The Public City

This history of San Fransisco from 1850 through 1900 identifies the active participation of citizens in communication, persuasion, and mobilization as the 'public city': the site of American political and social change. Drawing on speeches, pamphlets, newspapers, census and electoral data, the book narrates the city's turbulent history, through Vigilance Committees, public executions, duels, the Civil War, the Workingmen's Party of California, party 'bosses' and 'machines', the rise of modern feminism, the origins of mass journalism, and the triumph of Progressive urban reform at the turn of the century. Most studies of urban politics treat public life as the expression of social group experience. This book argues the reverse: that social group identities of race, class, ethnicity, and gender were created in the public sphere, as leaders mobilized the masses in politics and journalism.