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Dodge
City Vigilantes (1873) – Established in 1872,
Dodge City,
Kansas was teeming with buffalo
hunters, railroad men, soldiers, transients, and desperadoes. In the first
year of its existence an estimated 15 men were killed in
Dodge City, all winding up in
Boot Hill.
By early 1873, local
businessmen were concerned about the violence in the town that was not yet
organized with city officials or lawmen. They soon hired gunfighter named
Billy Brooks as a private lawman. However, when
Brooks did not tame the lawlessness of the city, men began to take
matters into their own hands by forming a
vigilante committee.
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Dodge City,
Kansas
in 1876.
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The committee effectively
rid the town of some of the worst offenders by notifying six of the
leading desperadoes that they must leave Dodge
immediately. Four went, but two were defiant and remained. When the
specified hour had passed, twelve double-barreled shotguns were loaded
with buckshot, the men were hunted down, and then killed.
However, the
vigilante group, like many others in
the west, soon became the main source of violence. With power gone to
their heads and attracting violent men, things were quickly out of hand.
On March 134, 1873, Tom Sherman, who ran a dancehall, chased a man out of
his saloon and shot him. As the man lay dying and writhing in pain,
Sherman walked over to him and said, "I'd better shoot him again, hadn't I
boys?" He then aimed his gun at the man's head and pulled the trigger
point blank.
On June 3, 1873, the violence escalated to the
point that two of vigilante members
killed a man named William Taylor. However, Taylor was employed by Colonel
Richard Dodge, the commanding officer of
Fort Dodge.
The officer was so outraged that he immediately telegraphed the Kansas
Governor and gained special permission to arrest the guilty parties. His
troops entered Dodge City the next day and
arrested Bill Hicks who was later convicted. On June 5th, the soldiers
arrested five more of the worst vigilantes,
including Tom Sherman.
 Montana
Vigilantes (1863-1864) - During
Montana's
gold rush days of 1863, the law was sometimes non-existent in the region
that was then in the Territory of
Idaho.
However, that was not the case in
Virginia
City, when a young miner was found murdered. A posse was quickly
formed to track the killers and they soon returned with three suspects,
who were tried in a miners' court in Nevada City, a few miles downstream
from
Virginia City. Tried in December, 1863, one man was convicted
and hanged for the crime, but of the other two, one was banished from the
territory and the other set free.
Outraged locals decided that justice in the
court was too slow and ineffective and the
Montana
Vigilantes were born. Five members were originally sworn in as the
Montana
Vigilance Committee, patterned after the
San Francisco Vigilantes of 1856. Almost immediately, orderly arrests
and trial courts became obsolete as a reign of lynching began to take
place. By the end of February, 1864, 22 men had been lynched.
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The
most famous victim of the
Montana Vigilantes was
Henry
Plummer, who, after arriving in
Montana in
1862 and was elected Sheriff of the
Bannack
Mining District in May 1863. At the same time, a group of road agents
called the Innocents were operating in the area and the
vigilantes suspected
Plummer
of being the leader of the group. On January 10, 1864,
Plummer
was hanged by a mob at
Bannack.
Today, historians disagree as to whether these many men that were hanged
during
Montana's
Vigilante days were truly guilty.
In fact, some researchers
believe the entire affair was a cover-up for the "so-called"
vigilantes who were actually committing the many crimes occurring in
the area. Random lynchings continued in
Montana
Territory throughout the 1860s until a backlash against extralegal justice
finally took hold around 1870.
Continued Next Page
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Some of the first road agents to be hanged by the Montana Vigilantes were executed in January, 1864
at this building in Virginia City. At the time, the
building was under construction and five bandits named
Frank
Parish,
Boone Helm, Jack Gallagher, Haze Lyons,
and
Club Foot George Lane. July, 2008, Kathy Weiser
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