"Vigilantism, Management, and Drive Out Campaigns in the United States, 1860s to 1910s"

The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in United States saw the emergence of hundreds of vigilante groups. Historians have written much about their uses of lynchings, kidnappings, and whippings. This paper examines an area of vigilantism that has received less scholarly attention: “drive out campaigns.” These elite-led mobilizations targeted “outside agitators,” including teachers, political activists, and union organizers. Focusing on the 1860s to the era of World War I, I highlight the ways mobs of elite men, including southern Klansmen in the late 1860s, Midwestern Law and Order League members in the 1880s, and Citizens’ Alliance activists in the early twentieth century, demanded that their targets leave communities or face grave punishments, including death. Night raiders, some of whom wore ominous-looking disguises, usually insisted that individuals or small groups leave before sunrise. On other occasions, they demanded that their victims flee immediately. Sometimes vigilantes gave their victims a “thrashing” before ordering them to depart. Whatever the case, practitioners of this technique, many of whom owned land and businesses, normally practiced a four-step process: isolate, intimidate, expel, and blacklist. By focusing on drive out campaigns, we can better appreciate the relationships between vigilantism and management across space and time.