"Vigilance committee" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the State seceded, he was visited by a number of men who called themselves a vigilance committee. They were fierce-looking fellows, ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... except to keep tumbling in the way of that detective party of Stanner's, and so throw them off the trail—ha, ha! The Judge here, I reckon, has had his share of fun, for while he was at Hennicker's trying to get some facts from Hennicker's pretty daughter, Stanner tried to get up some sort of vigilance committee of the stage passengers to burn down Hennicker's ranch out of spite, but the Judge here stepped in ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... Queen's right to the crown, to name her successor, to denounce her as a heretic, or to say or do anything which should "alienate the hearts and minds of her Majesty's subjects from their dutiful obedience" to her. Later, the "Association," a vigilance committee, was formed by a large number of the principal people of the realm to protect Elizabeth against assassination. Not only prominent Protestants but many Catholic noblemen joined the organization to defend the Queen at ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... and proceeded to perfect his plans. He had some half a dozen young men, four young ladies, and eight or ten matrons, upon whom he could depend for help. These he organised into a vigilance committee charged with the duty of preventing miners and lumbermen from getting away to Slavin's. 'The critical moments will be immediately before and after dinner, and then again after the show is over,' he explained. 'The ...
— Black Rock • Ralph Connor
... arms, and cannon, and with the open declaration that they were bound for Kansas to hunt and kill "abolitionists." Similar belligerent preparations were in progress at all the river towns they touched. At Kansas City the vigilance committee of the blockade boarded and searched the boat for concealed "abolitionists." Finally arrived at Leavenworth, the Governor saw a repetition of the same scenes—parades and military control in the streets, fugitives within the inclosure ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... gang are here at the Times, now. Bulldog and Slasher just got in a while ago. Some of the ships that were farthest west and didn't go to your camp have been in quite a while. We're having a meeting here. We are organizing the Port Sandor Vigilance Committee and Renegade Hunters' Co-operative." ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... her—that rude and noisy city that looked as if it had been tossed together in a night after one of its periodical fires, where the ill-made sidewalks tripped the unwary foot, or the winter mud was like a swamp, where the alarm bell summoned the Vigilance Committee day and night to protect or avenge, where a coarse and impertinent set of adventurers stared at and followed an inoffensive nun who only left the holy calm of the convent at the command of the ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... in our military prison at Fort Russell, for the crime of stealing horses. He was released upon a writ of habeas corpus from Colorado and taken to Denver, where members of the vigilance committee took him from jail outside the city in an express-wagon, and fastening a rope around his neck, and throwing it over a limb of a large cottonwood-tree, they hung him up; leaving the body suspended ...
— Three Years on the Plains - Observations of Indians, 1867-1870 • Edmund B. Tuttle
... (Dr. Beecher's), and subsequently a missionary to Jamaica. In the vacation of 1835 he undertook to sell Bibles in the State of Tennessee, with a view to raise the means of continuing his studies for the ministry. Under suspicion of being an Abolitionist, he was arrested by the "Vigilance Committee" (a Lynch-law institution), while attending a religious meeting in the neighbourhood of Nashville. After an afternoon and evening's inquisition, he was condemned to receive twenty lashes with the cow-hide ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... is figments. Yere's how it'll be. Huggins comes chargin' up, hungerin' for blood. You-all is r'ared back yere with that 10-gauge, all organized, an' you coldly downs him. Thar ain't no jury, an' thar ain't no Vigilance Committee, in Arizona, who's goin' to carp at that a little bit. Besides, he's that ornery, the game law is out on Huggins an' has been for some time. As for any resk to yourse'f, personal, from Huggins; why! Colonel, you snaps your fingers tharat. You hears Huggins ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... property and life seem to have been infrequent at first, but the unparalleled wealth toled in and developed a criminal class, which the rudimentary government could not control. San Francisco formed in 1851 a vigilance committee of citizens, by which crimes could be more summarily and surely punished. The pioneer banking house in California began business at San Francisco in January, 1849. The same month saw the first frame house on the Sacramento, ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... themselves with rum until their reason tottered, and they became beasts, refusing to work, growing ugly, even menacing, preferring to beg the food their empty stomachs craved for rather than toil, as before. At last they made themselves such a nuisance that the attention of the vigilance committee was called to their particular case. In short order they were hauled up and ordered to leave camp. There was no alternative but to obey, and thus began the dreary trek homeward of the two broken ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... one day when they found a girl's shoe on the trail they fitted a gold heel to it and put it up in camp to worship. But sentiment wasn't exactly their long suit, and any little difficulties that cropped up were straightened out by the vigilance committee—and a rope. One day a saddle, or maybe it was a gun, that didn't belong to him, was found among this man Steele's traps, and though he swore that some one had put it there for a grudge, the committee thought that a hemp necktie was ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning |
