The Vigilantes of Montana, by Dimsdale, Thomas Josiah
Inventory #: 01616
Price: $5.00

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The Vigilantes of Montana, by Dimsdale, Thomas Josiah. UniversityMicrofilms, Inc.: Ann Arbor, 1966. Edition: Facsimile reprint. Hardcover, 5.75 by 7.5 inches, 226,[4 ads] pages. Blue cloth with silver lettering on cover and spine. Red publisher's stain on upper page edges. A facsimile of the first edition, which was published in Virginia City in 1866.

Condition: Good Plus. An ex-library book with card pocket, shelf number, and other usual library markings. Upper corners bumped and publisher's stain somewhat faded. Without the library markings, this book would be at least Very Good. Interior pages clean and unmarked.

Contents: Publisher's Note:

The wildest of the Wild West is recounted in Thomas J. Dimsdale's The Vigilantes of Montana, or Popular Justice in the Rocky Mountains, first published in Virginia City, Montana Territory, in 1866. It was republished at Virginia City in 1882, and two printings appeared in 1915, one in Butte and another in Helena, Montana.

...Dimsdale's book was a defense of the action of the Vigilantes who wrested control of Virginia City and Bannack from a gang of notorious "road agents" who terrorized the country, robbed stagecoaches and lone travelers, and committed countless murders. The gang was led by Henry Plummer, a smooth desperado, who got himself elected sheriff of the Virginia City district and Bannack. He appointed as deputies a crew of the most callous villains in the West, who proceeded to prey on stagecoaches and travelers believed to be carrying large sums of money.

At Virginia City and Bannack in 1863 a group of citizens secretly organized a Vigilance Committee that soon enlisted most of the law-abiding men in the area. As Dimsdale reports it....the Vigilance Committee quietly went to work to discover and punish the road agents who made travel hazardous. After the confession of one of the desperadoes in late 1863, the Vigilance Committee learned that Plummer, the sheriff, was leader of the gang. Dimsdale recounts events that led to his arrest, trial, and hanging, and to the execution of other members of the crew.

....The factual material that he supplied, with the vivid pictures of life in a mining town in Montana in the 'sixties, actually provided the raw material for dime novels and later fiction of the Wild West. The chief value of his book today lies in the verisimilitude of its descriptions of life on the Montana frontier and of the methods by which citizens' committees took over the enforcement of law with rough-and-ready justice.

The original title page as reproduced in this facsimile copy: