It thus appears that summary and illegal methods of punishing offenders were known under various names between 1780 and 1830. The term Lynch’s law was not exclusively applied to such practices. The evidence obtainable at present, therefore, indicates that at some time between 1780 and 1817 the term Lynch’s law became a localism in Virginia in the region of the James River. By the year 1819 it had spread as far west as Indiana, and by 1828 it had become still more widely used but had not superseded all other terms for the popular administration of justice.
To the question why or how Lynch’s name came to be attached to this practice, there is at present no conclusive answer. It may be said that Colonel Charles Lynch was a prominent man in his community, and when he adopted extra-legal methods of punishing public offenders during the troublous times of the Revolution, he no doubt attracted considerable attention to himself, and thus his name became identified with such practices. It may also be said that the uniqueness of some of his punishments, such as compelling the Tories to shout “Liberty forever,” probably brought his name into prominence with the practice. The fact remains, however, that no contemporaneous evidence has yet been discovered which will explain why Lynch’s name came to be applied to the practice. We know definitely only that the form of the expression was at first Lynch’s law, and that tradition, supported by all the evidence that we have, ascribes its origin to Colonel Lynch. Equally certain it is that Lynch’s law originally signified a whipping for reformatory purposes with more or less disregard for its legality, and was so used at a time subsequent to the American Revolution and not before that time. Evidently the term originated in Virginia, and as the tide of emigration moved westward it was carried along the frontier where conditions were such as to encourage the use of extra-legal methods against public offenders.
This becomes more evident when the early history of the popular administration of punishment in the United States is taken into account. A consideration of early lynch-law, or lynch-law down to 1830, constitutes the following chapter.
CHAPTER III
Early Lynch-law
In the preceding chapter we have been concerned with the origin of the term by which the practice has come to be known. In this chapter we are concerned with the practice itself. Something of the nature of lynch-law procedure during the Revolutionary epoch has already become apparent, but a more detailed investigation into the early history of such procedure will reveal other characteristics.
It has been said by some that the first instance of the operation of lynch-law in America was in December, 1763, at Paxtang (now Harrisburg), Pennsylvania. Indian scalping parties had been laying waste the settlements with relentless fury, and the appeals of the settlers to the Quaker government for help had been treated with contempt. Exasperated at the policy pursued by the Quakers toward the Indians, the Scotch-Irish who had settled in Lancaster and Cumberland counties formed several companies of Rangers to patrol the borders and give protection. “About the middle of December, word was brought to the settlers living at Paxtang, that an Indian known to have committed depredations in the vicinity had been traced to Conestoga. Matthew Smith, a man of influence and popularity among his associates, called together a number of the Paxtang Rangers, and led them to the Conestoga settlement. One of the men saw an Indian issuing from a house, and thought that he recognized him as the savage who had killed his own mother. Firing his rifle, he brought the Indian down. Then, with a loud shout, the furious mob rushed into the cabins, and killed all the Indians whom they found there, some six in number. Fourteen of the Conestogas managed to escape, and, fleeing to Lancaster, were given a place of refuge in the county jail. While there, word was again carried to the Paxtang men that an Indian, known to have murdered the relatives of one of their number, was among those who had received the protection of the Lancaster magistrates. This again aroused a feeling of rage and resentment amongst the Rangers. On December 27, some fifty of them, under the leadership of Lazarus Stewart, marched to Lancaster, broke open the jail, and with the fury of a mob massacred every Indian contained therein, man, woman, and child.”[[68]]
In connection with this incident it has been suggested that the Scotch-Irish are to blame for the introduction of lynch-law in America; that they brought with them traditions of the administration of summary justice in Mediæval Scotland, and, amidst the perils of the frontier, quickly resorted to the ancient methods of suppressing violence and depredation. The case of the Regulators in the Carolinas is also cited as an instance of the Scotch-Irish backwoodsmen taking the administration of justice into their own hands, when their rulers failed to provide for them a safe government. It is said that this same self-reliant spirit is exhibited in the “family feuds of Kentucky, which for the most part seem peculiar to families bearing Scottish names.”[[69]]
Undoubtedly the Scotch-Irish played an important part in the early history of lynch-law in the United States. But it was rather because they were the vanguard of a new civilization than because they were of Scottish descent that they played this important part. Environmental influences of old had made them pioneers. Before coming to this country they had behind them a century of frontier life. Their experience in Ireland, where the soil was poor and where by reason of the difference in religion they lived apart from, and often in open hostility to, the natives, led them to be self-reliant and self-assertive. Their training had thus made them sturdy frontiersmen, quite the sort to subdue the wilderness and become the founders of a new civilization. Amid the vicissitudes incident to settlement in a virgin territory it was often necessary, as a matter of self-preservation, to use prompt and decisive measures against depredators. That the early settlers did not always observe “due process of law” can scarcely be urged as deserving condemnation. They merely adopted the means which seemed to them the most expedient under the existing circumstances.
The adoption of summary measures by Scotch-Irish Rangers in Pennsylvania in 1763, however, does not furnish an isolated instance, nor indeed the earliest instance, of the use of such measures against Indians. The provincial governments were not infrequently called upon to take note of such occurrences in order to preserve amicable relations with the various Indian tribes, and considerable difficulty was commonly experienced when the attempt was made to bring to justice white men who had murdered Indians.
In the Province of New Hampshire in June, 1753, two white men killed two Indians who were accused of having carried off two negroes the preceding year. After several months the men were arrested, indicted for the murder, placed in the jail at Portsmouth, and their trial set for March 21, 1754. The night previous to the day appointed for the trial a party of their neighbors appeared in Portsmouth, broke open the jail and set them free. “This outrage produced great excitement in the community—some endeavoring to discover and retake the murderers, and others favoring their escape. Both the murder and the rescue, however, were generally justified in the community. And, although rewards were offered by Governor Wentworth for the apprehension of Bowen and Morrill, yet in a short time they went openly about their business, without fear of molestation, and the men engaged in breaking the jail at Portsmouth, though well known, were never called to account, but, on the contrary, were considered as having performed a most meritorious act. In fact, some of the most substantial men in the country were engaged in the rescue,—by act or advice,—and the Government could not have made an arrest had they made the attempt. Presents were afterwards made to the relatives of these Indians by the Government of New Hampshire, and thus the ‘blood was wiped away’ to the satisfaction of the Indians.”[[70]]