VIGILANCE COMMITTEE. In the United States an unauthorized organization of citizens for the purpose of administering summary justice in the absence of a regular judiciary or when the courts are prevented from exercising their accus tomed functions. In times of civil strife or other public emergency, vigilance committees are fre quently formed for the purpuse of ascertaining the loyalty of suspected persons and for enforcing against disloyal ones the punishment fixed by public opinion. Thus, dm•iug and immediately preceding the American Revolution. vigilance committees were formed in many communities to enforce the non-importation agreements and to ferret out Tories. These bodies were not very olifferent from the Colonial Committees of Safety and of Correspondence, except that their methods were less open and they were usually self-con stituted. In the Southern States prior to the Civil War vigilance committees were sometimes formed to enforce the will of the community against abolitionists or other persons suspected if disloyalty to the South, or to prevent the cir culation of abolition literature. During the dis
order and confusion of the Reconstruction period similar committees were often formed to warn 'Ca rpetbaggers,"Sca la wags.' and obnoxious negro politicians. (See Ku-Ktxx KLAN.) The most notable instance of the employment of the vigi lance tquinnittee as a governmental improvisa tion occurred in California during the years 1848 and 1849. Thousands of adventurous characters had immigrated to this region on account of the discovery of gold, and, as tm legal government had yet been organized, the law-abiding citizens sup plied the deficiency' by the organization of vigi lance committees, which undertook the task of administering justice and punishing criminals.