Pursuant to a public notice, a meeting of the citizens was held on June 17 to make arrangements for the execution of O’Conner on June 20. L. Wheeler was requested to take command of a company of volunteers to act as a guard. A committee of three was appointed to make the necessary arrangements for the execution and burial of O’Conner. Henry Adams was requested to act as sheriff on the day of the execution. A committee of three was appointed to collect sums to defray the necessary expense “for the keeping, executing, burial, &c., of said O’Conner.” It was voted that the sheriff be allowed the sum of twenty-five dollars for the keeping and execution of said O’Conner; and that if there were anything over and above that amount, after all necessary expenses were paid, the same should go to the executioner.

“At 12 o’clock, on the day of the execution, the prisoner was taken from his place of confinement, under a guard of a company of volunteers, commanded by L. Wheeler, to the place of execution, where had assembled about 1,500 citizens. He was placed on a cart, the rope was made fast to the gallows, when the cart was driven away, leaving the prisoner suspended between the heavens and the earth.

“The whole proceedings were carried on with the utmost regularity and good order. By mutual consent of all, every coffee house was kept closed, and not a drop of spirits was sold until after the execution.”[[134]]

At the time of this affair no judicial or civil regulations were yet established in that region. Under these circumstances, then, was Patrick O’Conner legally executed or was he executed by lynch-law? Doubtless most men will agree that he was, to all intents and purposes, legally executed, and yet many instances of the operation of lynch-law on the frontier were scarcely less justifiable, though the trial and infliction of punishment may have been far more summary.

In general, the punishments administered under lynch-law previous to 1830 were not severe, usually consisting of a whipping, or some other form of corporal punishment, and banishment after a specified time. Niles’ Register for July 17, 1824 (26: 326) contains the following: “Kentucky.—Several murders have lately been committed in this state by persons who call themselves ‘regulators’—but effectual measures have been taken to arrest and punish them.” This case was evidently an abuse of lynch-law; a band of desperadoes, presumably, adopted the name of “regulators” as a cloak for their misdeeds, and thus sought immunity from punishment. Capital punishment was very rarely inflicted by the substantial and respectable settlers who sometimes found it necessary to use lynch-law methods at this early period.

It thus appears that the summary and extra-legal methods of punishment adopted during colonial times, and the summary practices of the time of the Revolution, were carried by the emigrants from the original colonies as they pushed the line of the frontier further and further to the westward. Frequent occasion was found on the frontier for the use of such methods and practices to curb the activity of the lawless and the vicious. When the legislature of Virginia authoritatively declared that circumstances may arise under which measures, though not strictly warranted by law, are justifiable from the imminence of the danger, it gave expression to a principle which found ready acceptance among the early settlers exposed to the dangers and vicissitudes of frontier life. Though the statement of the principle by the legislature of Virginia may not have been known, and probably was not known, to very many of those who took an active part in the subsequent history of lynch-law, nevertheless the principle itself was a matter of common knowledge, for it was in the air, as it were, and it was repeatedly embodied in action. In reality, the subsequent history of lynch-law is but the working out of this principle under varying conditions.

CHAPTER IV
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: