"Experience in a mining camp beyond the reach of law...an article...by John W. Clampitt." Blue-Grass Blade, July 11, 1909
"Clampitt's 'The Vigilantes of California, Idaho, and Montana' is...a readable and instructive contribution." -Hartford Courant, July 25, 1891
What role did "Vigilance Committees" play in the history of the settlement of the West?
In 1891, famed attorney John Wesley Clampitt (1839-1906) answers this question in his short 35-page work titled, "The Vigilantes of California, Idaho and Montana."
In discussing this topic, Clampitt writes:
"A tide of immigration...poured in from all directions, and with it came the bad as well as the good; and among the former were the desperadoes....[T]he honest men of the Territory, who, when they found they could not apply the forms of law in a community where the written law was a dead letter, or had never existed, maintained the right with their own strong hands to subdue the brute force of violence..."
About the author:
John Wesley Clampitt (1839-1906) was one of the lawyers who unsuccessfully defended Mary Surratt in connection with the murder of Abraham Lincoln.
