Mark C. Dillon

This is kind of an odd book, as on one hand it feels like a rehash of old memoirs and the 19th-century equivalent of "true crime" stories. On the other, I'm not sure that the legal and judicial analysis fits that well, as Dillon considers how vigilante justice stacked up against both past and current standards of due process. Still, Montana does seem to obsesses about its vigilante movement and it's hard not to feel some sympathy with the initial outbreak of "public" justice in the gold fields of the state, as there does seem to have been an actual criminal enterprise to rob the miners being directed by Henry Plummer, the elected sheriff, and a man with a long history of personal violence. The federal government also did the original citizens of the territory no favors, never mind that there was the small matter of the ongoing civil war, by not providing the territory with a prototype legal code and a presiding judge from the start; the territory really was existing in a state of lawlessness. As for later eruptions of vigilante justice there is less cause for sympathy, as they were either expressions of political conflict (directed towards the territorial governorship of Thomas Meagher) or of a range war provoked by self-important major ranchers.… (mere)