Were vigilantes, of the 19th century, a force of good or evil?
Before the modern era, law enforcement was mostly a personal and community issue. For thousands of years, humans handled criminal scum with beatings, beheadings and rope. A handful of communities were of bad people. But let me tell you something, bad people rarely are able to create communities that can survive, let alone flourish. Almost all communities were good people who cared for each other. Most were deeply religious. Nonsense was not tolerated. Minor theft got you a beating. Anything above that got you killed in short order. Only relatively recently has law enforcement been professionalized. It’s a new thing, with alot of problems. People take for granted these days that the right to justice is held by the state and not them. But that is not a natural thing. One might even go so far as to say it is not a good or even acceptable thing. Just be aware though that “vigilantism” is NOT deviant behavior. It is the normal and natural way humans have always dealt with criminals. The las
