it. The community was not surprised, and no one found much fault. Notwithstanding the jury may have been very stupid and the verdict was regarded as false and untrue, it was generally acquiesced in; and it began to be understood that under circumstances at all similar the result, with almost any jury, would be the same. In other words, it made no difference what the law of the statute and books was, there was a higher law that a man could not leave his property as he pleased, unless he did so in a manner to suit the popular notion of the fitness of things.'

The other trial was that of Laura D. Fair for the murder of Alexander P. Crittenden. The accused was a handsome and attractive woman, widow of a state senator. She had been for some time living in criminal relations with her victim. The latter, a brilliant and prominent lawyer, having a wife and family of good social standing, at length tiring of the meretricious connection, attempted to break it off. On the evening of November 3, 1870, on the return of his wife from a visit to the east, he met her at Oakland and took the ferry-boat to return with her to San Francisco. Soon after leaving the wharf, while he was sitting on an outside seat of the boat with his wife and several of the family by his side, Mrs. Fair came up, muffled, and, stepping in front, drew a pistol and shot him dead. Being arrested on the spot, she was soon indicted. There were two trials—both in the fifteenth district court in San Francisco. The first, which was in April, 1870, resulted in her conviction; but on appeal the supreme court reversed the judgment. On the second, which took place in September, 1872, she was acquitted. The defense was insanity; but, as her condition was certainly not insanity in the ordinary and usually accepted significance of that word, it was called "emotional insanity." Notwithstanding the facts seemed to show a deliberate, well-planned and carefullyexecuted scheme of homicide, the jury deliberately seized upon the plea of emotional insanity for the purpose of expressing its opinion that a woman should not, under the circumstances, be punished for killing a man even with malice aforethought. However plainly against the written law the verdict was and however stupid or corrupt the jury may have been to render it, Horace Hawes Will Case, San Francisco, 1872.

there was not a great deal of public reprobation. On the contrary, a very wide-spread opinion was that a man in Crittenden's condition in life, who would meddle with a woman as he did with Mrs. Fair, should do it at his own risk; and, if she killed him, no verdict against her should be adduced in justification or excuse of his conduct. In other words, there was in such cases a higher law, superior to the written statute, and against which instructions and charges of courts were in vain.'

Various reasons contributed to make the Fair case one of very great public interest. At the time of the homicide there was much excitement, which continued, with some intermissions, until the end of the second trial and acquittal of the accused. By that time, the more absorbing subject of a presidential election had come up and soon crowded it entirely out of thought. Almost immediately after the adjournment of the legislature of 1871–2, preparations began to be made for the next presidential campaign by the selection of delegates to the national conventions. That of the Republican party was held at Philadelphia on June 5, 1872, and resulted in the nomination of General Grant a second time for president of the United States, and of Henry Wilson for vice-president. But previously, on May 3, another convention had been held at Cincinnati, by what purported to be a new political party calling itself “Liberal Republican," which endeavored to forestall any enthusiasm for Grant by the nomination of Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, who had helped build up the Republican party but was then opposed to Grant and seemed willing, for reasons deemed satisfactory to himself, to wreck the structure he had spent so many years in erecting. The candidate for vice-president, nominated with Greeley, was B. Gratz Brown of Missouri. On the other hand, the Democrats, who were genuine Democrats and believed in maintaining their party organization, held a convention at Baltimore and nominated Charles O'Conor for president and John Quincy Adams for vice-president. As a matter of fact, the so-called Republicans, who nominated Greeley, and the so-called Democrats, who did not join in nominating O'Conor, had coalesced in support of a principle, commonly known as "anything to beat 1 San Francisco newspapers of September 30 and October 1, 1872.

Grant;" and the combination, which it produced in California, including as it did a number of the most violent or at least noisiest Republicans and at the same time a number of the most violent Democrats that had ever been known in the state, presented a spectacle truly unaccustomed.

The election took place on Tuesday, November 5, 1872, and resulted in the choice of the Republican electors by a vote of about fifty-four thousand against forty-one thousand for the Greeley electors and one thousand for the "out-and-out" Democrats; and it was soon known that the Republicans had been successful throughout the Union and Grant re-elected. At the same time, three Republicans, Charles Clayton, Horace F. Page and Sherman O. Houghton and only one Democrat, John K. Luttrell, were elected from California to congress. But this great triumph for the Republicans was soon followed in California by the formation of a new party-a sort of abnormal and eccentric growth, which, though it made great noise for a time and seriously threatened the Republican party upon whose body it preyed, had no inherent strength and did not last long. This new movement originated principally in the organization of a number of clubs of dissatisfied farmers in different parts of the state, whose object was to discuss their grievances. These clubs, finding that for various reasons they could not accomplish their purposes by open meetings, instituted or joined a secret order, known sometimes as "Patrons of Husbandry" but more commonly as "Grangers," which extended its organization throughout the state and for a period exerted very considerable influence upon politics. Its chief matters of complaint against the existing order of affairs, and against both the main political parties as responsible therefor, were excessive rates of railroad freights and fares and prodigal expenditures of public money. It maintained that railroad corporations, being the creatures of statutory law and deriving their powers therefrom, should be under the control of the legislature; that the maximum rates of freights should be so fixed by statute as to prevent extortion and leave producers a margin of profit on their productions; that wayfreights should be charged only in proportion to distance and at no greater rate than through-freights; that such railroads,

built by the money of the government, as would not reduce freights in accordance with the foregoing principles, should be operated by the government in the interest of the people rather than by private persons for personal aggrandizement, and that it would cast its votes and use its influence for such candidates for the legislature only as would carry such views into effect. It also proposed the utilization of state prison labor in the production of grain sacks for home consumption, to be sold to farmers at cost; the preparation of plans for a co-operative bank; the establishment of a co-operative system for the sale of agricultural supplies. and the providing of storage for grain which would enable it to be retained until it would bring the highest price.1

It seems plain, even from the above brief statement of their main purposes, that the Grangers could not constitute a successful political party. They had grievances and doubtless meant well enough; but they did not propose to look out for any interests except their own; and, by not regarding the interests of others, they could neither properly understand nor appreciate their own. They did not base themselves upon or advocate any broad principles of general application; and they never had any great or even moderately great leaders. They did not even have men properly qualified to formulate and forcibly urge their principles, such as they were; and, as to those principles, there was great diversity and independence of opinion. In their narrow sphere they could stick together, but in other respects there was no political cohesion amongst them. In fact one of their principal purposes, frequently put forward in their platforms, was, as above stated, to stand between the Republican and Democratic or other great parties, and wield the balance of power by throwing their influence in favor of one or the other as their interests might dictate. Such in a few words was the organization among the farming part of the community, provoked into existence mainly by the railroad that began to make itself felt in the latter part of 1872. It could hardly be called much of a political party of itself; but, in the campaign of 1873 for members of the legislature, it joined the anti-railroad portion of the Republican party 1Davis' Political Conventions, 321–323.

that trained under the leadership of Governor Booth and formed the new party referred to, which, on account of its heterogeneous constitution, parti-colored complexion and unusual make-up, was nicknamed and generally known as the "Dolly Varden" party.' Booth's ambition at the time was to become United States senator as successor to Eugene Casserly, whose term was to end in March, 1875; and his main object in the campaign of 1873 was therefore to secure votes favorable to his candidacy. As has already been shown, he was a pronounced opponent to the railroad and carried solidly with him all the anti-railroad elements of the Republican party. The Grangers could very well join in a movement to make so able and effective an enemy of the railroad United States senator and at the same time secure legislators pledged to anti-railroad legislation. The campaign was well planned, well carried out and eminently successful. Though the other parties ran tickets and great efforts were made by each of them to gain the favor of the growing and already formidable Granger power, and though it was endeavored in various ways. by the formation of new combinations to turn the tide, it made no difference. Nothing could stem the Dolly Varden flood. It gathered strength as it swept along. Among other things, it offered an opportunity for those misguided Republicans, who had followed the ignis fatuus of Liberal Republicanism under the leadership of Horace Greeley and thereby substantially identified themselves with the Democratic party, to get back into what was still Republicanism-though called by another name-under the leadership of Newton Booth. It also attracted and carried along with it all the dissatisfied, or what were commonly designated the "disgruntled," elements of the other parties. And the result was that the Dolly Vardens, to the surprise of nearly everybody except those thoroughly acquainted with the inconstant and mercurial character of what may be called the uncertain or floating vote of California, carried the election of September 3, 1873, in many parts of the state, and secured a majority which made Booth's election to the United States senate a matter beyond peradventure.

For the judicial election of 1873, which was to take place on 'Davis' Political Conventions, 323, 324.