Dirty Deeds

Land, Violence, and the 1856 San Francisco Vigilance Committee

By: Nancy J. Taniguchi

Narrated by: Gary D. MacFadden

Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins

Publisher's summary

The California gold rush of 1849, created fortunes for San Francisco merchants, whose wealth depended on control of the city's docks. But ownership of waterfront property was hotly contested. In an 1856 dispute over land titles, a county official shot an outspoken newspaperman, prompting a group of merchants to organize the San Francisco Committee of Vigilance. The committee, which met in secret, fed biased stories to the newspapers, depicting itself as a necessary substitute for incompetent law enforcement. But its actual purpose was quite different. In Dirty Deeds, historian Nancy J. Taniguchi draws on the 1856 Committee's minutes - long lost until she unearthed them - to present the first clear picture of its actions and motivations. Even after the establishment of a federal board in 1851 to settle California claims, land titles remained confused, and most of the land in the city belonged to no one. The acquisition of key waterfront properties in San Francisco by an ambitious politician, motivated the 30-odd merchants, who called themselves "the Executives" of the Vigilance Committee, to go directly after these parcels. Despite the organization's assertion of working on behalf of law and order, its tactics - kidnapping, forced deportations, and even murder - went far beyond the bounds of law. Dirty Deeds tells the real story, in which a band of men took over a city in an attempt to control the most valuable land on the West Coast.

The audiobook is published by University of Oklahoma Press.

"A tour de force of urban history." (Kevin Starr, University of Southern California)

©2016 University of Oklahoma Press (P)2017 Redwood Audiobooks

A uncertain premise and very biased

The audio book contains multiple audio patches to fix factual errors, in addition to having a distractingly monotone and flat delivery.
Taniguchi repeatedly gives a very generous characterisation to David S. Terry, a known murderer and supporter of slavery, casting him as a heroic and noble figure with little to no justification.
Taniguchi's premise of the property manipulations being the basis of the committee’s actions seems to be a massively exaggerated and ill founded claim. The premise reaches the point of farce when considering the scale and implications of the uprising both for the members of the committee and the state as a whole.
The book approaches the subject from a strongly modern progressive bias never exploring the nuances or complexity of the issue, given the state of government and wide scale corruption at the time.