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In the
Wild West, where law was often non-existent,
vigilantes often took "enforcement of the law," as well as moral
codes into their own hands. The term vigilante stems from the its
Spanish equivalent, meaning private security agents.
Vigilantes were most common in mining communities, but were also
known to exist in cow towns and in farming settlements. Most often,
these groups formed before any law and order existed in a new
settlement. Justice included whipping and banishment from the town,
but more often – offenders were lynched. Sometimes; however, vigilante
groups formed in places where "authority” did exist, but where the
"law” was deemed weak, intimidated by criminal elements, corrupt, or
insufficient.
Many times the
vigilantes were seen as heroes and supported by the law-abiding
citizens, seen as a necessary step to fill a much needed gap.
Though this was
usually the case, sometimes the vigilance committee began to wield too
much power and became corrupt themselves. At other times,
vigilantes were nothing more than ruthless mobs, attempting to
take control away from authorities or masking themselves as
"do-gooders" when their intents were little more than ruthless or they
had criminal intent on their own minds.
One of the first vigilante groups
formed was the
San Francisco Vigilantes of 1851. After several criminals were hanged
the committee was disbanded. However, when the city administration,
itself, became corrupt, a vigilante group formed once again in 1856.
There were literally hundreds of these
groups formed in the
American
West, such as the
Montana Vigilantes who
hanged Bannack Sheriff
Henry Plummer in 1864. Controlling the press, the
sheriff was made out to be the leader of an
outlaw gang called the
Innocents.
However, history now
questions if it wasn’t the vigilante group, themselves, who were behind
the chaos reigning in Montana and that
Henry Plummer, was, in fact, an
innocent man.
Following the
Civil War, the
Reno Gang
began to terrorize the Midwest, resulting in the formation of the Southern
Indiana Vigilance Committee. The next time the
Reno Gang attempted to rob
a train, a the vigilante group lynched its leaders - Frank, William and
Simeon Reno.
Tales such as these abounded
throughout the
Old West, as numerous
vigilantes attempted to tame the
lawless frontier.
See Vigilante
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