California Justice! - Weekly Columbus Enquirer Columbus, Georgia · Tuesday, September 02, 1851

This is an interesting article from the Weekly Columbus Enquirer in Columbus, Georgia about the hanging of Josefa, often named Juanita, in Downieville. It's an echo of several newspaper reports. It references the Marysville Daily Herald report of 8 July 1851, which itself was republished in the San Francisco Daily Alta the next day, and perhaps was the source for the Columbus paper. It also references a report from the San Francisco Evening Picayune which is the interesting part; that paper is not digitally available on the internet, so like the Pacific Star coverage, which I believe was written by a witness, in Downieville, there are only echoes of its content, like this one. It's not clear how much of the text below is copied verbatim from the Evening Picayune, and how much is editorial from the Columbus Enquirer. That an editor of a newspaper in Georgia, in 1851 might have qualms about unequal treatment due to race is also fascinating. They get the name for the stabbing victim wrong - Cameron instead of Cannon - and the date wrong - July 12th instead of July 5th. - MF

California Justice!

The New Orleans papers contain long accounts of the doings of a committee of Vigilance in California, which seems to have taken upon itself the administration of justice and the execution of the laws of that State, with summary vengeance. A notorious robber, by the name of James Stuart, had been detected in some of his petty thieving, and on being threatened with lasso execution, be made a full confession of his life, which is but a record of the blackest of crimes. But these self constituted executioners sometimes over-leap the bounds of justice and commit acts of atrocity, shocking alike to civilization and common decency. Witness the following from one of the California journals:

A Mexican woman named Josefa, was hung at Downieville, Yuba county, on the 12th of July, for the murder of a man named Cameron. The Marysville Herald says:

The deceased, in company with some others, had the night previously entered the home of the woman, and created a riot and disturbance, which so outraged her, that when he presented himself the next morning to apologize for his behavior, he was met at the door by the female who had in her hand a large bowie knife, which she instantly drove into his heart. She was immediately arrested, tried, sentenced and hung at 4 o'clock on the same day. She did not exhibit the least fear, walked up a small ladder to the scaffold, and placing the rope round her neck with her own hands, first gracefully removing two plats of raven black hair from her shoulders to make room for the fatal cord. Some five or six hundred witnessed the execution. On being asked if she had anything to say, she replied, "Nothing; but I would do the same again if I were so provoked"- and that she wished her remains decently taken care of."

The San Francisco Evening Picayune thus indignantly comments on the proceedings at Downieville which, it says, for outrageous indecency and savage brutality, are unsurpassed by any thing recorded in the first French Revolution:

What were the circumstances of the case? A party of drunken men, reeling home after a debauch, forced the door of a private house in which a female resided and insulted the inmates. The woman was not a brothel, nor the woman a prostitute. Of this outrage no notice was taken; but one of the party returning for the vilest of purposes, and insulting the woman by the grosset epithets, her Southern blood boiled over with indignation, and in a moment of passion she snatched a knife and inflicted a mortal wound. For this she was taken to the cross roads and publicly hanged!

Now we venture to say that had this woman been an American instead of Mexican - had she a boasted of white blood, as they call it - as though the caste of the woman, if it affected her caste at all, should not have tended to make her executioners more lenient - had she been of the Anglo Saxon race, instead of being hung for the deed, she would have been lauded for it; and instead of an account appearing in the papers of a "horrible murder by a Mexican woman," every press in the State would have rung with acclamations for the "heroic conduct of a female," or the "determined defence of her virtue by a lady in the mines." It was not her guilt which condemned this unfortunate woman, but her caste and her Mexican blood.

Of her trial we know not how to speak. We know of no terms which are capable of expressing the horrible - the savage brutality of it. Of course, the witnesses were not sworn; the men who tried her needed no testimony; they thirsted for her blood, and the form of trial was an impediment to their desires, which they cursed as they hurried through it. The Judge - John Rose, of Rose's Ranch - let his name be remembered -stated to the witnesses that they must tell the truth, "just as if they had been sworn;" to which they assented and lied; a physician who testified in her behalf was beaten, a lawyer who endeavored to get justice done her was threatened with hanging and ordered to leave town, and amid the shouts of blood-thirsty monsters, whose rage could hardly be restrained even for one short hour, the upright, intelligent and impartial jury brought in a verdict a of murder, and condemned her to be hanged in two hours! Which sentence was executed.

But one circumstance was wanting to make the murder of the woman unparalleled in atrocity. - She was in a condition that would have made her life sacred, even in the most barbarous ages, and under the bloodiest code that ever cursed the world. An unborn infant perished with its murdered mother, before it saw the light.

Let the perpetrators of this beastly act seek to justify the deed upon any ground whatever. - There is no justification, no paliation of it; it will live on the records of crime as the most wanton and dastardly transaction that ever disgraced humanity. No matter what her guilt - she was still a woman, and those who killed her must have been devoid of every feeling and principle of the human heart.

A man named David Hill, from Cortland county, N. Y., was hung by the populace at Sonora, but the account before us does not mention for what crime. It appears that he had confessed his
guilt.

California Justice! 02 Sep 1851, Tue Weekly Columbus Enquirer (Columbus, Georgia) Newspapers.com