LYNCH-LAW
CHAPTER I
Introduction
It has been said that our country’s national crime is lynching. We may be reluctant to admit our peculiarity in this respect and it may seem unpatriotic to do so, but the fact remains that lynching is a criminal practice which is peculiar to the United States. The practice whereby mobs capture individuals suspected of crime, or take them from the officers of the law, and execute them without any process at law, or break open jails and hang convicted criminals, with impunity, is to be found in no other country of a high degree of civilization. Riots and mob executions take place in other countries, but there is no such frequent administration of what may be termed popular justice which can properly be compared with lynch-law procedure in the United States. The frequency and impunity of lynchings in the United States is justly regarded as a serious and disquieting symptom of American society.
In general, it may be said that the practice of summarily punishing public offenders and suspected criminals is found in two distinct types of society: first, the frontier type where society is in a formative state and the civil regulations are not sufficiently established to insure the punishment of offenders; and second, the type of society which is found in older communities with well established civil regulations, the people of which are ordinarily law-abiding and conservative citizens. In this second type of society, recourse to lynch-law procedure may be had either in times of popular excitement and social disruption, or when there is a contrast in the population such as is to be seen in the South between the whites and the negroes, or against disreputable characters in the community for whose punishment under the law no tangible evidence can be adduced, or against persons guilty of committing some heinous offense which on account of its atrocity and fiendishness is particularly shocking to the community.
In other countries one or more of these conditions has at times existed, and summary methods of punishment to which lynch-law procedure in the United States bears a close resemblance have been followed. In the course of the settlement and development of this country, however, all of these conditions have existed almost side by side. From colonial times down to the present day there has been a section of the country where the frontier type of society was to be found. At the same time there has been an older, better settled section of the country, forming a different type of society, where, though the judiciary was well established and the apprehension and punishment of public offenders was well provided for in the law, circumstances have arisen of such a nature that the regular and legal administration of justice was deemed inadequate or defective, and was therefore disregarded. As will be made clear in the following pages, lynch-law has been resorted to in the United States in times of popular excitement and social disruption; it has been inflicted upon negroes, Indians, Italians, Mexicans; it has been inflicted upon disreputable characters; it has been inflicted upon persons guilty of heinous offenses.
The practice of lynching does not prevail in Canada[[1]]; nor is a similar practice to be found in England, France, or Germany. The nearest approach that can be found in Europe to the American practice of lynching exists in the rural districts of little Russia where the peasants sometimes adopt summary measures against horse-thieves. The Russian law provides only a light punishment for horse-stealing, and, since the peasant’s horse is almost his only property and is his chief instrument of labor, summary methods seem necessary in order to check the veritable plague of horse-stealing which breaks out every year as soon as the dark nights of autumn begin. When a thief is caught, the common way is for the men of the village to club him to death, each trying to strike in such a way as to inflict no injury more serious than a bruise. Another method is to tie the criminal by the feet to the tail of a young and active colt which is then ridden at a gallop until little is left of the horse-thief. There is also a mode of execution whereby the thief is bound hand and foot to a bench or log, and the women of the village thrust needles and pins into the soles of the victim’s feet and other sensitive parts, until death ensues.[[2]]
Aside from this instance which is found in the loosely organized society of the peasants in the rural districts of Russia, nothing like lynch-law can be said to prevail in Europe. Occasionally mobs put persons to death who have committed some brutal and outrageous crime. A newspaper report states that the burgomaster of Stujhely, Hungary, was lynched in November, 1902, for having set fire to his home in which were his wife, father, mother, and three sisters, all of whom were burned to death. The burgomaster had become angry at the members of his family for some trifling cause, and his method of revenge so enraged his neighbors that they immediately “took summary measures and lynched him.”[[3]] A similar report tells of the lynching of a Bohemian village schoolmaster who suddenly became insane and began shooting his revolver right and left among his pupils, killing three and dangerously wounding three others.[[4]] People in the lower stages of civilization, such as the Melanesians, Micronesians, and the inhabitants of the Guinea Coast of Africa, often have secret societies which take control of important functions, such as the initiation of young persons arriving at maturity, or the exaction of penalties for the transgression of customs and traditions. In most cases these societies form an essential part of the state, holding quite the place of the chief. Occasionally they degenerate and create a reign of terror by their extortions and exactions. Secret tribunals for thieves and robbers, like the society of the “Old Ox,” have existed in China.[[5]] Such instances, however, merely illustrate the general truth that summary methods of punishing offenders are sometimes resorted to in every country in times of great popular excitement or when some peculiarly atrocious crime has been perpetrated. They in no way invalidate the assertion that the practice of lynching is peculiarly an American institution.
Historically some parallels may be cited showing the execution of summary justice under frontier conditions in other countries. In Brande’s Dictionary of Science, Literature, and Art, published in 1842, it was stated that “lynch law may be called a democratic imitation of the old feudal Vehmgerichte.” Reference was there made to the “irregular and revengeful species of justice administered by the populace in some parts of the United States,” evidently meaning the operation of lynch-law on the western frontier at that time. Lynch-law in the United States has never been administered by an organization so perfect and extensive as that of the Vehmic courts.[[6]] The feudal conditions have been lacking which made that organization possible. It is only in its raison d’être that the frontier type of lynch-law may be compared to the Vehmic courts. The early settlers in this country felt themselves compelled to resort to summary proceedings as a means of protection; the civil government was not sufficiently organized and established to insure the punishment of violators of the public peace and security. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries utter lawlessness and disregard of authority was prevailing in Germany, and for a time the Vehmic courts afforded some protection against the outrages of the princes and nobles. With the increasing strength of the regular governments, however, the need of special protection diminished and these tribunals gradually disappeared. Like the Vehmic courts, with the establishment of the judiciary and a more effective execution of the laws by the officials, the administration of lynch-law in the western half of the United States has declined.
The tendency, it may be noted, for societies secretly organized for the arbitrary punishment of offenders to pass into the control of the persons against whom they were originally directed, is to be seen not only in the history of the Vehmic courts but also in the history of the Ku-Klux Klan and numerous vigilance societies in the United States. The proceedings of such societies necessarily awaken distrust and fear among the more quiet in the community, while the rogues, whose characters are not yet known, hasten to obtain admittance, both as a shield against enemies and a cloak to cover their own misdeeds. Soon their vindictive actions and their rascalities excite the indignation of the community; a counterparty of “moderators” must be formed to check the “regulators”; then begins a deadly struggle for supremacy. Such, in brief, is the abuse of lynch-law on the frontier. The tyranny of the Vehmic courts becomes the taking of private vengeance, the feud and the vendetta, under lynch-law.
The Vehmic courts, however, give no explanation for the presence of lynch-law as an institution in American society. No connection can be traced further than a few similarities in the methods adopted to put down lawlessness at a time when the civil government proved weak and inefficient.