Welcome to the American Story. Mostly true stories about what it is that makes America beautiful.

Heartbreaking, funny, inspiring, and endlessly interesting.

This is Chris Flannery with the Claremont Institute.

I call this one,

El Pueblo and El Omre.

Not long after El Pueblo de Los Angeles was incorporated as an American city.

The mayor, graduate of Yale, physician, and member in good standing of the local vigilance committee, resigned his office momentarily to lead a lynch mob.

Crooks, bandits, murderers, marauders, drunks, vagabonds, desperados, gangsters, thugs, and con men were crawling all over Los Angeles.

Once the lynching was out of the way, were crawling all over Los Angeles.

Once the lynching was out of the way,

the voters in a special election

returned the meridu office.

He was one of the framers of the California Constitution

and is credited with establishing

Los Angeles's first public school. The city of Angels was like the cities of

men wherever you find them. Crime and folly required that some men be authorized to

wield power over other men, but it was dangerous to invest fallible and culpable men with

all the power that must be wielded, and besides, you must be careful

not to tank them with the rough work you are hiring them to do.

So irregular means of seeking justice would always be needed.

Justice may be out there, but it was no easy thing to get,

and no one would sense would be surprised to see injustice, crime, and folly, going about in broad daylight,

...