P HENRY M. TURNER

Born in Newberry, S. C.--Ordained Bishop in 1880--President of Bishop
Council. Home and Foreign Missionary Society and Sunday School Union of
the A. M. E. Church.--From Slave to Statesman--As Soldier, Editor,
Author, Legislator, Orator, and African Explorer--For Vitality and
Ability, Courage and Fidelity, Along so Many Lines, He Stands Without a
Peer.]

CHAPTER V.

A rush to newly discovered gold fields bring in view every trait of
human character. The more vicious standing out in bold relief, and
stamping their impress upon the locality. This phase and most primitive
situation can be accounted for partly by the cupidity of mankind, but
mainly that the first arrivals are chiefly adventurers. Single men,
untrammeled by family cares, traders, saloonists, gamblers, and that
unknown quantity of indefinite quality, ever present, content to allow
others to fix a status of society, provided they do not touch on their
own special interests, and that other, the unscrupulous but active
professional politician, having been dishonored at home, still astute
and determined, seeks new fields for booty, obtain positions of trust
and then consummate peculation and outrage under the forms of law. But
the necessity for the honest administration of the law eventually
asserts itself for the enforcement of order.

It was quaintly said by a governor of Arkansas, that he believed that a
public official should be "reasonably honest." Even should that limited
standard of official integrity be invaded the people with an honest
ballot need not be long in rectifying the evil by legal means. But
cannot something be said in palliation of summary punishment by illegal
means, when it is notorious and indisputable that all machinery for the
execution of the law and the maintenance of order, the judges,
prosecuting attorneys, sheriff and drawers of jurors, and every other of
court of law are in the hands of a despotic cabal who excessively tax,
and whose courts convict all those who oppose them, and exonerate by
trial the most farcical, the vilest criminal, rob and murder in broad
day light, often at the bidding of their protectors. Such a status for a
people claiming to be civilized seems difficult to conceive, yet the
above was not an hypothesis of condition, but the actual one that
existed in California and San Francisco, especially from 1849 to 1855.
Gamblers and dishonest politicians from other States held the
governm