Even when the police did attempt to enforce the law, their efforts were frustrated by the lower courts.30 For the coercive enforcement of social norms and behaviors, the power of private vigilante action (organized and provisioned by private elites or spontaneously generated by community mobs) played a much more significant role in nineteenth-century America than the criminal justice system.31 When things got out of control, “order” was “restored” by communal mob action or private vigilante forces organized by elites that took the law into their own hands.
