Vigilante Wars — Cecelia Holland

The 1849 Gold Rush in California brought to a boiling point the new state's wild and unruly politics. Before long there was mob rule in the muddy streets of San Francisco. This decline of constitutional authority on the West Coast mirrored the fumbling actions of Congress and the federal government in Washington as a nation deeply divided over the slavery issue struggled to find a way to preserve the Union.

Cecelia Holland's compelling account of events in the city on the bay reveals a disturbing underside of the “will of the people” and the fragile nature of democratic government in a nation headed for civil war.

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Cecelia Holland was born in Nevada and grew up on the East Coast, where she went to Connecticut College and studied history under F. Edward Cranz. She has been a free-lance writer for fifty years and lives in northern California. Her Kindle Single “Blood on the Tracks,” about the great 1877 railroad strike, was a recent best-seller.