Vigilante Days and Ways. E-book. Formato PDF Nathaniel Pitt Langford   -  Arcadia Press, 2017  - 

Nathaniel Pitt Langford (1832–1911) was an explorer, businessman, bureaucrat, vigilante and historian from Saint Paul, Minnesota who played an important role in the early years of the Montana gold fields, territorial government and the creation of Yellowstone National Park. Langford was also part of the vigilante movement, the infamous Montana Vigilantes, that dealt with lawlessness in Virginia City and Bannack, Montana during 1863-64. In 1890, Langford wrote Vigilante Days and Ways to chronicle the era of pioneer justice in the American Old West.

Vigilante Days and Ways: The Pioneers of the Rockies, the Makers and Making of Montana, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming. E-book. Formato PDF Nathaniel Pitt Langford   -  Forgotten Books, 2017  - 

Could have stained our civilization than to permit the numerous and bloody crimes committed in the early history of this portion of our country to go unwhipped of justice. And the fact that they were promptly and thoroughly dealt With stands among the earliest and noblest character istics of a people which derived their ideas of right and of self-protection from that spirit of the law that ?ows spontaneously from our free institutions. The people bore with crime until punishment became a duty and neglect a crime. Then, at infinite hazard of failure, they entered upon the work of purgation with a strong hand and in the briefest possible time established the supremacy of law. The robbers and murderers of the mining regions, so long defiant of the claims of peace and safety, were made to hold the gibbet in greater terror there than in any other portion of our country.

Vigilante Days and Ways: The Pioneers of the Rockies, the Makers and Making of Montana and Idaho. E-book. Formato PDF Nathaniel Pitt Langford   -  Forgotten Books, 2017  - 

Let those who would condemn these men try to realize how they would act under similar circumstances, and they will soon find everything to approve and nothing to con demn in the transactions of the early Vigilantes. I have endeavored to narrate nothing but facts, and these will enable every reader to judge correctly of the merits of each case. I would fain believe that this history, bloody as it is, will prove both interesting and instructive. In all that concerns crime of the blackest dye on the one hand, and love for law and order on the other, it stands without a parallel in the annals of any people. Nowhere else, nor at any former period since men became civilized, have murder and robbery and social Vice presented an organ ized front, and ofi'ered an open contest for supremacy to a large civilized community. Their works for centuries have been done by stealth, in darkness, and as far away from society as possible. I cannot now remember the instance, within the past three hundred years, when the history of any country records the fact that the crim inal element of an entire community, numbering thou sands, was believed to be greater than the peaceful element. Yet it was so here. And when the Vigilantes of Montana entered upon their work, they did not know how soon they might have to encounter a force numerically greater than their own.