James
King "of William," so called to distinguish him from others similarly
named, began a campaign of public enlightenment in the fall of 1855.
His San Francisco Bulletin assailed by name the public
officials whose connivance was to blame for the bawdy houses and the
gambling houses and for a moral atmosphere in which swindling and
embezzlement were condoned.
Could
the bosses choose no better candidate for supervisor than a cheap,
machine journalist and politician, who was a veteran of the New York
State Penitentiary, asked King? The candidate replied to the
question—with a gun. James Casey met King at the door of his office on
the afternoon of May 14, 1856, fired a single shot into his victim's
chest, watched him stagger into the office of the Pacific Express
Company, and then permitted himself to be taken to jail.
King
did not die until May 20. Meanwhile a new Vigilance Committee had been
formed and its disciplined, armed companies supported the seizure of
Casey and another murderer, one Charles Cora, from the unwilling hands
of the legal Sheriff. On May 22, as King's funeral procession wound
toward the cemetery, Casey and Cora were publicly hanged in front of
the Vigilance Committee's meeting rooms on Sacramento Street.
