Vigilance Committee

A vigilance committee was a group formed of private citizens to administer law and order where they considered governmental structures to be inadequate. The term is commonly associated with the frontier areas of the American West in the mid-19th century, where groups attacked cattle rustlers and gangs, and people at gold mining claims. As such groups operated outside the law, they sometimes took excessive actions and killed innocent people. In the years prior to the Civil War, groups worked to free slaves and transport them to freedom.