Vigilantes

I'm reading Gen. Sherman's memoir. He was present as a young officer during the takeover of California and wrote about everyone from Kit Carson to Mariano Vallejo. He preferred Vallejo. Then he returned to San Francisco as a banker in 1856 and tried to deal with the vigilantes, who were hanging people without trials. For some that remains the American dream: we all get our guns, see, and go out and hang people who are different.