Vigilantes: Table of Contents
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The Vigilantes of Montana:
1864 Revisited
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Introduction
On December 23, 1863, a group of citizens in Virginia City met secretly
to form a Vigilance Committee. They adopted a set of bylaws and 24
individuals signed an oath of allegiance. During
January and February of 1864 they executed twenty-one men by hanging,
with more to come in the months and years ahead. Not one of the executed
men had a trial, nor an appeal, nor even a chance to set his affairs in
order before being hung.
At the time there were two instruments of justice in the
Bannack-Virginia City area, the miner's court with an elected Sheriff
and elected judges; secondly, a man appointed by President Lincoln to
be the Chief Justice of the Idaho Territory, Sidney Edgerton, who
arrived in Bannack in September, 1863. But Sidney Edgerton, assisted by
his nephew Wilbur Sanders, was instrumental in setting up the
extra-legal machinery of the Vigilantes, instead of using the existing
judicial system. For a comparison of what was done in the gold camps of
British Columbia at the same time see Trimble.
From the writings of the first two apologists for the Vigilantes,
Thomas J. Dimsdale (pub. in 1865-66)
and
Nathaniel P. Langford (pub. in 1890)
, it is clear that the Vigilantes operated under the following assumptions:
- There was an undue amount of lawlessness in the area.
- There existed an organized band of criminals (called road agents by the Vigilantes) who were responsible for this lawlessness.
- The leader of this hypothesized band was the elected Sheriff of Bannack and Virginia City, William Henry Plummer.
- Only by executing every suspected member of the this band could and would order be restored.
It is the goal of this revisitation of the Montana Vigilantes to examine
each of these assumptions.
Although the author is not a historian, a Ph.D. in mathematics, and
years of teaching and research should be equipment enough for logical
thinking and clear reasoning, which is all that is need to unravel the
vigilante mystery.
Where I allow myself an opinion, I hope to label it as such.
