ABSTRACT
On March 15, 1851, in the California gold rush town of Shasta City, Pearson Easterbrook was tried, convicted, and hanged for the murder of his messmate, Price. The citizens of Shasta held a meeting and ran the trial and the execution themselves because there were no courts in that part of the state. Pioneers and frontiersmen employed all three of the aforementioned branches of parliamentary practice: creating new associations, conducting the business of such associations, and holding mass meetings. The need for self-government and collective action was greater in Gold Rush California than anywhere else on the frontier. Foreigners in California believed that Americans enjoyed a great advantage over miners from other countries because they were so adept at coordination. Albert Bernard de Roushaile, a Frenchman who otherwise despised Americans, admired their behavior at meetings. John Phillip Reid presents an engrossing study of trials on the overland trail in his book Policing the Elephant.
