y the surrender to his
creditors of all he possessed, even his homestead, which, to the value
of five thousand dollars, the laws of California allowed him to retain,
and which might well be coveted by him as a home for his wife and six
children; every claim against him was promptly met and discharged.
Retaining amidst all his reverses, the respect of all who knew him, he
engaged as a clerk in the banking house of Adams & Co. where most of his
old customers followed him, induced to do so by their confidence in
him. After the failure of that firm, he was for some time out of active
employment. But compelled by the necessities of a large family to seek
it, he determined to establish a daily newspaper and take upon
himself the editorial charge of it. For such an undertaking, his large
experience in business, his resolute spirit, his sound judgment,
his keen insight into character, his lofty scorn and detestation of
meanness, profligacy, peculation and fraud, eminently fitted him. The
paper, the Evening Bulletin, was first issued on the eighth day of
October, 1855. From that day to the day of his death, he devoted all his
faculties most faithfully and conscientiously to the exposure of
guilt, the laying bare gigantic schemes for defrauding the public,
the denouncing villains and villainy in high or low station, and the
reformation of the numerous and aggravated abuses under which the
community was and had long been groaning. Day after day did he assail
with dauntless energy the open or secret robbers, oppressors or
corruptors of the people. Neither wealth nor power could bribe or
intimidate him. It would be difficult to conceive the enthusiasm with
which the People hailed the advent of so able a champion, and
the intense satisfaction with which they witnessed his steadfast
perseverance in the cause of truth and the right.

At length, on the fourteenth day of May 1856, the anxious fears and
gloomy forebodings of his family and friends were realized.... His
assassin, James P. Casey, was well-known and of evil repute in the City.
Bold, daring, and unscrupulous, his hand was ever ready to execute the
plans of villainy which his fertile brain had conceived. Sentenced in
New York to imprisonment for grand larceny in the State Prison at Sing
Sing for the term of two years, and discharged when that term had nearly
expired; he soon after sailed for California. Shortly after his arrival,
he was chosen Inspector of Elections in the Six