and other Slaves in this Province,” dated the 10th day of May, 1740,
reads as follows: “And _whereas_, several negroes did lately rise in
rebellion, and did commit many barbarous murders at Stono and other
parts adjacent thereto; and _whereas_, in suppressing the said rebels,
several of them were killed and others taken alive and executed; and
as the exigence and danger the inhabitants at that time were in and
exposed to, would not admit of the formality of a legal trial of such
rebellious negroes, but for their own security, the said inhabitants
were obliged to put such negroes to immediate death; to prevent,
therefore, any person or persons being questioned for any matter or
thing done in the suppression or execution of the said rebellious
negroes, as also any litigious suit, action, or prosecution that may
be brought, sued or prosecuted or commenced against such person or
persons for or concerning the same; _Be it enacted_ by the authority
aforesaid, That all and every act, matter and thing, had, done,
committed and executed, in and about the suppressing and putting all
and every the said negro and negroes to death, is and are hereby
declared lawful, to all intents and purposes whatsoever, as fully and
amply as if such rebellious negroes had undergone a formal trial and
condemnation, notwithstanding any want of form or omission whatever in
the trial of such negroes; and any law, usage or custom to the
contrary thereof in any wise notwithstanding.”—“Statutes at Large of
South Carolina” (edited by D. J. McCord, 1840), VII, 416–417.
Footnote 256:
Instances are recorded where Indians who had committed the crime of
rape on white females were legally dealt with. See “Records of the
Colony of the Massachusetts Bay in New England,” II, 23; “New Haven
Colonial Records” (Hoadly, 1858), p. 543; “Rhode Island Colonial
Records,” II, 420, 427, 428; “Records of the Court of Assistants of
the Colony of the Massachusetts Bay” (J. Noble, 1901), pp. 21–22;
“Plymouth Colony Records,” VI, 98.
Footnote 257:
_Niles’ Register_, Dec. 25, 1813 (5: 279).
Footnote 258:
_Niles’ Register_, Aug. 25, 1821 (20: 415–416).
Footnote 259:
_Niles’ Register_, June 8, 1822 (22: 238).
Footnote 260:
_Niles’ Register_, July 13, 1822 (22: 320).
Footnote 261:
_Niles’ Register_, Sept, 14, 1822 (23: 18). It was in the year 1741
that the thirteen blacks were burned at the stake in New York by
judicial decree.
Footnote 262:
Additional evidence has been given above in another connection. See
Chapter IV.
Footnote 263:
By an act passed the 11th day of May, 1754, power was given the
justice to postpone the trial to such time as he thought proper, owing
to the frequent difficulty of procuring the justice and the
freeholders and the witnesses to attend the trial within the three
days.—“Statutes at Large of S. C.” (edited by D. J. McCord, 1840),
VII, 426–427.
Footnote 264:
“Statutes at Large of South Carolina” (edited by D. J. McCord, 1840),
VII, 400–402. It was also provided by this act, which was passed the
10th day of May, 1740, that an oath for the faithful discharge of duty
be taken by the freeholders when they assembled with the justices for
the trial of prisoners, that the evidence of slaves, without oath, be
admitted against slaves, that for certain offenses certain penalties
be imposed, that compensation be allowed the owners of slaves
executed, that masters and other persons be compelled to give
evidence, that the constables execute or punish slaves according to
the judgments rendered, &c., &c.
Footnote 265:
The laws of Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and Delaware have been
cited above.
Footnote 266:
“Negro Outrage no Excuse for Lynching”—_Forum_, November, 1893 (16:
300).
Footnote 267:
Walter H. Page: “The Last Hold of the Southern Bully”—_Forum_,
November, 1893 (16: 303).
Footnote 268:
“Lynching of Black People because they are Black”—_Our Day_, 13: 298
(1894).
Footnote 269:
The following passage is taken from an editorial in the _Houston_
(Texas) _Post_ of October 23, 1902: “From the same telegraph pole from
which the two negroes were hanged at Hempstead on Tuesday, a rapist
was hanged less than two months ago. The circumstances of the first
execution were fully known to the victims of the second mob. This
teaches very plainly that lynching does not deter.”
Footnote 270:
See “The Epidemic of Savagery,” _Outlook_, Sept. 7, 1901 (69: 9);
also, “The Lynching of Negroes,” by Thomas Nelson Page, _North
American Review_, January, 1904 (178: 33).
Footnote 271:
Compare the conclusion arrived at by a Georgia lawyer in an article in
the _Forum_, October, 1893 (16: 176).
Footnote 272:
Even such a discriminating and estimable journal as the _Nation_ still
makes use of every possible occasion to preach the rights of man in
general and of the negro in particular, utterly ignoring the question
of capability and responsibility.
Footnote 273:
See, for example, J. H. Ingraham: “The South-West” (1835), II,
185–189.
Footnote 274:
See, for example, _Southern Literary Messenger_, March, 1839 (5: 219).
Footnote 275:
See _Public Opinion_, Feb. 11, 1893 (14: 448).
Footnote 276:
See _Our Day_, May, 1893 (11: 333).
Footnote 277:
See Haydn’s “Dictionary of Dates” (1898), p. 681. Also, “The
Cyclopedic Review of Current History” (1894), p. 647.
Footnote 278:
The _New York World_ secured “interviews” with nineteen governors on
the subject of the proposed visit of the committee. See _American Law
Review_, November-December, 1894 (28: 904).
Footnote 279:
See _Literary Digest_, July 14, 1894.
Footnote 280:
See _Independent_, May 16, 1901 (53: 1133).
Footnote 281:
See article by Edward Leigh Pell on “Prevention of Lynch-law
Epidemics,” _Review of Reviews_, March, 1898 (17: 321).
Footnote 282:
See Georgia Code, 1895, Sections 356–359.
Footnote 283:
Public Laws of North Carolina, 1893, ch. 461.
Footnote 284:
Georgia Laws, 1895, Part I, Title 7, No. 209.
Footnote 285:
Constitution of South Carolina, Section 6, Article 6. This article of
the constitution with additional provisions necessary to make its
operation effective was passed by the legislature in 1896 as “An Act
to Prevent Lynching.” See Acts of South Carolina, 1896, p. 213.
Footnote 286:
92 Ohio Laws 136. In this the original act the amount of damages that
could be recovered was fixed at a certain sum; for assault, “the sum
of $1000,” for suffering lynching “the sum of $500,” &c. In thus
fixing the amount of damages it was said that the legislature had
assumed judicial power and had thus rendered the act unconstitutional.
To remedy this defect, the legislature on April 21, 1898, amended the
act so that the amount of damages that might be recovered should be,
for assault “any sum not exceeding $1000,” for suffering lynching “any
sum not exceeding $500,” &c. See 93 Ohio Laws 161. Being Sections
4426–4 to 4426–14 of the Revised Statutes.
Footnote 287:
93 Ohio Laws 411. Being Section 6908 of Title I, Part Fourth, Revised
Statutes, Crimes and Offenses.
Footnote 288:
Acts of Tennessee, 1897, Chapter 52. This act was approved March 24,
1897.
Footnote 289:
Laws of Kentucky, 1897, Chapter 20. For the amendment and re-enactment
of this law see Laws of Kentucky, 1902, Chapter 25. In the above
résumé of the law nothing has been included from the sections which
were repealed in 1902.
Footnote 290:
Laws of Texas, 1897, Chapter 13. This act was approved June 19, 1897.
Footnote 291:
Acts of Indiana, 1899, Chapter 218. Being Sections 2065a–2065d, 2065f
of the Revised Statutes (1901).
By an act approved Feb. 24, 1899, boards of county commissioners in
Indiana are authorized to pay five hundred dollars reward for the
arrest and conviction of a murderer or lyncher.—Acts of 1899, Chapter
100.
Footnote 292:
Acts of Indiana, 1901, Chapter 140. Being Section 2065e of the Revised
Statutes (1901).
Footnote 293:
Public Acts of Michigan, 1899, No. 252. Repealed by Public Acts of
Michigan, 1903, No. 26.
Footnote 294:
Constitution of Alabama, Section 138.
Footnote 295:
Acts of West Virginia, 1903, p. 305; Joint Resolution, No. 12, adopted
Feb. 3, 1903.
Footnote 296:
See newspapers of the date Dec. 26, 1902, and subsequent dates.
Footnote 297:
Laws of Kansas, 1903, Chapter 407. This act was approved March 10,
1903.
Footnote 298:
Laws of Kansas, 1903, Chapter 221. This act was approved March 11,
1903.
Footnote 299:
As early as the year 1796, this measure was suggested as a means of
preventing the administration of popular justice by extra-legal
methods. In that year Governor St. Clair, in a report to the Secretary
of State concerning “Official Proceedings in the Illinois Country,”
after describing an affair in which some Indians were summarily put to
death, the circumstances of which he characterized as “not only not
blameable but laudable,” continued in these words: “I am sorry
however, to add that, had the affair been ever so criminal in its
nature, it would have been, I believe, impossible to have brought the
actors to punishment. The difficulties that have occurred in cases of
that nature in various parts of the United States, as well as in this
Territory, and the stain it fixes on the national character, has often
led me to consider whether justice could not be secured to the Indians
by adding some sanction to the law beyond what is usual between the
citizens, and it has occurred to me that, were a pretty heavy
pecuniary fine to be set upon the murder of an Indian, and a
proportional one for lesser injuries, to be levied upon the counties
where the offense was committed if the offenders were not brought to
justice, it would probably have the effect, for it is often seen that
the minds of men little tinctured with justice or humanity, have a
pretty strong sympathy with their pockets, and I believe it to be a
subject within the province of the general legislature.”—The St. Clair
Papers (1882), Vol. II, p. 397.
Footnote 300:
For the purpose of obtaining accurate and complete information on the
subject of anti-lynching laws the writer asked the following questions
of thirty-three attorneys-general in the United States, inclosing in
each letter a self-addressed and stamped envelope for reply:
1. What anti-lynching laws have been enacted in your State since 1890?
(Please give citation to statutes.) If there are no anti-lynching laws
in your State, mention any attempts that have been made to enact such
laws.
2. Have any cases been tried under any of such laws or any attempts
been made to that effect, and what has been the record and the outcome
in each case?
3. Are such laws effective in any respect?
Twenty-four replies were received to the thirty-three letters sent,
and upon examination a fact became evident which is probably rather
more than a coincidence—the nine unanswered letters were the ones
which were sent to the attorneys-general of the States, with one
exception, in which the greater number of lynchings have occurred. The
exception is scarcely worth noting, however, because it was a reply
which was very tardy and very non-committal.
Footnote 301:
See p. 234.
Footnote 302:
Brown _v._ Orangeburg Co., 55 S. C. 45; 32 S. E. 764. The decision of
the Supreme Court was rendered on April 20, 1899.
Footnote 303:
See p. 235.
Footnote 304:
Mitchell was a negro and was lynched on June 4, 1897, for the crime of
rape.
Footnote 305:
Caldwell lost again in the common pleas and circuit courts, and went
no further.—Deputy Clerk of Cuyahoga County in letter to the writer.
Footnote 306:
See note, p. 236. The supreme court by this decision upheld the act in
its original form.
Footnote 307:
62 O. S. 318.
Footnote 308:
68 N. E. 899.
Footnote 309:
See p. 185. Compare Chart I.
Footnote 310:
_New York Times_, Jan. 21, 1904. Governor Sayers of Texas made similar
statements in his annual message to the legislature of Texas on Jan.
16, 1903.
Footnote 311:
_New York Times_, Nov. 3, 1903.
Footnote 312:
_New York Times_, Sept. 7, 1903.
Footnote 313:
_Richmond_ (Va.) _Planet_, Feb. 14, 1903.
Footnote 314:
Governor’s message to the legislature, Jan. 14, 1903.
Footnote 315:
_New York Evening Sun_, June 5, 1903.
Footnote 316:
After a trial which lasted three months, the first man tried was
acquitted.—_Denver_ (Colo.) _Republican_, Feb. 28, 1902.
Footnote 317:
Attorney-general of Wyoming in letter to the writer.
Footnote 318:
A woman whose husband was hanged by a mob has recently filed suit
against twenty-six “prominent citizens” of Fleming County, Kentucky,
for $50,000 damages, claiming that they were members of the mob which
lynched her husband.—_New York Times_, July 14, 1904.
Footnote 319:
_Chattanooga_ (Tenn.) _Times_, July 27, 1902. It will be remembered
that by the Tennessee act any person guilty of direct or indirect
participation in a lynching was declared to be incompetent to serve on
a jury, and that the court was to carefully exclude all such persons
from both grand and petit juries. See p. 237.
Footnote 320:
Despatch from Lewisburg, Tennessee, in _New York Commercial
Advertiser_, Jan. 8, 1903.
In October, 1903, a grand jury in Moore County, Tennessee, indicted
twenty-two members of a lynching mob.—See _Outlook_, Oct. 24, 1903
(75: 427).
Footnote 321:
_Atlantic Monthly_, February, 1904 (93: 155).
Footnote 322:
See bills introduced during 57th Congress, 1st Session: Senate Bill
1117; House bills 21, 4572.
Footnote 323:
_Congressional Record_, 57th Congress, 1st Session, p. 636.
Footnote 324:
See _Green Bag_, September, 1900 (12: 466).
Footnote 325:
_New York Tribune_, April 15, 1892.
Footnote 326:
Some of these indemnities cover loss of property and bodily injuries
as well as loss of life.
Footnote 327:
See, in addition to _New York Tribune_, April 15, 1892, United States
Statutes at Large, 49th Cong., 2nd Sess., Ch. 253; 50th Cong., 1st
Sess., Ch. 1210; 54th Cong., 1st Sess., Ch. 373; 55th Cong., 1st
Sess., Ch. 9; 55th Cong., 2d Sess., Ch. 571; 56th Cong., 2d Sess., Ch.
831; 57th Cong., 2d Sess., Ch. 1006.
Footnote 328:
_American Law Review_, September-October, 1900 (34: 709).
Footnote 329:
See _Congressional Record_, 57th Congress, 1st Session, pp. 5902–5905,
5956, 6214.
Footnote 330:
_Leslie’s Weekly_, Aug. 20, 1903; _Independent_, Oct. 29, 1903 (55:
2547).
Footnote 331:
See _Harvard Law Review_, March, 1904 (17: 317).
Footnote 332:
On the work of the courts in the State of New York, see “Report of the
Commission on Law’s Delays,” January, 1904.
Footnote 333:
_Review of Reviews_, March, 1898 (17: 321).
Footnote 334:
Governor Newton C. Blanchard, at his inauguration on May 16, 1904, at
Baton Rouge, Louisiana, stated his position with reference to
lynchings in unmistakable language. “Lynchings,” he said, “will not be
permitted under any circumstances, if it be possible for the military
at the command of the Governor to get there in time to prevent them.
And if they occur before the intervention of the Executive can be made
effective, inquiry and investigation will be made and prosecution
instigated. Sheriffs will be held to the strictest accountability
possible under the law for the safety from mob violence of persons in
their custody.... The courts are adequate to the prompt vindication of
the law and the punishment of crime.”—_Outlook_, May 28, 1904 (77:
197).
Footnote 335:
Governor Vardaman ordered out two companies of militia and went
himself to the scene of the trouble in a special train, bringing the
negro away in his private car, at a cost to the State, it was said, of
$250,000. See _New York Times_, Feb. 29, 1904.
Footnote 336:
Vigilance and prompt action on the part of the officers of the law,
together with the presence of the militia, probably prevented the
lynching of the three negroes who assaulted Mrs. Biddle at Burlington,
New Jersey, on July 5, 1904.—See _New York Times_, July 16, 1904.
Footnote 337:
Governor Jelks, of Alabama, in his message of Jan. 14, 1903, said in
reference to the lynching in Pike County of a negro who was taken away
from a constable: “His offense was probably swearing contrary to one
of his white neighbors in a justice trial on a proof of character.
This was a cold-blooded murder and without excuse at all.... The
murderers go about. None of them will be hanged as they should be.”
Footnote 338:
The _News-Observer_, Raleigh, North Carolina, Aug. 27, 1902.
Footnote 339:
_American Law Review_, March—April, 1900 (34: 238).
Footnote 340:
For a discussion of the problem of punishing lynchers and for some
statistics with reference to the punishment of persons who
participated in lynchings during the first six months of the year
1892, see paper by George C. Holt, on “Lynching and Mobs,” _American
Journal of Social Science_, No. 32, p. 67 (November, 1894).
Footnote 341:
Carroll D. Wright: “Outline of Practical Sociology” (1899), p. 357.
Footnote 342:
This view of the matter is ably set forth in the _Green Bag_ for
September, 1900 (12: 466), by O. F. Hershey of the Maryland Bar.
The same idea is expressed in a different way in an article on
“American Quality,” by N. S. Shaler. See _International Monthly_,
July, 1901.
Footnote 343:
Francis J. Grund: “The Americans in their moral, social, and political
relations” (London, 1837), I, 323. (M.)
Footnote 344:
Quoted from the _Journal of Jurisprudence_ (Edinborough). See
_American Law Review_, May—June, 1891 (25: 461).
Footnote 345:
For a comprehensive discussion of the “native question,” see “A
Sociological View of the ‘Native Question,’” by Albert G. Keller,
_Yale Review_, November, 1903.
Footnote 346:
W. E. B. DuBois: “The Souls of Black Folk” (1903), p. 143.
Footnote 347:
William Hayne Levell: “On Lynching in the South.”—_Outlook_ Nov. 16,
1901 (69: 731).
Footnote 348:
“Lynching and the Franchise Rights of the Negro,” Annals of the
American Academy of Science, May, 1900 (15: 493).
Footnote 349:
On the suggestibility of crowds, see Gustave LeBon: “The Crowd. A
Study of the Popular Mind” (2d ed., 1897).
See also Boris Sidis: “The Psychology of Suggestion” (1898), Part III.
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in
spelling.
2. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.
3. Re-indexed footnotes using numbers and collected together at the end
of the last chapter.
4. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.