For instance, in 1866, near Rome, Georgia, a whole family consisting of a man, wife, and two daughters, were murdered, and one of the women, ravished. The newspaper account ends with:[34:8]
“It was difficult to restrain the people from inflicting summary punishment upon them.”
For such a crime now, a Negro would likely be burned alive. The same paper quotes the following from The Raleigh Progress:[34:9]
“Charles Wethers, the rascally Negro, who attempted to commit a rape upon a highly respectable young lady of this county some weeks ago, was placed in the stocks this morning for the last time, having completed his sit still in the burning sun for two hours during each day of this week. He was returned to jail and will remain in the custody of the sheriff till the workhouse is ready, in which institution he will labor at five dollars per month until the fine, $200, and the cost of the trial have been liquidated by muscle.”
Would it now be possible for any one to take such a tolerant, if not even good-natured,—view of such an affair?
In order to make a comparison I have selected for study, here, two three-year periods: First, 1866-7-8, including the year before and year after the passing of the Reconstruction Act of 1867 for the South; second, 1873-4-5, when the carpet-bag rule, which resulted from the Reconstruction policy of Congress, was in full operation. Although the number of lynchings during the first and second periods are in striking contrast, even this but faintly indicates the great change from the comparative tranquillity of the first (as illustrated by newspapers)[35:10] to the confusion, chaos, and crime of the second.
In 1866, one Negro was lynched in the South for attempted rape, another was sentenced to death for rape, and one was sentenced to the penitentiary for a like crime. Also, near Smithfield, Ohio, Negroes committed outrages on two girls. In Kentucky three white men were lynched for murder, and three more were put to death by a
band of regulators. No doubt Kentucky was influenced in such matters by the example of the West.
The following occurred in 1867: one Negro lynched in Missouri by Germans for the murder of a German; a Negro given sixty lashes in Delaware for assaulting two white women; three Negroes legally hanged at Charleston, S. C., for outrage. In the North, two or more Negro soldiers, deserters, lynched in Kansas for the rape of a white woman; four white men lynched in Indiana for murder and robbery; thirty men hanged in three Kansas counties by Vigilantes during the winter and spring.
For 1868: Two Negroes who confessed to the horrible murder of a white family in Mississippi were taken from a sheriff by a band of Negroes and burned;[36:11] one Negro was lynched in Kentucky for rape and another in Maryland for attempted rape; two Negroes, in jail for murder, lynched in Mississippi after boasting that the Loyal League would prevent their execution, even if convicted; a man lynched in Tennessee after he