Vigilance committee
A vigilance committee was a group of private citizens who took it upon themselves to administer law and order or exercise power through violence in places where they considered the governmental structures or actions inadequate. A Vigilance Committee was a form of vigilantism (often just a more structured kind of lynch mob). The term is commonly associated with the frontier areas of the American West, where throughout the mid-19th century, groups targeted and attacked cattle rustlers. Additionally, individuals, at gold mining claims, held kangaroo courts; beating, killing, or exiling those believed to have violated their preferred norms (sometimes on a thin pretext of such, motivated by personal or mercenary gain). As non-state organizations, no functioning checks or safeguards ("due process") existed to protect against the use of excessive force from the committees. In the years before the Civil War, some committees worked to free enslaved people and transport them to freedom.

Assisting fugitive slaves
Between 1850 and 1860, following the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, when professional bounty hunters swarmed through Northern states searching for missing enslaved people, vigilance committees were set up in several places in the North to assist the escaped enslaved people. Gerrit Smith called the Fugitive Slave Convention of 1850 "on behalf of the New York State Vigilance Committee". These vigilance committees helped to run the underground railroad.

In the West
In the western United States, before and after the Civil War, the stated purpose of these committees was to maintain law and order and administer summary justice where governmental law enforcement was inadequate. In reality, those high in the social hierarchy often used them to attack maligned groups, including recent immigrants and racial or ethnic groups. In newly-settled areas, vigilance committees promised security and mediated land disputes. In ranching areas, they ruled on ranch boundaries, registered brands, and protect cattle and horses. In the mining districts, they defended claims, settled claim disputes, and attempted to protect miners and other residents. In California, some residents formed vigilance committees to take control of officials whom they considered to be corrupt. This occurred during the trial of Charles Cora (Husband of Belle Cora) and James Casey in San Francisco in 1856.

Nature
Vigilance committees, by their nature, lacked an outside set of checks and balances, often making them a tool of abuse.
In the West, the speed of the vigilance committees and lack of safeguards sometimes led to the innocent being hanged or disappearing. Fraudulent individuals seeking profit or political office took over a few committees.

United States vigilance committees
In 1835, a Vigilance Committee in Nashville, Tennessee, was responsible, after a kangaroo court "conviction", for the public whipping of Rev. Amos Dresser for the crime of distributing abolitionist publications (which he claimed he did not do). The names of all 62 members of the self-appointed vigilance committee were published by the American Anti-Slavery Society, annotating some as "Elder in the Presbyterian Church" and the like.
Philadelphia Vigilance Committee; 1840s and 1850s, abolitionists who worked to subvert the Fugitive Slave Act and helped escaped enslaved people, including Henry Box Brown
Jackson County, Indiana vigilance committee (a.k.a. the Scarlet Mask Society or Southern Indiana Vigilance Committee), 1868 – captured and hanged ten members of the Reno Gang
Know-Nothing Riot; 1850s, New Orleans, Louisiana
San Francisco Committee of Vigilance; 1851 and 1856, San Francisco, California
San Luis Obispo Vigilance Committee; 1850s, San Luis Obispo, California,  known to have hung six Californios, and engaged in battles around the area.
3-7-77 Vigilance Committee; 1860s–1870s, Virginia City, Montana
Anti Horse Thief Association; 1860s, organized at Fort Scott, Kansas
Baldknobbers; 1880s, Taney, Christian and Greene Counties, Missouri

Other vigilance committees
Biddulph Peace Society; 1876, Biddulph, Ontario, Canada
Whitechapel Vigilance Committee; 1888, London, UK – founded to capture Jack the Ripper.
Vigilance Committee of the Gaelic Athletic Association – A committee tasked with identifying association members who either played or attended "Foreign Games" (predominantly soccer and rugby union) in contravention of the association's rules. The rule was in place until 1971, up to which point, many GAA players who also wished to play other sports had to resort to elaborate tactics, including the wearing of disguises, the use of false names, and travelling covertly (e.g. in the boot of a car) to attend matches.
An Oxford Vigilance Committee was formed during World War I in Oxford, UK, a town whose own men of military age had gone to war and where soldiers were stationed. The Committee ran volunteer patrols of women to discourage, observe, and report on what was perceived as "immoral" behaviour of the town's women. In November 1916, the Committee issued a report "on the Moral Condition of Oxford," warning that the town's streets were "crowded with young girls, whose dress [and] behaviour show that they are deliberately laying themselves out to attract men." Their reports included detailed accounts of casual or adulterous sexual liaisons in the town. Births out of wedlock in Oxford decreased from 1914 to 1925, but the Committee attributed the reduction to "forced marriages" and abortions.

In film and media
The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) is a movie directed by William A. Wellman, based on the novel of the same name written by Walter Van Tilburg Clark (1940). The story tells of a group of men pursuing cattle rustlers, capturing and hanging them, and the moral consequences.
"Ride in the Whirlwind" (1966) is a movie directed by Monte Hellman and written by Jack Nicholson that tells the story of innocent men who are thought to be part of a gang on the run from members of a vigilance committee.

Other uses of the term
Vigilance Committee is also a term used by some interest groups that monitor the actions of others.

See also
Vigilance committee (trade union)
Vigilante
Committee of Safety (disambiguation)

References
General references
Roger D. McGrath, Gunfighters, Highwaymen and Vigilantes, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1984. ISBN 0-520-06026-1
Bancroft, Hubert Howe, Popular tribunals V.1, The History Company, San Francisco, 1887
Bancroft, Hubert Howe, Popular tribunals V.2, The History Company, San Francisco, 1887

External links

Click here for a WorldCat search for American vigilance committee pamphlets published before 1900 available online, many but not all free. Click here for a search that includes pamphlets not available online.