the Fraser River to Yale. McGowan was convicted of assaulting Dr. Fife before the colony's first judge, Matthew Baillie Begbie

Matthew Baillie Begbie

Sir Matthew Baillie Begbie was born on the island of Mauritius, thereafter raised and educated in the United Kingdom...

, but McGowan charmed everyone, the Colonel, the Judge and the future British Rear Admiral Richard Charles Mayne

Richard Charles Mayne

Richard Charles Mayne RN CB FGS MP was a Royal Navy Captain, later Admiral and explorer.Richard Mayne was the son of Sir Richard Mayne KCB and the grandson of Judge Edward Mayne. Both his father and grandfather were graduates of Trinity College, Dublin,. Richard Mayne was educated at Eton...

, then a young lieutenant, with toasts to Queen Victoria and President James Buchanan

James Buchanan

James Buchanan, Jr. was the 15th President of the United States . He is the only president from Pennsylvania, the only president who remained a lifelong bachelor and the last to be born in the 18th century....

, (the latter a friend of McGowan's). The incident is known in British Columbia history

History of British Columbia

British Columbia is the westernmost province in Canada. Originally politically constituted as a pair of British colonies, British Columbia joined the Canadian Confederation on July 20, 1871.-Early history :...

 as McGowan's War

McGowan's War

McGowan's War was a bloodless war that took place in Yale, British Columbia in the fall of 1858. The conflict posed a threat to the newly-minted British authority on the British Columbia mainland, which had only just been declared a colony the previous summer, at the onset of the Fraser Canyon Gold...

.

Washington, D.C. and Arizona

In 1859, tired of struggling against the numerous Vigilance Committee miners on the Fraser, McGowan sold his stake at Hill's Bar for $500 and left British Columbia with $5000 in gold dust. He returned to the East, and a friend managed to get him a position as assistant sergeant-at-arms in the United States House of Representatives

United States House of Representatives

The United States House of Representatives is one of the two Houses of the United States Congress, the bicameral legislature which also includes the Senate.The composition and powers of the House are established in Article One of the Constitution...

. In 1881 he was out west again, in Tombstone, Arizona

Tombstone, Arizona

Tombstone is a city in Cochise County, Arizona, United States, founded in 1879 by Ed Schieffelin in what was then Pima County, Arizona Territory. It was one of the last wide-open frontier boomtowns in the American Old West. From about 1877 to 1890, the town's mines produced USD $40 to $85 million...

, appearing as a witness in a murder trial. He moved to San Francisco and published accounts of his times in British Columbia, as well as a two-part biography of the notorious Parker H. French

Parker H. French

Parker H. French was a nineteenth century adventurer, entrepreneur, and swindler. He left no personal records such as letters or diaries, and about whom very few formal records have been found...

. Ned McGowan, having outlived almost all of his friends, died in relative poverty in December 1892. He is buried in Holy Cross Cemetery, San Francisco.

External links

• Edward McGowan, Narrative of Edward McGowan, including a full account of the author's adventures and perils while persecuted by the San Francisco vigilance committee of 1856, together with a report of his trial, which resulted in his acquittal. McGowan's account of his persecution by the Committee of Vigilance, self-published, 1857, reprinted 1917.
• Mary Floyd Williams, History of the San Francisco Committee of Vigilance: A Study of Social Control on the California Frontier in the Days of the Gold Rush, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1921.