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VIGILANCE COMMITTEE

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Originally appearing in Volume V28, Page 60 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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VIGILANCE See also:

COMMITTEE , in the See also:United States, a self-constituted judicial See also:body, occasionally organized in the western frontier districts for the See also:protection of See also:life and See also:property. The first committee of prominence bearing the name was organized in See also:San Francisco in See also:June 1851, when the crimes of desperadoes who had immigrated to the See also:gold-See also:fields were rapidly increasing in See also:numbers and it was said that there were venal See also:judges, packed juries and false witnesses. At first this committee was 'composed of about 200 members; afterwards it was much larger. The See also:general committee was governed by an executive committee and the See also:city was policed by sub-committees. Within about See also:thirty days four desperadoes were arrested, tried by the executive committee and hanged, and about thirty others were banished. Satisfied with the results, ' the committee then quietly adjourned, but it was revived five years later. Similar committees were See also:common in other parts of See also:California and in the See also:mining districts of See also:Idaho and See also:Montana. That in Montana exterminated in 1863—64 a See also:band of outlaws organized under See also:Henry Plummer, the See also:sheriff of Montana City; twenty-four of the outlaws were hanged within a few months. Committees or See also:societies of somewhat the same nature were formed in the See also:Southern states during the Reconstruction See also:period (1865—72) to protect See also:white families from negroes and " See also:carpet-baggers," and besides these there were the Ku-Klux-Klan (q.v.) and its branches; the Knights of the White Camelia, the See also:Pale Faces, and the Invisible See also:Empire of the See also:South, the See also:principal See also:object of which was to See also:control the negroes by striking them with terror. 1 The 35th See also:canon of the See also:council of See also:Elvira (305) forbids —See also:omen to attend them. See H. H.

See also:

Bancroft, Popular Tribunals (2 vols., San Francisco, 1887) ; and T. J. Dimsdale, The Vigilantes of Montana (See also:Virginia City, 1866).

End of Article: VIGILANCE COMMITTEE

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