[5] Along with the governorship, Know Nothings also received considerable gains in the California State Legislature, as well as elections to every other major executive post in the state, including the offices of Lieutenant Governor (Robert M. Anderson), Attorney General (William T. Wallace), Treasurer (Henry Bates), and Controller (George W.

Early in his administration, Johnson agreed with legislation authored by San Francisco Assemblyman Horace Hawes to unite the city and county of San Francisco as a single entity to combat widespread corruption and lawlessness.

In 1851, armed citizens formed the San Francisco Vigilance Movement to correct wrongs they saw being committed or protected by the municipal government.

Governor John McDougall, condemned the actions of the vigilantes, but was not able to stop them because state law enforcement was too weak.

Distrust of city authorities again reached the surface on May 14, 1856, when James King of William, editor of the San Francisco Bulletin and a vocal critic of corrupt officials, was mortally wounded by James P. Casey, a purported ballot-box stuffer and city politician.

After a week, the Vigilantes marched on the city jail and overpowered its guards to arrest Casey, along with another criminal: Charles Cora, who had fatally shot a U.S.

Johnson returned to Sacramento with the Vigilantes refusing to disperse, claiming they were San Francisco's rightful law enforcement.

With the city's police and sheriff's departments outnumbered and trying to establish an armed presence in the streets, Mayor James Van Ness pleaded to Johnson for military assistance.

Johnson ordered John E. Wool of the U.S. Army's Department of the Pacific based in Benicia to dispatch weapons to the state militia.

General Wool declined, claiming that the Governor did not have the authority to use arms from federal soldiers because that right laid exclusively with the President.

Despite the fact that a large portion of the State Legislature were Know Nothing party members, Johnson vetoed a bill due to its "bad spelling, improper punctuation and erasures.

After leaving the high court, Johnson contracted a severe case of sunstroke and died in Salt Lake City on August 31, 1872.