Page 70 - Cornelius Hedges Story

57 The Cornelius Hedges Story

The Vigilantes of Montana

Civil law and order was also a concept which Hedges highly
valued, but there were times that he, like many early Montana
pioneers, found it necessary to resort to extra legal means of
maintaining order. This, of course, was the Vigilante movement,
which Hedges later defined as the time when:

“The habeas corpus act and the criminals were suspended
simultaneously.”222

It was in the early summer of 1865 when the first murder was
committed in Helena. This led to the organization of the Vigilance
Committee (the Committee on Safety) for the throng of incomers
had brought in many desperadoes from every part of the country and
somebody was robbed every day and the gamblers flourished their
pistols and told what they would do if the strangers interfered with
them. In Hedges words:

A crisis was approaching; the test was to be made. Robbery is
not generally regarded as a capital offence, but it was getting to
be altogether too common. There were no prisons and banishment
was ineffectual besides imposing outlaws on other communities. It
was voted to make an example of the next case of robbery and the
officers and men selected to carry the decision into effect. It was not
long to wait. The first offender was arrested in the largest gambling
room in the city, crowded with gamblers who had been uttering
oaths that they would shoot the first man who attempted to interfere
with their way of doing business.

But the appearance of a hundred men with cocked revolvers
and a strong reserve outside with repeating rifles altered the case
so much that there was no shooting done. The evidence against the
guilty party was quickly disposed of the verdict was death. This was
repeated a few times, when panic seized the desperadoes and they
left town in a hurry in every direction. In two weeks time it was all
over and a more peaceable and orderly community never seen in
any part of the country.

“It was rude, rough justice, only to be defended on the plea of
necessity and the right of self-defense and self- preservation.
When on a subsequent occasion of the kind when one who
several times evaded the law was hung from a railroad bridge