Vigilante Groups Essay

Because of the power that many vigilante groups held over their regions, much of the documentation which details the vigilantes’ actions and motivations can be called into question. Many texts and accounts from the period depicted the vigilantes’ actions and punishments in a positive light often saying they were just or necessary. However, later interpretations of the vigilante groups show that these groups may have presented their actions as being in the name of justice and for the people, when exactly the opposite may be true.
The judicial “Theories of Sentencing” is a theory that a group's motivation for actions can often be placed by determining which method of punishment was used. Subconsciously, people use this reasoning all the time …show more content…
This theme correlates to many of the vigilante groups’ actions. An example of this public display of denunciation may be seen in Alexandre Barde’s description of the punishment that was to be given to a group of slaves which had rebelled. He says, “The punishment had to be exemplary and it was. The young mulatto and modest were condemned to death. The former was hanged in fifteen days.” Later interpretations of these actions do not see the reasonings behind the vigilante’s actions in the same way that Barde attempts to describe them in his …show more content…
As Lisa Arellano says in her text, Vigilantes and Lynch Mobs: Narratives of Community and Nation, “the ‘facticity’ of these bodies is ambiguous, which is why the vigilante historians were so intent on gaining a monopoly over the linguistic description of them.” (49) When only one side of history is the predominant force in presenting itself, the boundary between falsehoods and reality becomes increasingly