Vigilantes

Vigilante activity in the United States dates as far back as the mid-1700s. Waves of vigilantism spread across the country in order to deal with rising crime rates on the expanding frontier and in gold rush and mining communities around the time of the Civil War. Vigilance committees were usually formed by local men as an attempt at restoring law and order whenever there was an absence of a well-established legal institution or an inadequate law enforcement system. These committees were usually composed of prominent men who banded together to capture, try, and punish those who were perceived as engaging in unlawful activities. Many of their practices included beating, flogging, forced labor, or lynching, depending on the severity of the crime. Vigilantism is often characterized by moblike violence, but it is markedly different because vigilance committees use careful organization, planning, and structure, even if the committee exists only briefly. Although the exact date of the first vigilance organization is unclear, there is evidence of vigilante activity in South Carolina backcountry as early as 1767. Vigilante movements in San Francisco in the mid-1850s and Virginia City, Montana, in 1864 were among some of the largest. However, after the Civil War, the popularity of vigilance committees began to subside as strong legal institutions or police forces were established.

The identity of most vigilantes was private. Members often tried their victims in secret and rarely spoke of their participation. The vigilante justice system often consisted of a trial whereby everyone on the committee had to agree on the ruling and the punishment. However, in many instances, this practice was abandoned in favor of hunting down those that members were convinced were guilty, often administering punishment before a trial took place. Lynching was the most extreme of the punishments administered. Lynching consisted of hanging a person and leaving the body for public display. Most often associated with racist violence in the South, lynching derives its name from Colonel Charles Lynch of Virginia, a planter and vigilante who used this method to punish looters and loyalists during the Revolutionary War. Lynching was frequently used by the frontier men. The accused was usually exiled for minor crimes such as petty theft, but for crimes such as rape or horse and cattle stealing, the accused was lynched.

Prior to the 1856 San Francisco committee, the terms vigilance and regulator committees were used interchangeably. Regulator was the more popular term and was used in reference to the South Carolina Regulators of 1767–1769, thought to be among the first of such committees. However, the San Francisco committee used the term vigilante because an outlaw group in the area was already using the name Regulators. Because of the widespread knowledge of the San Francisco committee, vigilance became the more commonly used term across the country.

The 1767 South Carolina Regulator movement was largely composed of wealthy men committed to restoring order by fighting off bands of outlaws and capturing runaway slaves. Without an official court system for punishing criminals, backcountry planters and farmers created an association to regulate any activity deemed unlawful. For 2 years, the South Carolina Regulators fought criminals, tracked runaway slaves, and established their own court system to resolve disputes. By 1769, an official court system was created in the backcountry, and the Regulators disbanded.

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