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.