“Startling as the above may seem to foreigners, it will ever reflect honour on the insulted citizens of Vicksburg, among those who best know how to appreciate the motives by which they were actuated. Their city now stands redeemed and ventilated from all the vices and influence of gambling and assignation houses; two of the greatest curses that ever corrupted the morals of any community.”
That the society in the towns on the banks of the Mississippi can only, like the atmosphere, “be purified by storm,” is, I am afraid, but too true.
I have now entered fully, and I trust impartially, into the rise and progress of Lynch Law, and I must leave my readers to form their own conclusions. That it has occasionally been beneficial, in the peculiar state of the communities in which it has been practised, must be admitted; but it is equally certain that it is in itself indefensible, and that but too often, not only the punishment is much too severe for the offence, but what is still more to be deprecated, the innocent do occasionally suffer with the guilty.
“A similar case is to be found at the present day, west of the Mississippi. Upon lands belonging to the United States, not yet surveyed or offered for sale, are numerous bodies of people who have occupied them, with the intention of purchasing them when they shall be brought into the market. These persons are mailed squatters, and it is not to be supposed that they consist of the élite of the emigrants to the West; yet we are informed that they have organised a government for themselves, and regularly elect magistrates to attend to the execution of the laws. They appears in this respect, to be worthy descendants of the pilgrims.”—Carey on Wealth.
Volume Three—Chapter Eleven.
Remarks—Climate.
I wish the remarks in this chapter to receive peculiar attention, as in commenting upon the character of the Americans, it is but justice to them to point out that many of what may be considered their errors, arise from circumstances over which they have no control; and one which has no small weight in this scale is the peculiar climate of the country; for various as is the climate, in such an extensive region, certain it is, that in one point, that of excitement, it has, in every portion of it, a very pernicious effect.