LYNCH-LAW 1830–1860
With the exception of the summary practices characteristic of
Revolutionary times, the lynch-law procedure that prevailed prior to
1830 was largely of the frontier type. Even in Revolutionary times,
however, when war and political controversies had brought about a state
of social disruption leading to the adoption of lynch-law procedure in
well settled communities, many of the instances of such procedure might
properly be classified under the frontier type. In remote parts of many
of the colonies the civil regulations had never been sufficiently
established to insure the punishment of public offenders, and recourse
was had to summary and extra-legal methods on the ground that there was
a lack of courts and other requisites for legal procedure. The
Regulation movement in the Carolinas, though stimulated by political
dissension, had its basis and origin in frontier conditions; and it is
obvious that lynch-law operated under frontier conditions in the
rough-and-ready methods of administering justice which were adopted by
the pioneers who moved westward over the Alleghanies into the valley of
the Mississippi. Before about the year 1830, then, lynch-law was
confined almost entirely to the border settlements, and was generally
excused and justified on the ground of necessity. It was not regarded as
a serious menace to law and order. It was adopted merely as a temporary
expedient which was expected to fall into disuse when the civil
government and the judiciary became firmly established.
Soon after 1830 a change took place. The anti-slavery agitation was
accompanied by a revival of lynch-law, and the practice spread
throughout the country. Not only did lynch-law continue to be exercised
occasionally in the border settlements, but it was revived in
well-established communities for the purpose of putting down
abolitionism. The early thirties witnessed many acts of violence. The
following appeared in the Massachusetts Journal in the year 1831:
“Progress of Violence.—It ought to be observed that there never was a
time of peace in which violence was so common in this country as at this
period.... Citizens who feel offended take the law into their own hands
without ceremony.” Then follows a recital of thirteen cases of violence
which occurred within two or three months, including riots, duels,
insurrections of negroes, persecutions of abolitionists, &c.[135]
The following instances, selected with reference to the localities in
which they occurred, indicate the extent of territory over which
lynch-law practices prevailed at this time:
“Wilmington, N. C., Sept. 28.—Three ringleaders of the late diabolical
conspiracy were executed at Onslow Court House, on Friday evening last,
23d inst. by the people. There was a fourth, who escaped during the
tumult.”[136] The editor of the Liberator adds: “‘Executed by the
people’ doubtless means executed by a mob, on suspicion of guilt,
without investigation or trial.”
A Mr. Robinson was lashed on the bare back at Petersburg, Virginia, for
saying “that black men have, in the abstract, a right to their freedom.”
After the scourging he was told to leave Petersburg and never return or
he would be treated “worser.”[137]
In Georgia, a man, named John Lamb, was severely treated because he had
subscribed to the Liberator. “A mob of unprincipled vagabonds assembled
around his house and violently took him out and tarred and feathered
him. They then poured oil on his head and set fire to it. They next
carried him on a rail to the river and ducked him. And then they
returned with him to a post near Darraugh and Simms’ Tavern, and whipped
him.”[138]
The slave insurrection in Virginia under the leadership of Nat Turner
took place in August of the year 1831. The nature and extent of this
insurrection has been frequently misunderstood. On the one hand, it has
been represented as having been confined to a magisterial district; on
the other hand, its leader is said to have recruited his forces through
all Eastern Virginia and through North Carolina. Both of these views are
in a measure true.[139]
Nat was a negro endowed with a mind capable of high attainments. He was
a careful student of the Bible and a Baptist preacher. He read the
newspapers and every book within his reach, and he was an attentive
listener at discussions of the political and social questions of the
day. But his mind grappled with things beyond its reach. The example of
Toussaint L’Ouverture in the island of Hayti, and that of Gabriel
Prosser in Richmond in 1800, together with the speeches and writings of
abolitionists, inspired him to make an attempt to “call the attention of
the civilized world to the condition of his race.” He became a complete
fanatic and believed that the Lord had destined him to free his race.
The red tint of the autumn leaves was a sign of the blood which was to
be shed. The eclipse of the sun in February and its peculiar appearance
in August, 1831, were to him omens indicating that the time had come for
him to put his plans into operation.
For several years plans for insurrection had been maturing in Nat’s
mind, and by February, 1831, he had so far determined upon his scheme
that he related it to four of the most influential negroes of his
section. From that time every effort was made to enlist the co-operation
of other slaves, but with the greatest patience and prudence. He deemed
it possible to conquer the county of Southampton, march to the Dismal
Swamp, collecting the slaves as he went, and so gradually overcome the
State, as the Americans had the British in the Revolutionary War.
On the night of Sunday, August 21, Nat opened the insurrection. A
misunderstanding in regard to the date deprived him of a few of his
followers, but, at the head of a small party which increased in numbers
as it proceeded, he went from house to house murdering every white
person that could be found. It is characterized as a massacre “barbarous
beyond degree.” Depredations, murders, and the most revolting crimes
were committed in cold blood. Before the insurrection was put down about
sixty whites,—men, women and children,—were slaughtered. The condition
of affairs in Southampton for about ten days after the massacre is best
described by a committee of citizens in a letter to President Jackson,
on the 29th of August, of which the following is an extract: “Most of
the havoc has been confined to a limited section of our county, but so
inhuman has been the butchery, so indiscriminate the carnage, that the
tomahawk and scalping knife have now no horrors. Along the road traveled
by our rebellious blacks, comprising a distance of something like
twenty-seven miles, no white soul now lives to tell how fiendlike was
their purpose. In the bosom of almost every family this enemy still
exists. Our homes, those near the scenes of havoc, as well as others
more remote, have all been deserted and our families gathered together
and guarded at public places in the county; and, still further, the
excitement is so great that were the justices to pronounce a slave
innocent, we fear a mob would be the consequence.”[140]
Many of the rebellious slaves were shot on sight and some innocent
negroes suffered. Some prisoners taken near Cross Keys were shot by the
Murfreesboro troops and their heads were left for weeks stuck up on
poles as a warning to all who should undertake a similar plot. The
captain of the marines, as they marched through Vicksville on their way
home, bore upon his sword the head of a rebel. A negress who attempted
to kill a Mrs. Francis was dragged out, after she had been taken
prisoner, tied to an oak tree, and her body riddled with bullets. It is
said that some of the slaves suffered fearful torture, being burnt with
red-hot irons and their bodies being horribly mutilated, before death
came to their relief. Nat was persecuted with pin-pricks and soundly
whipped before he was put in jail to await his trial.
According to Drewry, however, although “much excitement and rashness had
prevailed in the pursuit and capture of the rebels, the cases of mercy
and humanity overshadow those of barbarity and leave the decision in
favor of the former.” Fifty-three of the sixty or seventy negroes
connected with the massacre were brought before the county court. Of
these seventeen were executed and twelve transported. The rest were
discharged, except the four free negroes who were sent on to the
Superior Court, three of whom were executed. Nat and his three
associate-leaders, Hark, Nelson, and Sam, were hung according to the
sentence of the court. “The bodies of those executed, with one
exception, were buried in a decent and becoming manner. That of Nat
Turner was delivered to the doctors, who skinned it and made grease of
the flesh.”
The execution of the plot was thus confined to a magisterial district of
three thousand inhabitants. Yet every effort had been made to rouse the
negroes of neighboring counties in Virginia and North Carolina. The
influence of the insurrection was wide-spread, extending to the North as
well as the South. The immediate result in many parts of the South was
the greatest excitement, alarm, and confusion. “Men went about in
groups, the militia drills were renewed, and the arms called in a few
months before, reissued.” Thomas Gray, who lived in Southampton, said:
“It is the first instance in our history of an open rebellion of the
slaves, and attended with such atrocious circumstances of cruelty and
destruction as could not fail to leave a deep impression, not only on
the minds of the community where the fearful tragedy was wrought, but
throughout every portion of our country in which this population is
found.” In the North the immediate effect was a more pronounced
conviction of the evils of slavery. In general, the effect of the
Southampton insurrection was to center public consideration on the slave
question.[141] Its influence was indirect, rather than direct, in
stimulating recourse to lynch-law in the country.
During the spring and summer of 1834 there was a great deal of rioting
in which Irishmen were principally concerned. Several riots occurred in
New York City and in Philadelphia between whites and blacks, which were
said to be due to the abolitionists having stirred up the blacks.[142]
The following appeared in the Boston Whig in October, 1834: “The history
of the proceedings of the past year furnishes examples of outrage and
violence altogether unprecedented in the annals of our country. It would
seem that the supremacy of the laws is to be no farther regarded than it
coincides with the caprices and prejudices of an infuriated and
misguided and ignorant populace.... Mobs, which now seem to be the order
of the day, are of recent origin among us.... Our newspapers now, with a
few honorable exceptions, encourage these outrages and barbarous
proceedings, and by the inflammatory articles in their columns, incite
to the commission of the most heinous crimes.”[143]
The expression “Lynch’s law” first appears in the Liberator in the issue
of September 27, 1834 (4: 153), in an extract from the Lancaster
(Pennsylvania) Journal. The passage quoted is as follows: “In our quiet
village of New Holland, we understand _Lynch’s law_ was carried into
execution last week, against a stranger who had given some offence to
the inhabitants. The man was taken from his domicile, tarred and
feathered in the true Yankee style, marched out of town and let run. We
have not heard the cause of this summary proceeding.”
Another extract from the Lancaster Journal reads as follows: “We have
heard of another case of an appeal to Lynch’s code. A celebrated
Philadelphia doctor, a disciple of the Tappan school, who could not find
room for the overflowings of his milk of human kindness in the city of
brotherly love, paid a visit to Columbia, in this county, a few days
since, prepared, it is said, to deliver a course of amalgamation
lectures. A barrel of tar was purchased, and a pillow well stuffed with
feathers procured for the occasion. A hint of these proceedings was
given to the learned Doctor’s friends, who did not keep the secret, and
the Doctor not wishing to be exhibited in the costume of a goose, took
wing in an eastern direction, and has not been heard of since.”[144]
The expression “Lynch’s law” first appears in Niles’ Register under the
date of October 5, 1833 (45: 87), in an extract from the St. Louis
Republican. The quotation is as follows: “‘Lynch’s Law.’ We have heard,
that capt. _Slick_ summoned his corps the other night, and obtained
possession of a man with whose misdeeds they had become familiar,
carried him to the prairie near town, and administered ‘Lynch’s Law’
upon him in fine style. He received about fifty lashes—and was ordered
to decamp. The offence consisted in cheating at the gaming table—whereof
he was over-fond.... Several very effective demonstrations have been
made upon the gamblers in and about town, and they have been obliged to
make themselves scarce. This is as it should be.”
Lynch-law proceedings were inaugurated against gamblers in Virginia
about a year later. Niles’ Register for October 4, 1834 (47: 66) says:
“Large nests of gamblers in Richmond and Norfolk were completely routed,
a short time ago, by summary processes—numerous bodies of young men
having taken the matter in charge. They broke into the gambling houses,
and destroyed all the apparatus and furniture—but farther than this,
committed no acts of violence. Some curious disclosures of the great
profits made by the knaves have been brought to light by these
proceedings.”
The most notorious case of an appeal to summary procedure against
gamblers occurred in July, 1835, at Vicksburg, Mississippi. Professional
gamblers had for years made Vicksburg their rendezvous and certain
sections of the city were almost wholly given over to them. Frequently,
in armed bodies, they disturbed the good order of public assemblages,
insulted citizens on the streets, and openly defied the civil
authorities. The laws were found ineffectual for their punishment; their
numbers and their crimes continually increased.[145] At a barbecue on
the Fourth of July one of these gamblers, named Cakler, became insolent
and created a disturbance. Later a meeting was held and an anti-gambling
society was organized. “It was determined to take him (Cakler) into the
woods and _Lynch_ him—which is a mode of punishment provided for such as
become obnoxious in a manner which the law cannot reach. He was
immediately carried out under a guard, attended by a crowd of
respectable citizens—tied to a tree, punished with stripes—tarred and
feathered; and ordered to leave town in forty-eight hours.” The
following morning public notice was given that all gamblers must leave
the town in twenty-four hours. That night another was “Lynched.” The
next morning the citizens understood that a noted gambler, named North,
had defied them, barricaded his house, and together with some of his
fellows had made preparations to stay in the town. The volunteers were
immediately assembled and, followed by a crowd of citizens, marched to
North’s residence and demanded an unconditional surrender. This was
refused. The house was then surrounded and an attempt made to force an
entrance. Just as the door was burst open, Dr. H. S. Bodley, a highly
respected citizen, was shot and instantly killed by the gamblers.
Greatly incensed at this, the crowd rushed into the building and dragged
out the inmates, one of whom had been seriously wounded, hurried them
without ceremony to the common gallows and hanged them. Five gamblers
were thus executed at this time and their bodies left suspended for
twenty-four hours.[146]
About the time of the Vicksburg affair suspicion was aroused in Madison
County, Mississippi, that the Murrell gang had organized the blacks for
an insurrection.[147] “Two individuals, by name Cotton and Saunders,
both of them steam doctors by profession,” were thought to be
prominently connected with the scheme. A “committee of investigation”
was appointed by a mass-meeting of the citizens and as a result of the
investigation the two “steam doctors” and three other white men were
hanged, and also several negroes, “some ten or fifteen,” without any
process at law.[148]
J. H. Ingraham, writing of conditions in Mississippi at about this time,
after describing a “chain gang” of negroes, uses the following language:
“In Natchez, negro criminals only are thus honored—a coat of tar and
feathers’ being applied to those white men who may require some kind of
discipline not provided by the courts of justice. This last summary
process of popular justice, or more properly excitement, termed ‘Lynch’s
law’, I believe, from its originator, is too much in vogue in this
state. In the resentment of public as well as private wrongs,
individuals have long been in the habit of forestalling and improving
upon the decisions of the courts, by taking the execution of the laws
into their own hands.... The want of a penitentiary has had a tendency
to keep this custom alive in this state longer than it would otherwise
have existed. When an individual is guilty of any offence, which renders
him amenable to the laws, he must either be acquitted altogether or
suffer death.”[149]
Lynch-law was also known in the eastern states at this time. Not only
were there mobs which dealt summarily with offenders, as in the year
1831, but their proceedings were known by a different name. It was now
no longer simply “mobs” and “mobocracy,” but “Lynch’s law,” and “Judge
Lynch’s court” as well. The Boston Daily Advertiser in July, 1835, gave
expression to the following, under the heading “Lynch’s Law”: “We have
had occasion of late to advert to the use of this term in our paper, as
indicating punishments, wantonly and in disregard of law, applied in
certain portions of our country to individuals suspected or guilty of
crime.”[150] On the night of September 10, 1835, a gallows was erected
in Brighton Street, Boston, in front of Mr. Garrison’s house, with two
ropes suspended therefrom. On the crossbar was the inscription “Judge
Lynch’s law.”[151]
The following appeared in Niles’ Register, October 3, 1835 (49: 76–7):
“Our village (Kanawha Salines, W. Va.) was thrown into considerable
commotion on Friday morning last in consequence of the arrival of judge
Lynch among us. His business was soon ascertained, and by his authority
four white men from Ohio were soon arrested and tried before 12
intelligent persons of our county, for endeavoring to persuade several
slaves to leave their masters, for some free state.... These congenial
spirits of Garrison, Tappan & Co. were arrested in the neighborhood of
our village, tried, condemned, and received the sentence pronounced on
them by the jury. That is to say, Joe Gill and the elder Drake to
receive nine and thirty lashes each, and leave the county in 24 hours;
the younger Drake, with Ross, to be discharged for want of evidence, but
with a promise from them that they would also quit the county in 24
hours. The evidence ... produced an unanimous verdict on the part of the
jury, that two should be _lynched_ and the other two excused, provided
they would leave this part of the country.”
The following appeared in Niles’ Register, December 5, 1835 (49: 228):
“Lynch law in Colerain. The sect known as perfectionists have recently
been making some converts in Colerain (Franklin County, Mass.), and
holding meetings there considerably to the annoyance of the majority of
the inhabitants. We learn that one of the leaders ... who was suspected
of taking with his female disciples some liberties inconsistent with the
holiness of his profession, was taken out a few days since, ridden
nearly three miles upon a rail, tarred and feathered, and dismissed,
with an admonition to quit the town—a piece of advice with which he has
since complied.”[152]
Some idea of the prevalence of mob violence and lynch-law procedure in
1835 is obtained from the following editorials in Niles’ Register:
“Meetings have been held at Danville, Kentucky; at Richmond and
Petersburg and many other towns in Virginia; at Charleston, South
Carolina; at many places in Mississippi; and, indeed, it may be
generally said in all the south and southwest in consequence of the
flood of incendiary publications let loose by a few ‘anti-slavery’ men
of the north, inciting the negroes to insurrection, and murder, and
desolation; and, at as many places, perhaps, a like spirit has been
shown against _gamblers_. Anti-gaming societies have been introduced
in a number of cities and towns. _Executions_ by ‘Lynch law,’ have
been numerous. Acts of personal violence, on other accounts, some of
which are terrific, also abound. Society is in an awful state. What is
the cause of it?”[153]
“During the last and the present week we have cut out and laid aside
more than 500 articles, relating to the various _excitements_ now
acting on the people of the United States, public and private!
_Society seems everywhere unhinged_, and the demon of ‘blood and
slaughter’ has been let loose upon us! We have the _slave_ question in
many different forms, including the proceedings of _kidnappers_ and
_manstealers_—and others belonging to the _free negroes_: the
proscription and prosecution of _gamblers_; with mobs growing out of
_local matters_—and a great collection of acts of violence of a
_private_, or _personal_ nature, ending in death; and regret to
believe, also, that an awful _political_ outcry is about to be raised
to rally the ‘poor against the rich’! We have executions, and murders,
and riots to the utmost limits of the union. The character of our
countrymen seems suddenly changed, and thousands interpret the law in
their own way—sometimes in one case, and then in another, guided
apparently only by their own will!... We lately gave, by way of a
specimen, a few articles of a nature similar to those now in our
possession. We cannot consent to hold up our country to the contempt
and scorn of the old world, and shall, therefore, generally suppress
them, though some cases of peculiar atrocity must be inserted. Let the
laws rule. And let no one do anything that may have a tendency to
bring them into popular disrespect!”[154]
Even though some allowance for exaggeration in the above statements may
be necessary, there yet remains unquestionable evidence of a very
unsettled state of affairs.[155] An editorial written in a less
sensational style appeared in the Register in October. The first
sentences are as follows: “Meetings of the people have been held in
nearly all the chief cities and towns in the northern states—at which
the proceedings of the abolitionists were rejected and disavowed, with
great unanimity and much zeal. And in the south we almost daily hear of
‘judge Lynch,’ and of persons who are flogged and driven away, or
‘executed,’ under sentences rendered by him.”[156]
Judge Jay in a charge to a Grand Jury at White Plains, New York, in
November, 1835, referred to the “spirit of lawless violence” that was
abroad in the land, and spoke of the danger to civil and religious
liberty if it were not arrested. About the same time, Judge Cranch, in a
similar charge to a Grand Jury in the District of Columbia, spoke of the
“state of excitement” which existed in some parts of the country.[157]
Some attributed the cause of all this excitement to the
abolitionists.[158] A correspondent of the Medina (Ohio) Free Press
early in the year 1836 wrote as follows: “When a body of men with such
feelings and principles, begin to distract the nation with their mad
schemes, it is high time for a community to notice them. I am no
advocate of Lynch law, but I must say that if Lynch law must be
practised, I know of no fitter subjects for its operation than such
fanatics.”[159] The following appears in an article on Lynch Law in
America published in England in 1877: “Among the institutions specially
American, few have had worse odour in England than what is commonly
known as ‘Lynch law.’ In the time of the anti-slavery agitation the
recourse to Lynch law by the supporters of ‘the domestic institution,’
or ‘involuntary servitude,’ as it was euphoniously called, caused just
indignation. It was by Lynch law that men who dared to speak against
slavery were silenced in the Slave States.”[160] Thus, the defenders of
slavery in the Southern States were highly incensed at the interference
of abolitionists whom they felt knew but little about the actual
conditions, and laid upon the shoulders of these “fanatics” the blame
for the necessity of resorting to lynch-law; the abolitionists, on the
other hand, said that lawless violence was the direct result of
slavery[161] and the attempt of the South to put down free discussion by
means of force.
The years of Jackson’s presidency, 1829–1837, have been distinguished by
political writers as the Jacksonian period,—a period in which there was
an unusual amount of turbulence and violence. It has been repeatedly
suggested that Jackson’s own arbitrary temperament and example did
something to set this fashion. “It is, however, more just to see, both
in the President himself and in the mobs of his time of power, symptoms
of one and the same thing; namely, a great democratic upheaval, the
wilful self-assertion of a masterful people, and of a man who was their
true representative.... During Jackson’s eight years everything is
changing; both society and politics are undergoing revolution; deep
organic processes are in progress; significant atmospheric changes are
setting in.”[162] “It is not possible that a growing nation should
spread over new territory, and feel the thrill of its own young energies
contending successfully with nature in all her rude force, without
social commotions and a certain recklessness and uproar. The contagion
of these forms of disorder produces other and less excusable
forms.”[163]
The cause for all the turbulence and violence lay deeper than
abolitionism, slavery, or the character of political leaders. These were
merely the manifestations of the disruption of underlying social forces
which were warring against each other while seeking to come to a stable
equilibrium under new and changed conditions. Society was in process of
reorganization. It was a time of social readjustment. This was the
condition of society which existed, and it was a condition conducive to
the spread of lynch-law.
It was due to this fact that the term lynch-law gained a permanent place
in the English language. Early in the forties, as mentioned in the
introduction, the dictionaries admitted the term to their list and thus
gave to it the seal of their approval. A writer in Harper’s Magazine for
May, 1859 (p. 794) says: “I think I had never heard of lynch-law until
about the year 1834, when the citizens of Vicksburg organized themselves
into a Court of Uncommon Pleas, with special reference to certain men in
their midst who were, or were said to be, ‘living on the borders of the
law.’ And I well remember, boy as I was, the sensation with which the
news of the hanging of the Vicksburg gamblers was received in the old
States, and how soon the terms ‘Lynch law’ and ‘lynching’ became
familiar as household words.” It was the application of lynch-law, then,
to the gamblers infesting the towns along the Mississippi River that
familiarized the public with the term, and it was the constant exercise
of summary methods of punishment against abolitionists and other
unpopular individuals in various parts of the country that furnished the
occasion for its continued use.
In the month of May, 1835, two negroes were burned to death near Mobile,
Alabama, for “most barbarously murdering” two children. The murderers
had their trial, the result of which is given in the following paragraph
taken from a Mobile paper: “As the Court pronounced the only sentence
known to the law—the smothered flame broke forth. The laws of the
country had never conceived that crimes could be perpetrated with such
peculiar circumstances of barbarity, and had therefore provided no
adequate punishment. Their lives were justly forfeited to the laws of
the country, but the peculiar circumstances demanded that the ordinary
punishment should be departed from—they were seized, taken to the place
where they had perpetrated the act, and burned to death.”[164]
A case of burning alive, which on account of the subsequent events
gained great notoriety, occurred at St. Louis, Missouri, April 28, 1836.
One writer designated it as “the execution of ‘Lynch Law’ upon a yellow
fellow, by means of a slow fire.” A colored man was arrested on board a
boat by a deputy sheriff and a constable. Another colored man, a free
mulatto, assisted him to escape, and the officers immediately arrested
the mulatto. He, however, turned upon the officers, drew a knife and
stabbed Deputy Sheriff Hammond, killing him instantly, and also
seriously wounded Mr. Mull, the constable. He was finally captured,
however, and locked up in the jail. Later the people assembled and,
after threatening to tear down the jail if he was not delivered to them,
secured the prisoner, conducted him to the outskirts of the city, placed
a chain round his neck and a rope round his body, and thus fastened him
to a tree a few feet from the ground. A fire was then placed round the
tree and he was roasted alive.[165]
When this case came up for consideration before the Grand Jury of St.
Louis County, Judge Lawless—according to subsequent comments rightly
named—made the following charge:
“I have reflected much on this matter, and after weighing all the
considerations that present themselves as bearing upon it, I feel it
my duty to state my opinion to be, that whether the Grand Jury shall
act at all, depends upon the solution of this preliminary question,
namely, whether the destruction of McIntosh was the act of the ‘few’
or the act of the ‘many.’
“If on a calm view of the circumstances attending this dreadful
transaction, you shall be of opinion that it was perpetrated by a
definite, and, compared to the population of St. Louis, a _small_
number of individuals, separate from the mass, and evidently taking
upon themselves, as contradistinguished from the multitude, the
responsibility of the act, my opinion is that you ought to indict them
all, without a single exception.
“If on the other hand, the destruction of the murderer of Hammond was
the act as I have said, of the many—of the multitude, in the ordinary
sense of those words—not the act of numerable and ascertainable
malefactors, but of congregated thousands, seized upon and impelled by
that mysterious, metaphysical, and almost electric phrenzy, which, in
all nations and ages, has hurried on the infuriated multitude to deeds
of death and destruction—then, I say, act not at all in the matter—the
case then transcends your jurisdiction—it is beyond the reach of human
law.”[166]
It was for denouncing the burning of this colored man and violently
attacking Judge Lawless in his Observer that the Rev. E. P. Lovejoy had
his printing-office destroyed by a mob in St. Louis, and was forced to
remove his paper to Alton, Illinois. He did not cease to express his
convictions, however, and neither did his persecutions cease. Three
times his press was destroyed by mobs. On November 7, 1837, while
endeavoring to protect his property, he met his death at the hands of an
Alton mob.
In an address on “The Perpetuation of our Political Institutions,”
delivered before the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois, on
January 27, 1837, Abraham Lincoln characterized the spirit of the times
in the following way:
“Accounts of outrages committed by mobs form the everyday news of the
times. They have pervaded the country from New England to Louisiana;
they are neither peculiar to the eternal snows of the former nor the
burning suns of the latter; they are not the creature of climate,
neither are they confined to the slaveholding or the non-slaveholding
States. Alike they spring up among the pleasure-hunting masters of
Southern slaves, and the order-loving citizens of the land of steady
habits. Whatever then their cause may be, it is common to the whole
country.
“It would be tedious as well as useless to recount the horrors of all
of them. Those happening in the State of Mississippi and at St. Louis
are perhaps the most dangerous in example and revolting to humanity.
In the Mississippi case they first commenced by hanging the regular
gamblers—a set of men certainly not following for a livelihood a very
useful or very honest occupation, but one which, so far from being
forbidden by the laws, was actually licensed by an act of the
legislature passed but a single year before. Next, negroes suspected
of conspiring to rise an insurrection were caught up and hanged in all
parts of the State; then, white men supposed to be leagued with the
negroes; and finally, strangers from neighboring States, going thither
on business, were in many instances subjected to the same fate. Thus
went on this process of hanging, from gamblers to negroes, from
negroes to white citizens, and from these to strangers, till dead men
were literally dangling from the boughs of trees by every roadside,
and in numbers almost sufficient to rival the native Spanish moss of
the country as a drapery of the forest.
“Turn then to that horror-striking scene at St. Louis. A single victim
only was sacrificed there. This story is very short, and is perhaps
the most highly tragic of anything of its length that has ever been
witnessed in real life. A mulatto man by the name of McIntosh was
seized in the street, dragged to the suburbs of the city, chained to a
tree, and actually burned to death; and all within a single hour from
the time he had been a freeman attending to his own business and at
peace with the world.
“Such are the effects of mob law, and such are the scenes becoming
more and more frequent in this land so lately famed for love of law
and order, and the stories of which have even now grown too familiar
to attract anything more than an idle remark.”[167]
The following paragraph appeared in the Southern Literary Messenger in
the year 1839 (5: 218): “Forty years ago, the practice of wreaking
private vengeance, or of inflicting summary and illegal punishment for
crimes, actual or pretended, which has been glossed over by the name of
_Lynch’s Law_, was hardly known except in sparse, frontier settlements,
beyond the reach of courts and legal proceedings.”
The above quotations set forth clearly the condition of affairs in the
United States at this time. It was the spirit of the times, rather than
any particular cause, which brought about recourse to lynch-law
practices. Lynch-law was invoked for no particular offense to the
exclusion of all other offenses; neither was it peculiar to any one
section of the country. From having been practised only in the border
settlements as a temporary means of suppressing lawlessness until the
civil regulations could be established, lynch-law methods had come to
prevail even in well settled communities. Those writers who expressed
the opinion about 1830 that lynch-law was dying out did not foresee the
great popular excitement which existed during Jackson’s administration.
The anti-slavery agitation acted as a spark in a tinder-box and seemed
to beget a spirit of lawlessness in every part of the country. To the
inflamed imagination of the popular mind the slightest provocation
seemed a serious offense. The law did not reach such offenses, or they
were deemed to be inadequately punished by the law, and this seemed to
the people a justification for summary punishment.
In the slave States such punishment was generally a whipping or
flogging, often followed by tarring and feathering, inflicted upon
abolitionists or any persons suspected of “tampering with the slaves,”
or distributing “incendiary tracts.” In cases of a suspected conspiracy
for an insurrection among the slaves the supposed leaders were often
summarily punished, sometimes by the infliction of the death penalty.
Along the Mississippi River, the gamblers had aroused the resentment of
the peace-loving portion of the community by their vices and excesses of
various kinds. In many places they were able to bid defiance to the
civil authorities and laugh at threats of enforcing the law against
them. Here again the exigencies of the situation seemed to the people to
justify the adoption of lynch-law. This case of the summary treatment of
the gamblers may be regarded as a transition from the frontier type of
lynch-law to the sporadic and epidemical type which later prevailed in
the well settled States.
The author of a book published in London in 1837 wrote: “The Lynch-law,
is not, properly speaking, an opposition to the established laws of the
country, or, is at least, not contemplated as such by its adherents; but
rather as a supplement to them,—a species of _common_ law, which is as
old as the country, and which, whatever may be the notion of ‘the
_learned_ in the law,’ has nevertheless been productive of some of the
happiest results.”[168]
In 1839, F. Marryat wrote: “The Lynch law of the present day, as
practiced in the States of the West and South, may be divided into two
different heads: the first is, the administration of it in cases in
which the laws of the States are considered by the majority as not
having awarded a punishment adequate, in their opinion, to the offence
committed; and the other, when from excitement the majority will not
wait for the law to act, but inflict the punishment with their own
hands.”[169]
Occasionally innocent persons suffered the violence of lynching
mobs,[170] and sometimes damages were secured through the courts for
having suffered lynch-law. Cases of this nature were not uncommon in the
early history of the operation of lynch-law in Virginia,[171] and in the
later thirties similar suits were instituted in the courts. On September
4, 1835, certain inhabitants of Brownsville, Tennessee, constituted
themselves a lynch court for the trial of Anson Moody, suspected of
being a kidnapper, or slave stealer. They seized him in the dead of
night, tried him, convicted him, and then proceeded to punishment by
inflicting one hundred lashes with a “cowskin,” branding him on the
cheek with the letter R and commanding him to leave the country. A jury
in the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of West
Tennessee gave him a verdict of $2,000 and costs against five of the
members of the Lynch court.[172]
In Yazoo, Mississippi, a Mr. Harris, for some real or supposed offense,
was “severely lynched” by H. W. Dunn, C. W. Bain, and others. He
prosecuted those two individuals for the outrage, and the case was tried
in the circuit court of Yazoo County. The jury returned a verdict for
the plaintiff of $20,000.[173]
Two young men in Fayette County, Tennessee, were sentenced to three
months’ imprisonment and to pay a fine of $50 each for assisting to ride
John T. Foster on a rail. The said Foster died in consequence of the
injuries he received during the outrage.[174]
Sherman Thompson and Samuel Thompson, of Meriden, Connecticut, were
sentenced to pay a fine of $20 each and to suffer imprisonment in the
common jail for the term of six months for having participated in an
outrage upon the Rev. Mr. Ludlow in October, 1837.[175]
The Grand Jury of Alton, Illinois, found bills of indictment against a
number of individuals concerned in the affair of November 7, 1837, when
Lovejoy was killed, but the suits were evidently not pushed against
them. In the trial of Rock, one of the assailants, which came up before
the municipal court, the jury returned a special verdict that the
defendant, in their opinion, was guilty of the various charges in the
indictment, but that they return him not guilty on a question of
jurisdiction.[176]
Previous to 1840 the verb lynch was occasionally used to include capital
punishment, but the common and general use was to indicate a personal
castigation of some sort. “To lynch” had not then undergone a change in
meaning and acquired the sense of “to put to death.”[177] Webster’s
Dictionary, edition of 1848, gives: “Lynch, v. t. To inflict pain, or
punish, without the forms of law, as by a mob, or by unauthorized
persons,” and “Lynched, pp. Punished or abused without the forms of
law.” These same definitions still stand in the edition of 1876. It was
not until a time subsequent to the Civil War that the verb lynch came to
carry the idea of putting to death. Men were punished with death “by
Lynch-law” and “by order of Judge Lynch,” but it is so stated in every
such case that death was inflicted.
A few typical instances of the use of the word will illustrate the
point. The St. Louis Bulletin, November 21, 1835, contained the
following item: “Fuller and Bridges, the men suspected of having
kidnapped Major Dougherty’s slaves ... were soundly flogged, or in other
words—_Lynched_, and set on the opposite side of the river, with the
positive assurance that, if they were again found within the limits of
the State of Missouri, their fate should be death by hanging.”[178]
Niles’ Register for December 5, 1835 (49: 228) heads a paragraph taken
from the Louisiana Advertiser “More Lynching.” The paragraph tells of
the murder of John W. Brock by John Joseph Short, who was “tried in a
summary manner, and executed, by hanging.”
Under the title “Lynchers Lynched” the following language was used in
the Liberator for September 24, 1836 (6: 155): “A party of from 6 to 12
persons proceeded to the house of Judge Bermudez last night ... their
object being, as it is supposed, to assault or Lynch the Judge.”
The following passage is from the Liberator, August 17, 1838 (8: 131):
“Lynching. A man named John Miles, who hails from Cincinnati, received
100 lashes in Adams county, Mississippi, for endeavoring to entice
negroes away.”
Under the heading “Horrible Lynching” the following item, taken from the
Southern Mississippi Sun of the 19th ult., appears in Niles’ Register
for December 14, 1839 (57: 256): “Crook and Carter who were confined in
the jail of Scott county for murder, have been taken by force from
prison by some of the citizens of that county and hung! It will be
recollected that they once made their escape from the jail and were
retaken.—They were brought to Rankin county two or three weeks since for
trial, but were remanded for want of some testimony. The people have
taken the law into their own hands, and executed them without a trial.”
The ordinary use of the term at this time was very well stated by Philip
Hone when he wrote in his diary on August 2, 1835: “A terrible system
prevails in some of the Southern and Western States, which consists
in ... beating, tarring and feathering, and in some cases hanging the
unhappy object of their vengeance, and this is generally called ‘Lynch’s
Law.’”[179]
Instances may be cited showing that the term continued to be used in
this way down to 1860. Niles’ Register for August 24, 1844 (66: 428) has
this paragraph: “Judge Lynch. Four men, Rea, Mitchell, White and Jones,
were tried and condemned before his honor, Chief Justice Lynch, on the
16th inst. at South Sulphur, Texas, for killing two men and one boy of
the Delaware tribe of friendly Indians. They were executed under said
sentence, the next day, in the presence of a large number of persons.”
In the year 1845 there were some lawless proceedings in Scott County,
Missouri. Niles’ Register for July 26, 1845 (68: 325) describes the
occurrence in the following way: “A party of men ... were charged with
burning the houses, stocks, etc. and doing other injuries to a man named
Lane. Some of his neighbors collected and caught several of the persons
charged, lynched them, and ordered them to leave the county, which they
did. A few days ago, they returned with a considerable party and avowed
their determination to drive out or be avenged on Lane and those who had
assisted to lynch and drive them away.”
The following item is taken from the St. Louis Reveille for October 2,
1845: “It is reported that the two men named Redman, brothers, with five
others, were recently arrested in the vicinity of Davenport, charged
with the murder of Colonel Davenport. Suspicion was strong as to their
guilt. We have heard rumors that Lynch law had been inflicted upon both
the Redmans since their arrest—that they both were hung.”[180]
Niles’ Register for January 17, 1846 (69: 320) gives the following:
“Lynching in Florida. A man by the name of Yeoman, accused of being a
noted slave stealer—having been discharged by Judge Warren, of Baker
County, Georgia, on a writ of _habeas corpus_ ... on his arrival at
Jefferson County, Florida, ninety citizens assembled and took a formal
vote, which stood 67 for and 23 against hanging him. He was executed
accordingly at 12 o’clock, on the 2d inst.”[181]
In 1855 several negroes were summarily executed by mobs in Tennessee.
The Liberator gives an account of these occurrences under the heading,
“Hanging Negroes in Tennessee by Judge Lynch’s Code.”[182]
In the Liberator, January 18, 1856 (p. 12), it is stated that “Judge
Thomas Clingman, of Carroll county, Missouri, was murdered, about the
middle of October, by one of his field slaves. The murderer was
instantly hung by Lynch law.”
The Liberator, May 2, 1856 (p. 72), contains this paragraph, taken from
the Western Herald: “Lynch Law in Virginia.—A man named William
Hornbeck, living in Lewis County, Virginia, for the alleged
ill-treatment of his family, was lynched by the young men in the
neighborhood, one night last week.—Stripped of his clothing, rode on a
rail, made to run through a briar patch, a stout paddle used to keep him
going, and a coat of tar and feathers applied.”
The Liberator, December 4, 1857 (p. 196) copies the following account of
the manner in which an abolitionist was lynched in Mississippi: “... A
crowd took him to the woods, told him to strip, carried to a hollow and
tied around a tree. He was then told what was their intention: to lynch
him until he told something. The lashing was commenced by two who used
straps fastened to sticks about 10 in. long....”
The same issue of the Liberator contains the following: “Lynch Law
Proceedings.—In Barton County, Southwestern Missouri, great excitement
has recently existed on account of the doings of a set of lawless
wretches called ‘Slickers,’ who pretended to be after a horse-thief, but
who ‘slicked’[183] or barbarously beat several men until their lives
were despaired of, and when women interfered, some were badly beaten and
others violated....”
The following paragraph appeared in the Liberator, December 31, 1860 (p.
211): “Lynch Law Again.—Two white men named Waters and a mulatto named
Wilson, at Mosely Hall, a village in North Carolina, were arrested a few
days ago for hurraing for Lincoln and the Abolitionists and severely
beating a citizen who remonstrated with them. They were immediately
tried by a jury, who ordered them to be whipped, and to have their heads
shaved. The verdict was carried out on the spot.”
The use of the word lynch in a story entitled “Jack Long; or lynch-law
and vengeance,” which appeared in the American Whig Review for February,
1845, purporting to be a true story of frontier life in Shelby County,
Texas, fully bears out the assertion that “to lynch” was generally
understood at that time to mean to whip or to maltreat. According to the
story a band of men calling themselves “Regulators,” led by a ruffian,
terrorized the county. Once they lynched, that is, lashed to a tree,
whipped and beat, Jack Long, leaving him for dead. He recovered and left
the county in obedience to their orders, but later came back and shot
all but two of the “Regulators.”
It should be said, however, that the instances of the application of
lynch-law which are given in Niles’ Register and the Liberator from 1830
to 1860 show an increase in the severity of the punishment administered.
As the slavery controversy went on and the breach widened between the
North and the South, it was but natural that such should be the case.
Many people in the South felt that no punishment was quite severe enough
for an abolitionist. Crimes committed by negroes were also treated with
greater severity. The following extract from a private letter, dated
Houston, Texas, August 23, 1860, to a friend in Hartford, Connecticut,
expresses a sentiment felt at that time in many sections of the South:
“Tell your abolition friends to go on and soon they will have the
pleasure of seeing the negro reduced to such a state of hopeless bondage
that they may well pity them. I solemnly declare that to-day the negro
is not as free as he was two or five years ago; and why? Simply because
his master has been goaded on to desperation by incendiary acts and
speeches. Now he fears the negro, and binds him down as you would a
savage animal. One year ago, all was peace and quietness here. The negro
was allowed to go out, to have dances and frolics; to-day one dare not
show his head after nine o’clock in the evening. Seven companies of
patrols are organized and guard the city each night, sixteen
horse-patrol scour the country around. Forty-eight vigilance men say
live, banish or die, as the proof may go to show. And so it is all over
the country. Men are hung every day by the decision of planters,
lawyers, judges and ministers. It is no hot impetuous act, but cool,
stern justice. It is the saving of wife and daughter, mother and sister
from the hand of desecration. It is the stopping of scenes that would
make the Druses and Turks blush for shame.”[184]
At the time this letter was written, and during the three years
preceding, there was a great deal of excitement in Texas. Vigilance
societies were in active operation against desperadoes and
abolitionists. In 1857 a vigilance committee in the “upper country,” as
it was then called, was “raking the country fore and aft and swinging
every horse-thief and murderer,” that could be found. A traveler saw
twelve bodies suspended from one tree and on another tree five.[185] In
the summer of 1860 there was an insurrection and conspiracy in Dallas,
Ellis, Tarrant and Denton counties, in northern Texas. The three
ringleaders, Sam, Cato, and Patrick, were hung by a vigilance committee
on July 24. Twenty-two insurrectionists in all were said to have been
hanged.[186] This condition of affairs must be taken into consideration
in connection with the statements made in the above letter and the fears
and prejudice therein expressed.
When drawing any conclusions from the instances recorded in the
newspapers as to the history of lynch-law during this period, there is
another fact to be kept in mind. During the later years the facilities
for obtaining news were greatly increased; the means of communication
between different parts of the country were very much improved and the
number of newspapers published had rapidly increased. There were no
doubt many cases of the administration of summary justice in the remote
districts during the thirties and the early forties which never came to
the notice of either the Liberator or Niles’ Register. There is,
however, abundant evidence to make the conclusion a safe one that
lynch-law was more and more resorted to during this period and that the
punishments administered under that name by vigilance committees and
mobs came to be more and more severe, death being frequently inflicted
during the later years.
The Parkville (Mo.) Democrat made the following statement in the year
1856: “Deeds of daring and outrages perpetrated by negroes, are
constantly becoming more frequent. We hope that the proper authorities
will see to it that all such cases are punished to the extent of the
law.”[187] The Liberator for May 2, 1856 (p. 72) contains an item which
reads in this way: “In Hancock County, La., Samuel L. Watson, a negro
overseer, whipped one of the negroes under him, and a few days after,
the negro caught him in a field and beat him with a club till he died.
The tragedy closed in the usual way, by the summary hanging of the negro
by the populace.” There are indications, therefore, that crime was on
the increase among the negroes at this time and that the whites had
cause for inflicting more rigorous punishment.
The following editorial appeared in the Liberator, December 19, 1856 (p.
204): “A record of the cases of ‘Lynch Law’ in the Southern States
reveals the startling fact, that within twenty years, over three hundred
white persons have been murdered upon the accusation—in most cases
unsupported by legal proof—of carrying among slave-holders arguments
addressed expressly to their own intellects and consciences, as to the
morality and expediency of slavery.” If this figure may be accepted as
reliable for the whites, it is within the truth to say that a
considerably larger number of negroes met with summary capital
punishment during the various insurrection excitements which occurred.
The summary execution of negroes did not, however, become a serious evil
previous to the Civil War. So long as the negroes were valuable as
slaves, it was a direct economic loss to the slave-holder if an
able-bodied slave were put to death. In general, it was only in cases of
real or supposed conspiracy against the whites, or in cases of
insurrection, that the negroes were killed in a summary manner. Such was
the case in Virginia at the time of the Nat Turner insurrection; such
was the case in Mississippi in 1835 when it was discovered that the
Murrell gang had laid plans for a general uprising among the slaves. A
similar condition of affairs existed in northern Texas in 1860, when it
was thought that strychnine had been distributed among the negroes and
they had been instructed to put it in the wells and in the food of their
masters.
Damages were sometimes claimed by owners for the loss of their slaves
through illegal procedure. A suit was instituted in the year 1857 in the
Jefferson Circuit Court of Kentucky against the city of Louisville for
the value of the slaves George, Bill, and Jack, the murderers of the
Joyce family. George and Bill had been hung by an infuriated mob, and
Jack had cut his own throat in jail, in order to escape the fate which
befell his companions. $1,500 each was claimed as damages by the owners
of the negroes. The Louisville Courier in commenting upon the case said
the suit would be of interest and importance, involving some delicate
principles of law.[188] In 1858 a vigilance committee was established in
Shelby County, Kentucky, whose method of procedure was described as
follows: “They order white men and free negroes who have been concerned
in evil deeds, to leave the county within three days. Any property
belonging to a white man is to be appraised by three disinterested
persons, and the price paid, after such person has been directed to
leave the county. Slaves who are vicious must be removed, also, from
Shelby county, by their masters.”[189] The property right in the slaves
was generally recognized in cases where they committed offenses against
a neighbor or a neighbor’s slaves. A common way of settling such matters
was for a number of the planters to meet together and decide upon the
amount of damages to be paid and what should constitute an equitable
settlement, without going through any formal legal procedure. In
Louisiana a tribunal formed in this way tried and gave sentence of death
upon two negroes for violating the person of a young white girl on
Christmas eve, 1856.[190]
An examination of the files of the Liberator shows that, during the ten
years 1830–1840, in cases where masters, overseers, or mistresses were
murdered by slaves, the law was allowed to take its course almost
without exception. The same is true in the case of rape committed upon
white women by negroes. The record stands, three slaves and one free
negro legally executed for rape and two slaves legally executed for
attempted rape. There are some instances reported of summary punishment,
not death, being administered to negroes for inducing white girls to run
away with them, or for living with white women.
There were also three instances of burning negroes at the stake during
this period. These cases have been described above: one was the burning
of two slaves near Mobile, Alabama, for murdering two children; another
was the burning of the free mulatto at St. Louis for killing an officer;
and the other was the burning of a slave in Arkansas for the murder of
his master.
For the ten years 1850–1860, the record is somewhat different. Out of
forty-six negroes put to death for the murder of owners or overseers,
twenty were legally executed and twenty-six were summarily executed. Of
the latter, one was a female slave who was taken from the constable and
hanged upon a tree for the crime of beating her mistress to death, and
another was a negro woman who was burned to death for poisoning her
master. Eight of the remaining twenty-four negroes were summarily
executed by being burned at the stake. For the crime of rape upon white
women, three negroes were legally executed, and for attempted rape two
were legally executed; while twelve negroes were more or less brutally
put to death by mobs for having committed the crime. Of the latter, four
were burned at the stake, three of whom had committed the double crime
of rape and murder. Some other instances of rape and of attempted rape
are reported, but no statement is made as to the manner or the nature of
the punishment inflicted.
It cannot be said, however, that these cases of the infliction of
capital punishment upon negroes without process of law were anything
more than sporadic and isolated cases. They were scarcely more than
local in their influence. The most important thing brought to light by
the above comparison of the two ten-year periods is the tendency, in the
later period, toward less reliance on legal procedure and toward greater
readiness on the part of the people to take matters into their own
hands. The newspapers in the fifties not only frequently excused summary
procedure but often openly advocated it. One instance only will be cited
and it is from a southern newspaper. In 1856, a Mr. Pearce, residing in
Morgan County, Georgia, attempted to give one of his negroes a flogging
for some misdemeanor. The negro picked up an ax and at one blow split
his master’s head open. He then fled. While he was still at large the
Madison Messenger printed the following: “Beyond doubt he will be
captured before many hours. If he is, although we admire submission to
the course pointed out by the law of the land, in this case so much of
the brute has been manifested, we should be glad to see our citizens
rise _en masse_, and avail themselves of Lynch law, and hang the rascal
without court or jury.”[191]
The preceding paragraphs have made it clear that negroes occasionally
suffered death under lynch-law previous to the Civil War. It was not
common, however, to characterize the summary hanging of negroes as
lynching. Such occurrences were neither common nor general enough to
give to the verb lynch its modern meaning, even though they had been
always designated as lynchings.
It was with reference to the lawless proceedings which took place in the
western and southwestern portions of the United States in the fifties
that the term lynch was first used in its modern sense. The vigilance
committees which were then common in that section of the country often
hung desperadoes and horse-thieves, and frequently when such persons
were thus executed they were said to have been lynched. A paragraph in
the Liberator, November 9, 1860 (p. 179), has the heading: “Four men
Lynched in Texas.” The paragraph contains a clipping from a Texas paper
describing the circumstances under which four men were found one morning
hung in the public square of a town in Navarro County, and refers to the
“many accounts of lynchings in Texas.”
Howitt’s Journal for February 12, 1848 (3: 109), contains an article
entitled “American Lynching—The Desperadoes of the South-West.” The
article is really a review of a book published under the title “The
Desperadoes of the South-West,” which, according to the reviewer, gives
a picture of the state of society in that section of the United States.
Quotations from the book are given in which the author outlines the way
the West was settled up and the difficulty of keeping prisoners until a
regular trial could be had, and the exasperating delays and
postponements brought about by pettifogging lawyers. The author
describes the operation of lynch-law at that time in the following
words:
“Then, after all other means of redress have been exhausted, the
honest, hard-working portion of the community organize themselves into
a community of lynchers, elect a captain, appoint a committee, and, as
they say, ‘take justice into their own hands.’... The company of
lynchers once formed, they proceed to the execution of summary
justice. It is easy to see what sad work they must make of it,
rendered furious, as they have been, by multitudinous wrongs. And
accordingly, they whip, bang, torture, burn, flay alive; and however
they may begin, end at last by acting like a band of savages. What
else could be expected of such men, however honest, however merciful,
stung to ungovernable rage by so many injuries, and now placed as
judges in their own case, in a position beyond responsibility? By and
by, the more cunning rogues take shelter under their protection, and
bawl out the loudest for justice. Then the fruit of ruin is ripe. Men
accuse their enemies of the most appalling crimes, in order to glut
feelings of private revenge. A hypocritical zeal for honesty becomes
the cloak for rapine and murder. Vengeance supplants law, and brute
force and fury trample down all show of order.... But the force is
never wholly on one side only. The lynchers, or ‘regulators,’ as they
are often called, soon find that their foes organize also; arm
themselves, and prepare for systematic resistance, under the
denomination of ‘moderators.’ Then commences a guerilla warfare as
dark and deadly in its hate, as the old English contest between the
Red and the White Roses. It is a war of utter extermination.”
Chambers’ Journal for February 17, 1855 (23: 101) contains an article
entitled “American Jottings. Eccentricities in criminal
jurisprudence—Lynch Law.” The following quotations are both illustrative
and instructive:
“A respect for law and order is as conspicuous in general
circumstances in the greater part of the United States as it is in
England. This much may be said without prejudice to the fact, that
very strange things occasionally come to pass, particularly in the
south and west, in violation of the regular course of justice.... It
is doubtless the perfunctoriness in the administration of justice
which at times arouses the indignation of the public and causes them
to have recourse to what is called Lynch Law, in which respect
American society, in the more newly settled parts of the country, may
be said to be at the stage of the rough populace of Edinburgh when
they interrupted the ordinary course of justice, and laid violent
hands on Captain Porteous. It is thus interesting to note how long it
is before a people acquire the habit of implicit submission to the
maxims of law—the time, of course, being proportioned according as the
administrators of that law are in themselves unworthy of respect. The
ancient venality of judges and juries in Scotland, now the theme of
romance, would appear to be still matched on the banks of the
Mississippi, and sometimes, as popular feeling inclines, it leads to
similar results.... Objectionable and dangerous as lynching may be
considered in the abstract there can be little doubt of its propriety
practically in certain conditions of American society. When judges and
courts are leagued with desperadoes, or when peculiar difficulties
stand in the way of a prompt administration of justice, the public, in
self-defense, feel impelled to interfere. At the settlement of
California, and before society had time to establish regular
tribunals, or to give due efficacy to the law, life and property would
not have been safe for a moment, unless a Vigilance Committee had
charged itself with the duty of lynching. Even when, in such newly
opened territories, judges are appointed, only a small advance is made
towards a vigorous legal administration. Of American judges it needs
to be recollected that their position is often not such as to command
respect. A judge of the supreme courts in England is a being aloof in
every respect from the people, and he scrupulously abstains from
interference personally in matters which might by possibility come
before him in his judicial capacity. An American judge, on the other
hand, is not dissevered from the ordinary action of society; and if he
looks forward to a governorship, or some other high function, he
requires to cultivate a certain popularity.”
In these extracts there is presented very clearly the character of the
illegal and summary proceedings to which the term lynch-law was
generally and commonly applied in the fifties. The quoted passages
likewise indicate the attitude of public sentiment at that time toward
such proceedings and the frequency of their occurrence. The tendency for
vigilance societies organized in the interests of law and order to pass
quickly into the control of the lawless and the vicious, or for
counter-organizations to be formed by the lawless element in the
population, is also given due prominence.
The Vigilance Committee movement in the West attained its highest state
of organization and effectiveness under the San Francisco Committees of
Vigilance of 1851 and of 1856. The discovery of gold in 1848 had brought
to California in a few years men from all parts of the world. National
characteristics came into conflict. Mexicans, Frenchmen, Irishmen, and
Americans were suddenly thrown together in a virgin territory. The
establishment of civil government and judicial tribunals could not keep
pace with the rapid increase in population. When such civil government
was begun, the control which the vicious and corrupt element in the
population was able to exercise over it rendered it ineffectual. It was
a time of social irresponsibility, and serious crimes were of common
occurrence. Out of five hundred and thirty-five homicides which occurred
in California during the year 1855, there were but seven legal
executions.[192] It was under these conditions and on the ground that
some such organization was necessary to bring about order and security,
that the two San Francisco Vigilance Committees were organized. “Each
hanged four men and banished about thirty. Each rescued two prisoners
from the county jail by means of surprise parties.... The crimes
committed by the victims of the first tribunal were against property and
life, while those of the second were strongly tinctured with political
immorality.... The reformation of 1851 was superficial and temporary;
that of 1856 radical and permanent.”[193] On the whole, though the
measures taken seem extreme, these committees accomplished their end
remarkably well, and it is to their credit that they promptly disbanded
when their time of usefulness had passed.
Committees of Vigilance were formed elsewhere than in the city of San
Francisco, however. Many places in California during the early history
of the State had similar committees, though outside of San Francisco
they were usually organized only temporarily to deal with particular
cases. Similar “Popular Tribunals” existed in Utah, Nevada, Oregon,
Washington, Idaho, Montana, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado during the
early period of their settlement. Bancroft says at the close of his
first volume on Popular Tribunals: “I have given in this volume many
examples of Popular Tribunals, but the half has not been told. It is
safe to say that thus far in the history of these Pacific States far
more has been done toward righting wrongs and administering justice
outside the pale of law than within it.”
Further evidence of the prevalence of lynch-law during the colonization
of the territory west of the Mississippi River is furnished by an
editorial in the New York Times of March 19, 1864, written under the
title “Judge Lynch.” The opening sentences are as follows: “Our
fellow-citizens in the far West, in the mineral territories bordering
upon the Rocky Mountains, and in those on the other side of the
mountains, are holding Lynch courts in extraordinary number, and
carrying out the decrees of that ferocious judge with unprecedented
energy. Our latest files from the distant regions of Idaho, Nevada,
Utah, &c., contain accounts of executions in numbers that we think were
never equalled even in the early days of California settlement, nor in
any part of the West.” Then follows a recital of various instances,
twenty or more robbers and murderers hung in Idaho Territory, four
murderers hung by a “Citizens Association” in the Territory of Nevada,
&c. It is stated that on Thursday of that week bills were passed in
Congress enabling Nevada and two other Territories to form constitutions
preparatory to their admission to the Union as States. As a condition to
their admission an irrevocable ordinance was provided prohibiting
slavery, and the writer of the editorial remarks, “we think lynching
might have been added.”
Lynch-law prevailed to a large extent, also, during the border troubles
attending the outbreak of the Civil War. Particularly was this the case
in Kansas where, along with the guerrilla warfare that went on for a
number of years, many instances of summary procedure occurred that may
be properly classified under lynch-law. A correspondent of the New York
Tribune in Lawrence, K. T., wrote on May 30, 1858: “There is a very
general disposition to pass over the helplessly useless forms of
Territorial law and corrupt Federal courts, and try these parties
(_i.e._, horse-thieves) by Lynch law.”[194]
The lynch-law procedure of the fifties that was most commonly mentioned
and described in the newspapers and periodicals was that that prevailed
in the western part of the United States. Bodies of citizens, organized
secretly or openly under the names of “vigilance committees,” “vigilance
societies,” “vigilantes,” “regulators,” “law-and-order men,” “Citizens’
Associations,” &c., punished with summary severity horse-thieves,
cattle-thieves, highway robbers, counterfeiters, burglars, and
swindlers, as well as murderers. Certain rude forms of trial were
generally observed, acquittals were rare but not entirely unknown, and
the punishment was usually death by hanging. The frequency with which
lynch-law was resorted to at this time is to be referred, both to the
lack of a well established civil government, and to a doubt on the part
of the people as to the adequacy of the ordinary legal machinery.
It was the use of the word lynching in connection with these summary
proceedings against white men of desperate character, the criminals of
the frontier region west of the Mississippi, during the period of
settlement, that first gave to it its modern meaning of putting to
death. After the Civil War, when the Southern States were being
reconstructed and the whites were threatened with negro domination,
summary practices were adopted against the negroes. The negro had ceased
to be valuable as property and was looked upon as a dangerous political
factor in the community; to take his life was thought to be the easiest
and quickest way to dispose of him. The adoption of this plan in many
parts of the South gave for the word lynching a new application. Since
the Reconstruction Period, then, to lynch has generally meant to put to
death. The infliction of any minor punishment without legal trial still
constitutes lynch-law, but the simple term “lynching” usually implies
capital punishment. It is in this sense that the term will be used
throughout the remainder of this investigation.