vigilantes

vigilantes , members of a vigilance committee. Such committees were formed in U.S. frontier communities to enforce law and order before a regularly constituted government could be established or have real authority. They were most common in mining communities, but were also known in cow towns and in farming settlements. The extreme penalty inflicted by the vigilantes was lynching . Among the most famous of the vigilante groups were those formed in San Francisco in 1851 and reorganized in 1856 to bring order to the notorious Barbary Coast . Measures taken by vigilance committees were at best extralegal. When such committees were formed in a community with a well-constituted government and a police force, they were strictly illegal and usually were merely the expression of mob violence.

Bibliography: See W. Gard, Frontier Justice (1949, repr. 1968); S. A. Coblentz, Villains and Vigilantes (rev. ed. 1957); A. C. Valentine, Vigilante Justice (1956); J. H. Jones, The Minutemen (1968); A. Madison, Vigilantism in America (1973).

Vigilantes, members of secret volunteer organizations for the summary suppression of lawless conditions, where formal means of law enforcement are lacking, or where they are considered to be inadequate. Such vigilance committees consistently flourished on the frontier, and were particularly prominent in California during the gold‐rush era, and in other parts of the West as the result of cattle and horse thefts. The committees frequently resorted to lynch law. Even during periods of settled order, vigilance committees have been formed because of racial conflict, crime waves, labor disorders, and radical activities. Literary treatments include Bret Harte's The Outcasts of Poker Flat, Norris's The Octopus, Steinbeck's In Dubious Battle, and Van Tilburg Clark's The Ox‐Bow Incident.

vigilante ˌvijəˈlæntē n. a member of a self-appointed group of citizens who undertake law enforcement in their community without legal authority, typically because the legal agencies are thought to be inadequate.
vigilantism -ˌtizəm n. mid 19th cent.: from Spanish, literally ‘vigilant.’