Lost Sacramentos

It is time we take seriously the prospect of fundamentally false history being broadly accepted as true. On this fifth anniversary, we should recall a previous episode of comparable seriousness that was on its way to amnesia soon after the young state’s most traumatic incidents.

Obscure linkages connect the San Francisco Committees of Vigilance to the Sacramento Settlers’ Association and other social movements of the California Gold Rush. These connections have been covered up by apparently intentional editorial choices of eminent 19th Century historians including John Morse, Josiah Royce, Hubert Howe Bancroft and Theodore Hittell.

I wrote this historiographic essay to explore why – and how – Californians generally fail to recall momentous events with intense resonance to our nation’s present difficulties. Please consider “Secret Intimacies and Mysterious Dealings: The Hidden History of California’s Vigilantes.”