Vigilantism has probably always existed, at least as long as laws have existed. It is the epitome of taking the law into your own hands. One vigilante group called themselves “The Bald Knobbers.” They were a group of vigilantes in the Ozark region of southwest Missouri, from 1885 to 1889. The group got its name from the grassy bald knob summits of the nearby Ozark Mountains. The hill where they first met, Snapp’s Bald, is located just north of Kirbyville, Missouri. The Bald Knobbers were a strange looking bunch. They were known to wear black horned hoods with white outlines of faces painted on them. It was a distinction that evolved during the rapid growth of the group into neighboring counties from its Taney County origins.
The Bald Knobbers had mostly sided with the Union in the Civil War, and they were opposed by the Anti-Bald Knobbers, who for the most part had sided with the Confederates. After the Civil War, the economy in Southwest Missouri was failing. Taxes were high. Lawlessness, disorder, and a general breakdown of society prevailed, especially in small towns and rural regions. The rising crime rate was the reason the group was formed. The area was in a deplorable state when Nathaniel N Kinney settled in Taney County, Missouri, in 1883. Outlaws and renegades ruled the land. Most of them were bushwhackers and guerillas that had rampaged through Missouri during the Civil War. Because law enforcement was at a minimum, the outlaws had free reign. To protect their own, clans elected and controlled the local sheriff, whose authority was to subpoena jury panels. If outlaws or their relatives didn’t sit on the juries, they bribed those who did. As many as forty murders occurred in Taney County between 1865 and 1885, but due to all the corruption, not a single suspect was convicted.
Nat Kinney was about to change all that. Kinney feared no man. He stood six feet six and weighed more than 300 pounds. On September 22, 1883, after yet another murder Kinney began to consider forming a law-and-order league patterned after other vigilante groups that were popular during that time. The final straw came when a biased jury acquitted yet another murderer, Kinney called together 12 county leaders who met in secret. They decided to form a committee to fight the lawlessness and elect officials who would enforce the law, and the Bald Knobbers group was born. The Bald Knobbers began with “good intentions,” but soon, the violence displayed by the vigilante group gained national attention, becoming more publicized than the actual fight for law and order.
It seemed that a lot of people wanted to get better control of the lawless situation in the area, so the organization grew rapidly, and by the time of their meeting on April 5, 1885, two hundred people showed up at a meeting on Snapp’s Bald, a hilltop south of Forsyth, Missouri. Kinney was an excellent speaker and was unanimously elected as their leader. Kinney accepted and swore his followers to secrecy. Then, he instructed them to recruit new members to carry out the group’s ultimate goal of taking control of a wildly out of control situation. Within days, they were ready. The Bald Knobbers began to show their force when over 100 of them broke open the door of the Taney County jail and kidnapped brothers, Frank and Tubal Taylor. The Taylor brothers were well known criminals in the area and were known for their viciousness. They were jailed for wounding a storekeeper during an argument over credit for a pair of boots. Unfortunately for the Taylor brothers, the local store owner, John Dickenson, happened to be a Bald Knobber. The group broke the two out of jail. Then the mob hauled the brothers south of Forsyth and hanged them. They were not going to have a corrupt trial this time.
Some of the Bald Knobbers felt that the groups own violence was appalling, and so they dropped out of the group after the attack. Nevertheless, the Bald Knobbers continued to grow, and before long, the group had between 500 and 1,000 members. Kinney’s group began to further “correct” the lawlessness by making night rides to scare such “lowlifes” as drunks, gamblers, or “loose” women into changing their ways. They also frightened wife beaters, couples “living in sin,” and men who failed to support their families. They had really gone overboard in their “correcting” of the people. The group actually took on the feel of a dictator, even trying to rule over those whose “crimes” were hurting no one. At this point, the Bald Knobbers split into two factions…those who followed or supported Kinney and those who thought him a tyrant and wished he was dead.
The violence brought about by the group increased as they flogged or branded suspected thieves, arsonists, and robbers. Their punishments no longer fit the crimes, as they would hang or beat a man to death for assault, disturbing the peace, or destroying property. Then things went from bad to worse when, emboldened by their power, some Bald Knobbers began to use their position for greedy and selfish purposes as they went after men who owed them money or owned land they wanted. They “settled” feuds over fence lines and property deeds, whipped men for disrupting services in their churches, or for supporting the wrong candidate in the election. They were quickly becoming the dictators of the area.
However, the harshest punishment was saved for those who spoke out against them. Some victims who resisted the Bald Knobbers simply disappeared. Later, several turned up in the woods, beaten to death. Those who lived to tell claimed that Kinney’s followers killed more than thirty men and at least four women. It is thought, however, that a better estimate, thought to be more realistic places the number between fifteen and eighteen. No matter, because the killing of anyone without a trial, unless it is in self-defense or the defense of another, is morally wrong. I understand how people can feel that justice isn’t being carried out, but when we take the law into our own hands, we are no different than the criminals we are trying to punish.
As the Bald Knobbers grew in numbers and their violent acts escalated, resentment grew, a a small group formed to fight against the Bald Knobbers. They called themselves the Anti-Bald Knobbers. The vigilantes were able to block every effort to mitigate the situation. The courthouse was burned down when a judge called for a state audit to ferret corruption among the county’s officeholders. Finally, twenty Bald Knobbers were arrested, 
but most received light sentences ranging from fines to short prison terms. However, four were sentenced to death. On August 20, 1888, Nat Kinney was shot and killed by Billy Miles, a member of the Anti-Bald Knobbers, in a planned assassination. Though Miles was tried for Kinney’s murder, he was found not guilty based on self-defense and so ended a brutal reign of vigilante terror.
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