Vigilance Societies

Vigilance Societies, in the United States, include not only Regulators and other extreme exponents of Lynch Law (q.v.), but also the illegal associations which spring up from time to time in all parts of the country for the compulsory improvement of local morals, and the punishment of those who either refuse or fail sufficiently to reform their lives. Such organisations as the White Caps, at home in the eastern and central states, have for their professed objects the suppression of vice and idleness; they send formal warnings to those citizens whom they consider to be neglectful of their homes, too partial to card-playing, drinking, &c.; and if this warning be disregarded, inflict such punishment as whipping, destruction of property, &c. The methods of the modern White Caps are the same as those of the Ku-Klux Klan (q.v.).