Abstract

Law in Their Own Hands

The article focuses on the book "Vigilante Justice," by the author Alan Valentine. The Valentine's vigilantes are the men of the San Francisco committees of 1851 and 1856 who undertook to give the regular courts an object lesson in effective trial and punishment. The first committee was protesting a court that was inadequate; the second supplanted one that had become corrupt. From page one through his next to the last paragraph Valentine concentrates on retelling this dramatic story. Valentine gives it in much less detail than is available elsewhere, but he tells it briskly and in part by reproducing contemporary letters, news reports and editorials. Valentine tells it from the vigilante viewpoint and with frank admiration for the decorum and restraint of the second committee.