Once more the sober and law-loving men of California sent abroad word, and again the Vigilantes assembled. In 1853 they hanged two Mexicans for horse stealing, and also a bartender who had shot a citizen near Shasta. At Jackson they hanged another Mexican for horse stealing, and at Volcano, in 1854, they hanged a man named Macy for stabbing an old and helpless man. In this instance vengeance was very swift, for the murderer was executed within half an hour after his deed. The haste caused certain criticism when, in the same month one Johnson was hanged for stabbing a man named Montgomery, at Iowa Hill, who later recovered. At Los Angeles three men were sentenced to death by the local court, but the Supreme Court issued a stay for two of them, Brown and Lee. The people asserted that all must die together, and the mayor of the city was of the same mind. The third man, Alvitre, was hanged legally on January 12, 1855. On that day the mayor resigned his office to join the Vigilantes. Brown was taken out of jail and hanged in spite of the decision of the Supreme Court. The people were out-running the law. That same month they hanged another murderer for killing the treasurer of Tuolumne county. In the following month they hanged three more cattle thieves in Contra Costa county, and followed this by hanging a horse thief in Oakland. A larger affair threatened in the following summer, when thirty-six Mexicans were arrested for killing a party of Americans. For a time it was proposed to hang all thirty-six, but sober counsel prevailed and only three were hanged; this after formal jury trial. Unknown bandits waylaid and killed Isaac B. Wall and T. S. Williamson of Monterey, and, that same month U. S. Marshal William H. Richardson was shot by Charles Cora in the streets of San Francisco. The people grumbled. There was no certainty that justice would ever reach these offenders. The reputation of the state was ruined, not by the acts of the Vigilantes, but by those of unscrupulous and unprincipled men in office and upon the bench. The government was run by gamblers, ruffians, and thugs. The good men of the state began to prepare for a general movement of purification and the installation of an actual law. The great Vigilante movement of 1856 was the result.