it was all
right," and I was then allowed to pass down. But at the foot of the
stairs the guard made similar demand, and again the word had to be
shouted from above, that I was to be allowed to pass out. One of the
guards then took my arm, escorted me through the file of outside guards,
into the street, and I was, finally, "all right." But I felt curious in
regard to Broderick and McKibben, The next day Dows told me we had all
been wanted as witnesses on behalf of one of the prisoners in the
custody of the Committee, but that he had got me excused. From Broderick
I subsequently learned that he had given his testimony and had then come
away. Also had McKibbon.

Rumors had been circulated that Broderick was to be arrested by the
Committee. Whether true or false, I never learned, At all events he soon
left San Francisco and made a tour of the mountain counties, to promote
his canvass for the Senatorship, which he achieved the following year.
His devoted friends were all violently opposed to the Committee, and any
harm to him, by that body, would have been the occasion of very serious
trouble.

Colonel E. D. Baker had defended Charles Cora, at his trial, as I have
related. He was positive and unreserved in his denunciation of the
Committee. Whether he was ever threatened with arrest I do not know; but
he likewise left the city and went into the interior Northern Counties
and there practiced his profession until September, when he entered into
the Presidential campaign as chief orator of the Republican party, for
Fremont, and in November returned to his practice in San Francisco.

The Vigilance Committee disbanded their military forces late in August.
The Executive Committee held to them for future emergencies, but ceased
their meetings. Fort Gunny Bags was dismantled. The rooms were
abandoned; but as a closing scene, a grand review of the military was
held near South Park, and the rooms were thrown open to the public.
Thousands, ladies and gentlemen and children went there, and looked at
the stuffed ballot-box, at the nooses and ropes used in the hanging of
Casey and Cora, of Hetherington and Brace, at the shackles and gyves, at
all the other instruments and paraphernalia of the gallows and the
cells, into the narrow cells and their scant furniture, and at all the
ghastly curios of these haunted rooms of life and death, of mental
torture and bodily suffering, of forced suicide and the mocking of the
crazed victim of his