J. Neely Johnson

J. Neely Johnson
4th Governor of California
In office January 9, 1856 – January 8, 1858
Lieutenant	Robert M. Anderson
Preceded by	John Bigler
Succeeded by	John Weller
Personal details
Born	August 2, 1825(1825-08-02) Gibson County, Indiana
Died	August 31, 1872(1872-08-31) (aged 47) Salt Lake City, Utah Territory
Political party	Know Nothing
Spouse(s)	Mary Zabriskie
Profession	Jurist, lawyer, politician

John Neely Johnson (August 2, 1825 – August 31, 1872) was an American lawyer and politician. He was elected as the fourth governor of California from 1856 to 1858, and later appointed justice to the Nevada Supreme Court from 1867 to 1871.^{[citation needed]} As a member of the American Party, Johnson remains one of only two members of a third party to be elected to the California governorship, with the only other being Frederick Low, who was elected on a National Union Party ticket.

Biography

Born in rural Gibson County, Indiana, Johnson studied to become a lawyer, successfully completing his studies at the age of 21 in Iowa. In July 1849, Johnson abandoned law to join the Gold Rush in California. Johnson briefly employed himself as a gold prospector, and later as a mule train driver. Upon settling in Sacramento, Johnson restarted his law career, and at the age of 25 in 1850, was elected as Sacramento city attorney.^[1] After two years of working in the City Attorney's office in the growing inland city, Johnson embarked on beginning a political career. In the 1852 general election, running as a Democrat, Johnson was elected to the California State Assembly as one of four members representing Sacramento.^[2]

During his time in the Assembly, Johnson famously nearly broke a local editor's nose after accusing the editor of writing an insulting article on the young Assemblyman. The editor pulled out a pistol and aimed it at Johnson, but was tackled by onlookers before he could fire.^[3]

By 1854, both the state and federal wings of the Democratic Party increasingly split into two separate Lecompton and Anti-Lecompton camps due to the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Frustrated with increasingly frequent and sometimes violent party splits, Johnson abandoned the Democrats and joined the Nativist American Party, known popularly as the "Know Nothings" due to their semi-secret meetings where members frequently responded when asked of their political activities, "I know nothing." The Whig Party, once a force in national and state politics, all but collapsed.

During the 1855 general elections, the new American Party, fresh from the Whig disintergration and hoping to capitalize on Democratic divisions and growing anti-Catholic sentiment, nominated Assemblyman Johnson as its candidate for Governor of California, running against incumbent Governor John Bigler, who hoped to garner a third term. Johnson and the American Party's distinct anti-immigrant rhetoric and fatigue from deep Democratic divisions proved popular with the electorate, giving Johnson the governorship by a comfortable margin. Johnson was described as "the most startled man in the state" upon hearing of his election.^[3] Along with the governorship, Know Nothings also received considerable gains in the California State Legislature, as well as getting elected to every other major executive post in the state, such as the offices of Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General, Treasurer, and Controller.^[4]

Governor

Johnson was sworn in as the fourth governor of California on January 9, 1856. Taking office at age of 30, Johnson remains the youngest to have done so in California history. Upon assuming the office, Johnson inherited a growing state debt left over from the Bigler administration. Johnson sought nearly immediately to reduce government expenditures in the hope of cutting the debt.

The Vigilante Committee

A lithograph depicting James Casey and Charles Cora being taken prisoner by armed Vigilante Committee members

Since the beginning of the 1850s, tensions within San Francisco political circles had often expanded to open violence. In 1851, due to distrust with municipal authorities and allegations of severe corruption, armed citizens took to the streets and formed the San Francisco Vigilance Movement to correct wrongs they saw being committed or being protected by the city government. In one of the committee's first moves, citizens lynched two criminals that had been in the city jails. The governor at the time, John McDougall, condemned the actions of the vigilantes, but proved powerless to stop them due to the infancy of state law enforcement.

Remaining dormant for five years, distrust of city authorities again reached the surface when on May 14, 1856, James King of William, editor of the San Francisco Bulletin and a vocal critic of corrupt officials, was mortally wounded by James P. Casey, a purported ballot-box stuffer and city politician.^[5]

As Casey stood in custody with San Francisco law enforcement, William T. Coleman, a ringleader in the 1851 Vigilance Committee and another vocal critic of municipal authorities, called for sympathizers and arms to form another Vigilante Committee. Armed citizens erected a barricade along Sacramento Street to repel city officers from removing their presence. By the next week, Vigilantes marched on the city jail, overpowering its guards to arrest Casey, along with criminal Charles Cora, who had fatally shot a U.S. Marshal the previous year.

Johnson reacted to the news of the Vigilante Committee quickly. Johnson, along with his brother William and the newly commissioned chief of the California Militia, Major General William Tecumseh Sherman, traveled to San Francisco from Sacramento to meet the Vigilante Committee ringleaders face to face. Sherman later recalled in his 1875 Memoirs of Johnson angrily confronting Coleman and other Vigilante ringleaders in their makeshift headquarters, exclaiming, "Coleman, what the devil is the matter here?" Coleman replied the San Franciscans "were tired of it, and had no faith in the officers of the law.”^[6] After personal negotiations between Governor Johnson and the Vigilantes over transferring the criminals to state law enforcement failed, Johnson watched helplessly as both Casey and Cora were hanged by the Vigilantes on May 20.

Portrait of Johnson by William F. Cogswell

Believing the matter done, Johnson returned to Sacramento, still reeling from his lack of authority to stop the hangings. The Vigilantes, however, had refused to disperse, claiming themselves as the city's rightful law enforcement. San Francisco Mayor James Van Ness, with the municipal police and sheriff departments overwhelmed by the Vigilantes continued armed presence in the city's streets, pleaded to the Governor for military assistance. Johnson acted, instructing General Sherman to gather available arms and muster the California Militia in San Francisco on June 2, and issuing a gubernatorial proclamation declaring San Francisco in a state of insurrection the following day.^[7] But Johnson's proclamation, like those of McDougall's five years earlier, faced enforcement problems. Johnson had instructed the California Militia to impose martial law. Yet due to the lack of proper arms, the Militia needed equipment provided by federal forces. Johnson ordered John E. Wool of the U.S. Army's Department of the Pacific based in Benicia to dispatch weapons to the state militia. Yet General Wool rejected, claiming that the Governor did not have the authority to use arms from federal soldiers or his soldiers use to any military capacity, claiming that right laid exclusively with the President.^[8]

Both Johnson and Sherman were furious over General Wool's refusal to lend arms for state militia forces. Seeing the state government's powerlessness in the face of the situation, Sherman resigned from his military commission, vowing never to return to the realm of California politics. Meanwhile, the California Militia, under the new command of Major General Volney E. Howard, continued to gather arms in the city for its companies that Sherman had begun, but suffered a major setback when on June 21, 1856, Vigilantes seized the arms schooner Julia, depriving the state militia its arms supply and a majority of its muskets.^[9]

The Vigilantes remained the defacto law enforcement of San Francisco until August 1856. Between June to their gradual dissolution, Vigilantes had arrested Chief Justice David S. Terry of the Supreme Court of California for stabbing a Vigilante member, as well as hanging two more individuals. Governor Johnson revoked his proclamation on San Francisco's insurrection on November 3.^[10]

Despite denouncing the Vigilantes and their rebellion against city authorities, Johnson did agree to an earlier Vigilante demand of uniting the city and county of San Francisco into a single entity to minimize corruption. The result was the passage and signing of the Consolidation Act of 1856, uniting county and municipal authorities.

Rest of term

The Vigilante Crisis in the summer of 1856 overshadowed much of the rest of Johnson's term. Despite a large portion of the State Legislature made up of Know Nothing party members, Johnson once vetoed a bill due to its "bad spelling, improper punctuation and erasures."^[3] One important accomplishment of the Johnson Administration would be the approval of funds to build the future California State Capitol.

By the 1857 general election, Know-Nothings had grown frustrated with Johnson's inability to deal with the San Francisco Vigilantes. During the American Party's convention that year, Johnson lost the party's nomination for the governorship to George W. Bowie. Bowie would later be defeated by Lecompton Democrat John Weller. Shortly afterwards, the Know-Nothings ceased to be a major political force in California, and later collapsed, swallowed up by the emerging Republican Party and sections of the Democratic Party.

Nevada

Frustrated by his tenure in the California governorship and anxious for a new political start, Johnson moved to the Utah Territory shortly after his departure. Following Utah's split and the creation of the Nevada Territory, as well as the beginning of the American Civil War in 1861, discussion began in territorial political circles to draft documents suitable for the federal government to admit Nevada as a U.S. state. In 1863, Johnson was elected to the Nevada Constitutional Convention in Carson City. The following year, the former governor was elected as Convention President.

Due in part to Johnson's efforts, Nevada was admitted as a U.S. state on October 31, 1864.

In 1867, Nevada governor Henry G. Blasdel appointed Johnson to the Nevada Supreme Court. A justice until 1871, Johnson would serve in this post longer than any other in his life.

After leaving the high court in 1871, Johnson's health declined. He died in Salt Lake City on August 31, 1872 at the age of 47.

References

1. ^ James P. Jackson, (1999) (.PDF). Celebrating the Sesquicentennial of the Sacramento City Attorney’s Office. City of Sacramento. http://www.cityofsacramento.org/cityattorney/history/documents/City_Attorney_History.PDF. Retrieved 2007-05-10. 
2. ^ "J. Neely Johnson Candidate Biography". JoinCalifornia. http://www.joincalifornia.com/candidate/7666. Retrieved 2007-05-10. 
3. ^ ^{a b c} California State Library. "Governor J. Neeley Johnson of California". State of California. http://www.californiagovernors.ca.gov/h/biography/governor_4.html. Retrieved 2007-05-10. 
4. ^ "5 September 1855 General Election". JoinCalifornia. http://www.joincalifornia.com/election/1855-09-05. Retrieved 2007-05-10. 
5. ^ "The Vigilantes". San Francisco Virtual Museum. http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist11/vigilantes.html. Retrieved 2007-05-10. 
6. ^ Sherman, William T. (1875). Memoirs of General W.T. Sherman. New York: Penguin Books. ISBN 0140437983. 
7. ^ - California Military Museum
8. ^ John Wool (5 June 1856). "Letter Governor Johnson". http://www.familytales.org/dbDisplay.php?id=ltr_jew1073. Retrieved 2007-05-21. 
9. ^ "William Tecumseh Sherman (1820 - 1891)". Museum of the City of San Francisco. http://www.sfmuseum.org/bio/sherman.html. Retrieved 2007-05-21. 
10. ^ Judson A. Grenier (2003). Officialdom: California State Government, 1849-1879. OCLC 108243065. 

External links

• J. Neely Johnson biography at the California State Library
• J. Neely Johnson Daguerreotype image from the California State Library
• Guide to the John Neely Johnson Papers at The Bancroft Library
• J. Neely Johnson at Find a Grave

Political offices
Preceded by Four members	California State Assemblyman, 11th District 1853-1854 (with three others)	Succeeded by Three members

Persondata
Name	Johnson, J. Neely
Alternative names
Short description	Governor of California
Date of birth	1825-8-2
Place of birth	Gibson County, Indiana
Date of death	1872-8-31
Place of death	Salt Lake City, Utah Territory