The net result of this investigation into some characteristics of the population in relation to the distribution of lynchings is negative rather than positive. The proportion between the white and colored elements in the population does not seem to affect the prevalence of lynchings. It is only the proportion of whites lynched to negroes lynched that seems to bear any relation to the proportion between the white and colored elements in the population. The percentage of foreign born in the population does not seem to influence the prevalence of lynchings and there is not the slightest indication that the practice of lynching is anything else than a thoroughly American practice. So far as the percentage of illiterates in the population is an indication of the degree of culture and civilization possessed by a community, it does not appear that lynchings are confined to backward communities. The deductions which may be drawn as a result of this investigation afford no explanation why, for instance, a greater number of lynchings occurred in Decatur County, Georgia, than in any other county in that State, or why there were ten lynchings in Dallas County, Alabama, but only one lynching in Lowndes, an adjoining county. It is probably true that the distribution of lynchings is largely affected by entirely local conditions, conditions which cannot be represented by statistics.[[222]]
In this chapter nothing has been said about the methods adopted for lynching during the twenty-two-year period. In the record of lynchings published by the Chicago Tribune no mention is made of the manner of death which the victims suffered. It is probably true that most of the lynchings were either by hanging or by shooting, or by both hanging and shooting. Additional indignities and cruelties have not infrequently been inflicted, however, and there have been a number of cases where the victims have been burned alive. The following cases of lynching by burning alive have come to the writer’s notice: in 1884, one in Texas; in 1891, one in Texas, one in Louisiana; in 1892, one in Arkansas; in 1893, one in Texas; in 1894, one in Kentucky; in 1895, one in Texas; in 1897, one in North Carolina; in 1899, one in Georgia, one in Mississippi, one in Kentucky; in 1901, one in Kansas; in 1902, three in Mississippi, one in Arkansas, one in Texas, one in Colorado; in 1903, one in Illinois, one in Delaware; in 1904, one in Mississippi, one in Georgia, at each of which two persons were burned at the stake, in the former instance one of them being a woman. In all these cases the victims were negroes and they were believed to be either guilty of several crimes or of a single atrocious crime. The majority were lynched for the double crime of rape, or attempted rape, and murder.
If these cases of burning alive form a list that is at all complete, there is ground for believing that as the practice of lynching continues the punishments inflicted tend to increase in severity and the victims are tortured more and more before death comes to their relief.
While the exact figures have been given in this investigation of lynchings in recent years based on the Chicago Tribune record, it is to be remembered that these figures are probably only approximations. It is extremely doubtful whether exactly 3,337 persons have been lynched in the United States during the last twenty-two years, or whether there have been exactly 2,465 lynchings. It is probable, however, that these approximations are as nearly correct and as reliable as any that we shall ever get, and there seems to be no reason why they should not form a sound basis for the statistical study attempted in this chapter.
CHAPTER VII
Lynch-law and its Justification
For more than a century the principle laid down by the legislature of Virginia has been appealed to as a justification for recourse to lynch-law. In Revolutionary times it was held that the immediate urgency and imminent danger of the situation justified the summary and extra-legal measures that were taken to suppress conspiracies against American patriots. On the frontier it was urged that the imminence of the danger warranted summary procedure against desperadoes and marauders, at first merely whipping and banishment, later hanging and summary execution. In the time of the anti-slavery agitation circumstances had arisen under which measures, though not strictly warranted by law, were held to be justifiable from the nature of the offense. In the opinion of the slave-holder summary treatment in the form of flogging, tarring and feathering, and banishing the abolitionist was wholly justifiable. The doctrine that “when the law is inefficient to take hold of a man the people should” was again and again referred to in support of the summary punishment of the abolitionists.
Hidden away in Judge Lawless’s charge to the St. Louis grand jury is the same principle.[[223]] If the lawless violence was the work of the “many,” if it was committed by a representative number of the citizens while in a state of frenzy and excitement, it must be considered beyond the reach of human law. In 1839, W. E. Channing stated the principle in the following words: “Undoubtedly there may be crimes, so unnatural, so terrible to a community, that a people may be forgiven, if, deeming the usual forms of justice too slow, they assume the perilous office of inflicting speedy punishment.... There is, indeed, as I have intimated, one case where popular commotion does comparatively little harm, I mean that which is excited by some daring crime, which the laws sternly forbid, and which sends an electric thrill of horror through a virtuous community. In such a case, the public without law do the work of law, and enforce those natural, eternal principles of right, on which all legislation should rest.”[[224]]
Governor Lynch, of Mississippi, in his message to the State legislature in 1836, used the following language with reference to the hanging of the Vicksburg gamblers: “However we may regret the occasion, we are constrained to admit that necessity will sometimes prompt a summary mode of trial and punishment unknown to the law.”[[225]]
A few years later Captain Marryat wrote:
“Englishmen express their surprise that in a moral community such a monstrosity as Lynch law should exist; but although the present system, which has been derived from the original Lynch law, cannot be too severely condemned, it must, in justice to the Americans, be considered that the original custom of Lynch law was forced upon them by circumstances.... In its origin the practice was no more blameable than were the laws established by the Pilgrim fathers on their first landing at Plymouth, or any law enacted amongst a community left to themselves, their own resources, and their own guidance and government. Lynch law, as at first constituted, was nothing more than punishment awarded to offenders by a community who had been injured, and who had no law to refer to, and could have no redress if they did not take the law into their own hands; the present system of Lynch law is, on the contrary, an illegal exercise of the power of the majority in opposition to and defiance of the laws of the country, and the measure of justice administered and awarded by those laws.