The White Caps is a 1905 American silent drama film, directed by Wallace McCutcheon and Edwin S. Porter showing how a man abusing his wife is punished by a group of white-hooded men.

It is one of the first American films exposing conjugal violence against women and showing the action of vigilante groups.

[1] Two members of a vigilante group known as 'The White Caps' post a warning sign on a man's home.

[6] The play, which presented the Ku Klux Klan as a "force for regeneration",[7] would become ten years later the main inspiration for D.W. Griffith's film The Birth of a Nation.

While the Ku Klux Klan had almost disappeared after 1872 (its revival would be rekindled in 1915 by Griffith's film), other vigilante groups such as the White Caps were active in the Midwest and border states at the turn of the century.

[8] Charles Musser mentions that White Caps members, "generally faced with declining income and political power, acted as agents of social control, punishing offences that the state and local governments failed to address adequately.

He remarks that while The White Caps "avoids the overt racism of Dixon’s novel, it depicts and even accepts a pattern of alternative justice that supports it."

Porter had already expressed his doubts about what he regarded as corrupt traditional justice in his film The Kleptomaniac released earlier in 1905.

Musser contrasts the methods used to influence spectators in The White Caps and in The Birth of a Nation.

McCutcheon and Porter "assumed that the viewers’ moral outrage at the husband's behavior would lead them to condemn the drunkard and condone his punishment", thereby implicitly justifying other actions by the vigilante groups, who after the Civil War increasingly targeted black victims.

On the other hand, Griffith, in order "to convert people to his beliefs in white supremacy, did not assume shared attitudes and effectively used parallel editing to force his audience into identifying with the Klan.

[9] The Edison company advertisements presented the film as follows: "The 'Vigilantes' during the gold excitement of (18)49 in California and the 'White Caps' of more recent years in Ohio, Indiana and other Western States, are well-known organisations which dealt summarily with outlaws and the criminal classes in general.

We have portrayed in Motion Pictures, in a most vivid and realistic manner, the method employed by the 'White Caps' to rid the community of undesirable citizens.

The Portsmouth Daily Herald explained that the White Caps were "reputable citizens punishing "wife beaters, habitual drunkards, etc."

The Altoona Mirror listed the film as "Punishing a wife-beater or The White Caps" and presented it as a "Warning to Wifebeaters".

The right hand door opens and a young girl enters the room and runs to kiss her.

The camera pans left as a man waves at two men on horseback, who bring him his horse.

The man enters at the back left and runs followed by the White Caps until they all exit at the front right.

The White Caps, spread across the whole screen, walk towards the camera carrying torches and looking for the man.

One of the White Caps appears to the right and walks carefully towards the tree when the man jumps on him and they start to fight.