Read All About It With E.J.C. Kewen in the Los Angeles Weekly Express, 22 August 1872, Part One

by Paul R. Spitzzeri

F.P.F. Temple wasn’t the only well-known figure in 1870s Los Angeles was a triple set of names before his surname—other examples included postmaster H.K.W. Bent, H.K.S. O’Melveny and E.J.C. Kewen—and it’s the latter who is the focus of this post, a noted attorney, politician, rancher and farmer and, perhaps best-known in this time, a silver-tongued and fiery orator who was an open Confederate sympathizer during the Civil War and a filibusterer in Nicaragua prior to that.

The highlighted artifact here is the 22 August 1872 edition of the Los Angeles Weekly Express, which was a compendium of articles featured during the prior six days and which, consequently, was devoid of the advertising found in the daily editions and which substantially paid for the operations by George A. Tiffany and Company of the paper, which had come into being the prior year. Before we get into the content related to our subject, we’ll go into some of his notable and colorful background.

Edward John Cage Kewen was born in 1825 in Columbus, Mississippi in the eastern part of the state not far from the Alabama border, but when he was 13 years old he was sent to Connecticut to attend the Wesleyan University, a Methodist-affiliated school in Middletown that was founded in 1831 and still operates with a very high reputation (among notable alumni are Lin-Manuel Miranda; football coach Bill Belichick; Colorado Senator Michael Bennet; film director Michael Bay; and National Economic Council Director Lael Brainard.)

After three years, however, a guardian squandered a substantial inheritance left to Kewen and he had to return to Mississippi with little left to his name and two younger brothers dependent upon him. He turned to the study of the law, but, after three years, he made a name at just age 19 for his remarkable oratorical skills when speaking on behalf of Whig presidential candidate Henry Clay during the 1844 election (Clay was defeated by Democrat James K. Polk). On one occasion, he was so spellbinding that, when he finished his speech, part of the crowd carried him on their shoulders to a nearby courthouse and demanded an encore.

Still in his teens, Kewen was hired as editor for his hometown Columbus Whig newspaper and operated it for two years before moving to St. Louis to take up a law practice. It was the 1848 presidential election season, so he stumped for Whig candidate Zachary Taylor, the hero general of the recently concluded Mexican-American War that included the seizure of much of México, including California. Part of “his fervid pilgrimage” took him though much of the Midwest and South.

With the onset of the subsequent California Gold Rush, Kewen joined a wagon train that crossed the plains to northern California and fell in love with a fellow traveler, Frances (Fannie) White, daughter of Dr. Thomas Jefferson White. The couple married in December 1849 after arrival in Sacramento and it was said that Kewen’s renown as a public speaker preceded him as he was called upon to give an address the day he got to what later became the state capital. Moreover, he was almost immediately, despite having just turned 25 years of age, elected as California Attorney General. Preferring Sacramento instead of San Jose, which was where the capital then was, he soon resigned and entered into a law practice.

Kewen was said to be undaunted and unafraid in confronting the criminal band called The Squatters and, in spring 1851, he was nominated as the Whig candidate for a seat in the House of Representatives. While he was defeated, the fact that the dominant Democrats barely defeated him was attributed largely to the candidate’s rapidly improving and maturing oratorical skills. In summer 1852, Kewen moved to San Francisco and practiced law, it was said, with “imminent success” for a few years.

Kewen’s brother, Achilles, became second-in-command to the notorious filibusterer William Walker and his short-lived and disastrous tenure as president of a self-declared American-led republic in Nicaragua in the mid-Fifties, and died in an early battle there in June 1855. The other sibling, Thomas, died the prior year in Panama and Kewen, said to be a close friend of Walker, joined the enterprise and became involved in the fiscal side of the Walker administration. Part of this involved an ill-advised conflict with the transportation titan Cornelius Vanderbilt and, at one point, Kewen went to the Southern states to recruit more men and money for the Nicaraguan “adventure.”

The first mention of Kewen, who appears to have picked up his rank of Colonel in the filibustering endeabor, in the Los Angeles press was in the 24 August 1854 edition of the new paper, the Southern Californian, which reported that he’d established “a rabid Whig sheet” called the Journal of Commerce. In January 1856, the Los Angeles Star reprinted a report from a San Francisco paper that Kewen was the subject of an arrest warrant for purportedly injuring a hotel employee in that city while staying there as part of his duties as an envoy.

In the late summer, Kewen made his first visit to the Angel City and the 13 September edition of the paper noted that he attended the formation of a Democratic Party club (the Whigs disintegrated after losing the 1852 presidential election and the new Republican Party emerged for the 1856 campaign, but Kewen obviously picked the Democrats for his loyalty). At a meeting held at the County Court House, then located in an adobe building sold by Jonathan Temple a few years prior, Kewen spoke with the paper lauding “his usual grace and eloquence” with it noted that his switch in party affiliation “shows his affection to the Constitution and the Union.”

The following week’s issue of the Star contained a very lengthy letter by Kewen and its formal language provided some idea of what his oratory would be like, except that the emotion and power of the latter, of course, could not be conveyed via the written word. Acknowledging his debt to Clay as standard-bearer of the late Whig Party, Kewen felt that James Buchanan, Polk’s Secretary of State during the recent war, was “a true representative of National principles,” which is why he became a Democrat. As to the Angel City, where his father-in-law, Dr. White, had settled, Kewen offered his

deep indebtedness I feel for the uniform kindness which has been extended to me by the citizens of Los Angeles during my brief sojourn in this vicinity, and entertaining the hope that their prosperity and fortunes may ever be commemorate [commensurate?] with the proverbial renown they enjoy for devotion to friends and hospitality to strangers.

It seemed clear that Kewen had been invited by local Democrats to settle in the town and join their ranks—the party was largely controlled then by lawyer Joseph Lancaster Brent, a Southerner—but Kewen demurred as he had to return to Nicaragua in the service of Walker. The Star of 6 December reported that, while he left to go to the U.S. “on business connected with the Republic of Nicaragua” and that it was hoped that “one of the most eloquent and graceful speakers” known in California would be welcomed and heard, Fannie Kewen remained in Los Angeles with her father and family.

It was reported that Kewen had some 800 men ready to go with him to Nicaragua when news was received of Walker’s fall, with one account of the former’s life stating that the report “dashed the hopes of its [the filibuster] most efficient and brilliant supporter.” At the end of 1857, Kewen headed back to San Francisco, but, at the start of the new year, came to Los Angeles to reunite with his family. By March, he opened a law office “in the [Eulogio de] Celis house in front the Bella Union Hotel” on the east side of Main Street.

The year, he was defense counsel for Francisco “Pancho” Daniel, one of the leaders, with Juan Flores, of a gang that committed several crimes in San Juan Capistrano in what was then the southernmost extreme of Los Angeles County (becoming part of the new Orange County some three decades later) and then killed Sheriff James R. Barton and members of his posse as they rode south from the Angel City in pursuit. Daniel evaded capture for quite a while, but was arrested in the northern part of California and sent to Los Angeles for trial.

It was a testament to Kewen’s ability and skill as an attorney that he succeeded in keeping the case going for an extended period at a time when most trials were conducted in a matter of a day or two or a few. In November, however, just after Kewen was able to secure a change of venue, on the argument that Daniel could not get a fair trial in Los Angeles, presumably because of media coverage and other reasons, to Santa Barbara, which part of the judicial district, a mob broke into the jail behind the courthouse, seized Daniel and lynched him.

Whereas Kewen politely declined the invitation of Democrats to settle in Los Angeles and join the dominant party’s ranks, he did become a key member in 1859—the year when William Workman ran for county supervisor as part of a splinter group of the party—and was elected district attorney, serving for two years. In 1860, the party’s county convention named Kewen, along with Brent, Andrés Pico (who was in the state Assembly), Mathew Keller, Jonathan R. Scott, Antonio F. Coronel and others, as a delegate to the state convention in Sacramento.

Meanwhile, his father-in-law, Dr. White, took possession of El Molino Viejo, “the old mill” for the Mission San Gabriel and which was owned by Workman as part of the lands granted to him and Hugo Reid by Governor Pío Pico in 1846. White then turned the property over to the Kewens, who remodeled and expanded the building and resided in it for some two decades.

In 1862, Kewen won election to the Assembly, but, with the nation plunged into the horrors of the Civil War, the Southern native was a dedicated secessionist and dyed-in-the-wool Confederate loyalist. Even though published returns in the Star showed that he and fellow Democrat, John A. (Jack) Watson, defeated their Republican (and Unionist) opponents, including Russell T. Hayes (a distant cousin of future President Rutherford B. Hayes), an effort was mounted to get Kewen removed.

Hayes filed suit, claiming the Kewen was ineligible for election because he was a citizen of “Central America” by virtue of his filibustering several years prior; “on the ground of disloyalty” because he was “in favor of the existing rebellion;” that there were votes cast illegally for him; that the election itself was not conducted legally in some places in the county; that the county supervisors erred in not allowing a recount in the Ballona district, where a Union camp was located near modern Culver City; and that Kewen did not actually have a majority of votes.

Shortly after the 4 October filing, Kewen was arrested by a Union officer and taken to Camp Drum at Wilmington, the domain of Phineas Banning, a Union supporter who also received a large amount of patronage and financial benefit from the Army presence in his harbor town. The detention was from an order in San Francisco and “Madame Rumor,” said the Star of the 11th, let it be known that the cause was “affidavits of three persons, charging disloyalty on Col. Kewen.”

The following week’s edition of the paper quoted from the San Francisco Alta California that a steamer arrived with Kewen, who was greeted by a guard from the Union forces, though it was reported that “there was no unusual commotion, and probably not one man in a hundred knew why or wherefore Uncle Sam’s soldiers were on the wharf.” The account continued,

As the vessel approached her berth, the Colonel, who was standing on the guard, recognized several acquaintances, with whom he interchanged salutations. Another [ship?] being moored alongside, Lieutenant Ropes went aboard, was introduced to the Colonel, and the prisoner turned over to him by Lieut. Forry. He [Kewen] took matters very coolly, remarking that he hoped he would have been released on parole . . . He was certain that the Military Board would at once release him, after the facts were laid before them.

It was added that spectators began to gather around and the larger guard of some thirty soldiers were called to appear and “formed a cordon around the trio, thus keeping the crowd back,” which was said to number in the hundreds and who were “all eager for a look at the ‘secesh prisoner.'” The three men then “stepped into a Government barge and were rowed directly over to Alcatraz Island” and, on arrival there, Kewen “was assigned the comfortable quarters” recently vacated by another prisoner who was “grumbling considerably at being compelled to occupy more humble lodgings.”

Alcatraz, or Bird, Island was granted by Governor Pico to Workman at about the same time as the Mission grant where El Molino Viejo was located, but, with the American invasion of Mexican Alta California during the Mexican-American War, Lt. Col. John C. Frémont arranged in spring 1847 for its purchase for $5,000 from Workman’s son-in-law, F.P.F. Temple. Frémont was subsequently court-martialed, the acquisition being one of the grounds for it, and, in 1850, President Millard Fillmore declared the island a national government property, so Temple never received his money.

At the end of October, the Los Angeles News published an account by the San Francisco Call that a number of Los Angeles figures, including Star publisher Henry Hamilton, petitioned General George Wright for release and it was added that Wright

has liberated Col. E.J.C. Kewen from imprisonment on Alcatraz Island, upon his giving satisfactory bonds for the faithful obedience to the Constitution and laws of the United States and the State of California, and taking the oath of allegiance to the Federal Government . . . it is understood that Gen. Wright became satisfied that Col. Kewen’s sentiments had been misrepresented, and that there was no sufficient evidence of his disloyalty to warrant his detention. The Colonel was around the city [San Francisco] yesterday evening, and spent the night at a first-class hotel instead of a military prison.

Hayes’ suit went nowhere and Kewen was able to take his seat in the Assembly. We’ll follow up tomorrow with part two of this post, so please join us then.