| List of illustrations and tables | |
| Preface | |
| Introduction: The public city: American political culture in nineteenth-century San Francisco | 1 |
| 1 | The agony of authority: People, public, party, and power, 1849-1859 | 43 |
| 2 | Republican terror: The origins of Vigilante movements of 1851 and 1856 | 86 |
| 3 | Though the heavens fall: The Vigilante movement culture of 1856 | 128 |
| 4 | Race and reaction: Civil War political mobilization | 170 |
| 5 | The postwar reconstruction of the urban public sphere | 208 |
| 6 | A language of politics in a politics of class: The Workingmen's Party of California | 242 |
| 7 | The institutional preconditions of progressivism | 287 |
| 8 | Progressivism as the politics of needs: The mobilization of group identities | 345 |
| Conclusion: A new public sphere and a new government | 408 |
| App.: Statistical sources, methods, and supplementary tables | 419 |
| Bibliography | 427 |
| Index | 454 |