Death Valley Days: David Farragut

It is June of 1856 in San Francisco and the Vigilance Committee is arresting citizens and has already hanged two men.  Doctor Ashe has managed to escape the committee and reports the troubles to Captain Farragut (Ronald Reagan).  Farragut says he can't do anything without orders from the president.  So long as the committee doesn't attack federal property, there's nothing he can do.  Nonetheless, he takes a longboat to the Barbary Coast of San Francisco to see for himself.  He is unsatisfied by the answers from a committee functionary named McCartney.  McCartney is sending bands of men to arrest all sorts of people without due process.  Farragut checks with the head of the committee, JD Calhoun.  Calhoun denies all blame for McCartney's actions.  As luck would have it, Farragut had left orders with Lt. Burnell to sail three ships to stand off the Barbary Coast.  Farragut threatens the miscreant committee men with a barrage that will flatten the area.  Everyone comes to their senses and the city is saved.

All this was new to me, so I decided to research the topic.  Sure enough, there was a Vigilance Committee that took law into its own hands, once in 1851, and again in 1856.  William Tecumseh Sherman - future arsonist of Atlanta - was a banker in San Francisco at the time and had been asked to command the city militia during this exact period.  His letters show that he was frustrated by the inaction of General Wool - the army commander in the region - and the mixed signals from Governor Johnson.  He also noted that Farragut refused to get involved without orders from President Pierce.  As Pierce had already taken a hands-off attitude in what became Bleeding Kansas, it seemed unlikely he would authorize military action in San Francisco.  In his biography of Farragut, Alfred T Mahan - author of The Influence of Sea Power Upon History - offers an oblique comment that the Navy approved of Farragut's actions during those troubled times in California.  In an article from the National Review, it was noted that Farragut dispatched a ship "for moral effect."

It would appear that The Battle of San Francisco episode vastly expanded Farragut's minimal role in the taming of the Vigilance Committee.  As an active participant in opposing the committee, it is a certainty that Sherman would have mentioned this astonishing effort by Farragut, especially since Sherman had been denied assistance by Farragut the day before the proposed events in the episode.

Farragut was in the region to establish the Mare Island Naval Station and was living aboard a sloop-of-war with his wife, Virginia.  I had thought it odd that she was living on the ship, but the episode was accurate on this point.  There were no accommodations on the island as yet and he was stationed here from 1854 to 1858.  6 years later, he would "Damn the torpedoes" and steam into Mobile Bay during the Civil War.

Disappointing.