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LYNCH-LAW
AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE HISTORY OF LYNCHING IN THE UNITED STATES

BY

JAMES ELBERT CUTLER, Ph.D.

Instructor in Economics in Wellesley College; sometime Henry C. Robinson Fellow and Instructor in Political Economy in Yale University

❦

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.

91 AND 93 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK

LONDON AND BOMBAY

1905

Copyright, 1905

By Longmans, Green, and Co.

All rights reserved

The Plimpton Press Norwood Mass.

FOREWORD

Few people are able to read about lynch-executions, with atrocious forms of torture and cruel death, such as have occurred from time to time within ten years in this country, without a feeling of national shame. It is necessary that facts should be known and that public opinion should be corrected as to the ethics of that mode of dealing with crime. Lynch-law is a very different thing where laws and civil institutions are in full force and activity from what it is where they are wanting. It is not admissible that a self-governing democracy should plead the remissness of its own selected agents as an excuse for mob-violence. It is a disgrace to our civilization that men can be put to death by painful methods, which our laws have discarded as never suitable, and without the proofs of guilt which our laws call for in any case whatsoever. It would be a disgrace to us if amongst us men should burn a rattlesnake or a mad dog. The badness of the victim is not an element in the case at all. Torture and burning are forbidden, not because the victim is not bad enough, but because we are too good. It is on account of what we owe to ourselves that these methods are shameful to us, if we descend to them. It is evident, however, that public opinion is not educated up to this level. The reader of the present book will learn very interesting facts about the causes alleged for lynching, and about the public view of that crime. Many current errors will be corrected, and many notions which are irrelevant, although they are popularly believed to be germane and important, will be set aside.

W. G. SUMNER.

New Haven, Conn., February, 1905.

PREFACE

In making this investigation into the history of lynching in the United States, my point of view has been that of a student of society and social phenomena. The purpose of the investigation has not been primarily to write the history of lynching, but to determine from the history the causes for the prevalence of the practice, to determine what the social conditions are under which lynch-law operates, and to test the validity of the arguments which have been advanced in justification of lynching.

At the present time many positive opinions are held with reference to lynching, and these are quite at variance one with another. Any one who attempts to investigate a subject under such conditions cannot hope to escape criticism; neither can he hope to have given the subject equal consideration from every standpoint. The most that one can say is that he has pursued the investigation with perfect honesty of purpose and with openness of mind. To this study of the history of lynching I have brought no theories to prove and no conscious prejudices to confirm. My first endeavor has been to obtain all the facts possible; my final endeavor has been to point out the conclusions clearly warranted by such facts.

The material for a study of this nature is found in a wide range of sources and I gratefully record here my obligations to those who have aided me in the task of collecting and sifting this material. For some very valuable notes on the early history of lynch-law I am indebted to Mr. Albert Matthews, of Boston, Massachusetts. Of his notes I have made free use, indicating my obligation to him in each instance, either by the use of the letter (M) or by special mention. Six of the chapters have been read by him in the manuscript, and he has given me much encouragement and kindly criticism during the preparation of these pages for publication.

For many valuable suggestions during the prosecution of this study I am indebted to members of the Faculty of the Social Sciences of Yale University, especially to Professors Sumner, Farnam, Bourne, and Keller. The editors of the Yale Review have very courteously permitted me to use in Chapter VIII the material which was published in a condensed form in the Yale Review for August, 1904. To many others whom I cannot here mention by name I desire to express my thanks and acknowledge my indebtedness for information given in response to inquiries.

The number of requests which have come to hand for copies of this study, from persons living in various sections of the United States as well as in Europe, and the attention that has been given the subject of lynchings in newspapers and magazines, indicate a desire on the part of the general public to learn the facts concerning lynchings. By many it is believed that in no other respect to-day is American civilization so open to reproach as in its toleration of the practice of lynching, and there is an increasing demand that this summary method of administering justice be suppressed and utterly abolished. That this book may contribute in some measure to a better understanding of this most serious and difficult problem is the hope with which it is placed in the hands of the reader.

J. E. C.

CONTENTS

CHARTS

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.

Some writers have stated that lynch-law was anciently known in England by the name of Lydford law and Halifax law, and that the same thing was known in Scotland as Cowper justice and Jeddart or Jedburg justice. Lydford law is defined in a dictionary of the seventeenth century as “a certain Law whereby they first hang a Man and afterwards indite him.”[^[7]] One of Grose’s Proverbs reads:

“First hang and draw,

Then hear the cause by Lidford law.”

Westcott, in his “History of Devonshire,” has preserved some droll verses about the town of Lydford. The first twelve lines are as follows:

“I oft have heard of Lydford law,

How in the morning they hange and draw,

And sit in judgement after;

At first I wondered at yt much,

But since I fynd the reasons such

As yt deserves no laughter.

“They have a castle on a hill,

I tooke it for an old wyndmill,

The vanes blowen off by weather:

To lye therein one night, ’tis guest,

’Twere better to be ston’d and prest,

Or hang’d; now chuse you whether.”[^[8]]

It has been asserted, therefore, that “Lydford law became a proverbial expression for summary punishment without trial.”[^[9]] This, however, is going further than the facts will allow, and is wholly misleading when thus used to show the connection between Lydford law and lynch-law. It would seem to imply that Lydford law in England was once as well known, as a name for summary punishment, as lynch-law has become in this country. As a proverbial expression Lydford law never came into general use; it was confined to one section of England and never became more than a localism.

In another part of England a certain summary procedure was known by the name of Halifax law. In this case there was a trial followed by immediate punishment. The trial was of a summary nature without adequate opportunity of defense, and the punishment was irrevocable. The name, Halifax law, originated from the so-called gibbet law or custom in the forest of Hardwick, coextensive with the parish of Halifax, under which the frith burghers summarily tried any one charged with stealing goods to the value of 13½ d., and could condemn him to be beheaded on the market-day.[^[10]]

Cowper justice is defined by Jamieson to mean “trying a man after execution; the same with Jeddart, or Jedburgh justice,” and the latter he defines as “a legal trial after the infliction of punishment.” Jeddart justice refers to Jedburgh, a Scotch border town, where many of the border raiders are said to have been hanged without the formality of a trial. It is said that “in mockery of justice, assizes were held upon them after that they had suffered.”[^[11]]

All of these expressions, however, were entirely provincial. They were merely different names used to characterize the methods employed in various parts of England and Scotland for executing popular justice. These practices differ from the administration of lynch-law in not dispensing with all regular proceedings. Further, as will appear later, the death penalty was not at first inflicted under lynch-law; originally, lynching was synonymous with whipping. It is impossible, therefore, to trace lynch-law back to these mediæval practices and find in them any explanation for the existence of the practice of lynching in the United States.

A general idea of the history of lynch-law in the United States is obtained by noting the definitions of the term that have appeared from time to time in the dictionaries. Brande’s Dictionary of Science, Literature, and Art (1842)[^[12]] contains the following: “Lynch Law. The irregular and revengeful species of justice administered by the populace in some parts of the United States is said to have been so called from a Virginian farmer of the name of Lynch, who took the law into his hands on some occasion, by chasing a thief, tying him to a tree, and flogging him with his own hands.” A “University Edition” of Webster’s Dictionary (1845) defines “Lynch-law” as “The practice of punishing men for crime by private, unauthorized persons, without a legal trial”; and gives the verb lynch meaning “to inflict punishment without the forms of law, as by a mob.” Worcester’s Dictionary (1846) has “Lynch-law. An irregular and revengeful species of justice, administered by the populace or a mob, without any legal authority or trial. Brande.” For the verb lynch the meaning is given, “To condemn and execute in obedience to the decree of a multitude or mob, without a legal trial; sometimes practiced in the new settlements in the southwest part of the United States. Qu. Rev.” In Webster’s Dictionary (1848) “Lynch-law” is defined as “The practice of punishing men for crimes or offenses by private, unauthorized persons, without a legal trial. The term is said to be derived from a Virginia farmer, named Lynch, who thus took the law into his own hands. (U. S.)”[^[13]]

Some important changes are noticeable in the definitions attached to lynch-law forty years later. The Progressive Dictionary of the English Language, edited by Samuel Fallows and published at Chicago in 1885, gives this definition for the verb lynch: “To punish without the forms of law; specifically to hang by mob-law.” In a note it is stated that more than one etymology is claimed for the word. John S. Farmer in his “Americanisms,” published at London in 1889, says the origin of the term lynch-law “is wrapped in mystery; many explanations have been put forward; none, however, are conclusive.” In Webster’s Dictionary, edition of 1893, the following definition is found: “Lynch: To inflict punishment upon, especially death, without the forms of law, as when a mob captures and hangs a suspected person.” Lynch-law is defined in a general way as “The act or practice by private persons of inflicting punishment for crimes or offenses, without due process of law,” but this note is added: “The term Lynch law is said to be derived from a Virginian named Lynch, who took the law into his own hands. But the origin of the term is very doubtful.”[^[14]]

There are two differences between the definitions formulated in the forties and those formulated in the eighties and in recent years. In the later definitions the operation of lynch-law is described as being much more harsh and severe, and there is an expression of doubt as to the origin of the term. In the earlier definitions death is not mentioned as the ordinary penalty administered by lynch-law and the American origin of the term is accepted without question. The doubt as to the origin probably arose because of the number of stories which have appeared, all claiming to account for its origin, and also because of the lack of any careful investigation to determine the question authentically from historical sources. The increased harshness expressed in the definitions is, of course, due to the fact that the punishment inflicted under the name of lynch-law has become more severe and inexorable. Lynching is now practically synonymous with summary and illegal capital punishment at the hands of a mob. In the following pages the history of this change will be traced and the conditions noted which have led to the continuance of the practice of lynching and given to it its increased severity.

In the above citations to various definitions that have been given for lynch-law it was noted that more than one origin has been claimed for the term. An investigation into the circumstances surrounding its origin will throw considerable light on the early history of lynch-law procedure in the United States, and this question will therefore be taken up in some detail.

CHAPTER II
Origin of the Term Lynch-law

Many and various explanations of the origin of the term Lynch’s law, or lynch-law, have been offered. Some of these explanations are evidently nothing more than the offspring of minds fertile in resources; others have the support of tradition and are entitled to consideration. Not infrequently confusion and apparent contradiction have resulted from the failure to distinguish clearly between the practice itself and the name by which it has been known. To follow back through history the successive outbreaks of such practices is not to discover the origin of “lynch-law,” the term which has now become so firmly established in the English language. The origin is to be found at that time when these practices first came to be known by the name Lynch’s law or lynch-law.

According to one account, given more or less indorsement in the encyclopedias, lynch-law owes its name to James Fitzstephen Lynch, mayor and warden of Galway, Ireland. He was the famous “Warden of Galway” who tried, condemned, and executed his own son in the year 1493. The story is told with varying details. One tradition has it that the mayor sent his son to Spain to purchase a cargo of wine. The young man squandered the money intrusted to him, but succeeded in obtaining a cargo on credit from a Spanish friend of his father. This gentleman’s nephew accompanied him on the return voyage to Ireland where the money was to be paid. Young Lynch, to conceal his misuse of the money, caused the Spaniard to be thrown overboard and returned home in triumph with his cargo of wine. But a sailor, on his death-bed, revealed to the mayor of Galway the crime which his son had committed. The young man was tried before his father, convicted and sentenced to be hanged. Another tradition states that the son of the Spanish friend of his father was visiting him at his home in Ireland. This son was fast supplanting him in the affections of a Galway lady to whom he was engaged. One night, in a fit of jealous passion, he stabbed the Spaniard to the heart and threw his body into the sea. The crime was quickly discovered, and on being brought before his father for trial he was condemned to die as a sacrifice to public justice. Public sympathy, however, turned in favor of the young man, and every effort was made to effect his pardon. The father “undauntedly declared that the law should take its course.” On the way to the place of execution a mob appeared, led by members of the mother’s family, demanding mercy. The father, finding that he could not “accomplish the ends of justice at the accustomed place and by the usual hands,” conducted his son up a winding stairway to a window overlooking the public street. “Here he secured the end of a rope, which had been previously fixed around the neck of his son, to an iron staple which projected from the wall, and, after taking from him a last embrace, he launched him into eternity.” The people, “overawed by the magnanimous act, retired slowly and peaceably to their several dwellings.” In the council books of Galway there is said to be a minute that “James Lynch, mayor of Galway, hanged his own son out of the window for defrauding and killing strangers, without martial or common law, to show a good example to posterity.” In commemoration of this “Roman act of justice,” a stone sculptured with a skull and crossbones was erected in Lombard Street, Galway, in 1524, and in 1854 was reerected on the wall of St. Nicholas Churchyard.[^[15]]

This “Galway story” may be dismissed with but little consideration. Howell Colton Featherston of the Lynchburg (Va.) Bar has clearly shown that this act of the mayor of Galway was entirely without any definition ever attached to lynch-law and that there was no reason for bestowing upon it any name, and more particularly his name. Mayor Lynch was the legally constituted authority presiding over the tribunal in which his son had had, presumably, a fair and regular trial. He merely persisted in executing the laws in the face of popular opposition and tumult. Lynch-law has always been considered as operating wholly without, or in opposition to, established laws of government.[^[16]]

Equally fanciful and fictitious but less romantic is the “pirate story” of the origin of the name lynch-law. It is said that about 1687 one Lynch was sent to this country from England under a commission to suppress piracy. He is credited with having faithfully executed, without the formality of a trial, every pirate that he captured. It is presumed that owing to the difficulty of adhering to the usual forms of law in the colonies, this Judge Lynch was empowered to proceed summarily against pirates and thus gave rise to the term.[^[17]] But whatever the facts may be about the methods employed by this man Lynch to suppress piracy,[^[18]] there is no evidence to show that they were ever known as Lynch’s law or had any connection whatever with lynch-law.

On its etymological side the word lynch has been traced to an old Anglo-Saxon verb linch, meaning to beat severely with a pliable instrument, to chastise or to maltreat, which is said to have survived in this cognate meaning in America, as have many other words and expressions long obsolete in Great Britain.[^[19]] For this derivation, however, there seems to be no authority. There is no evidence that such a verb “survived” in America; nor is there any evidence that such an Anglo-Saxon verb ever existed.[^[20]] According to Skeat the name Lynch is from hlinc, an Anlgo-Saxon word meaning a ridge of land.[^[21]] Furthermore, as was noted in the preceding chapter, when the word lynch first came into general use, it was stamped as of American origin.[^[22]] No English lexicographer recognized the terms lynch or lynch-law until 1848, and in 1849 Craig gave the verb “lynch” as meaning “to punish summarily without judicial investigation, as by a mob.—An American word.”[^[23]] The fact that Wright’s English Dialect Dictionary (1902) does not contain the word lynch, and the further fact that Murray’s Oxford Dictionary (1903) states that the term was originally used in the United States, may be regarded as conclusive evidence that the origin of “lynch-law” is not to be sought in England.

There is a tradition in the Drake family of South Carolina which ascribes the origin of the term to the precipitate hanging, to prevent a rescue, of a Tory named Major Beard, on Lynch Creek in Franklin County, North Carolina. The following account of it is given by John H. Wheeler, to whom it was communicated by Hon. B. F. Moore, who received it from the Drake family:

“The origin of lynch-law: During the revolution there was a noted tory ... in that portion formerly called Bute County, now embraced within the counties of Franklin and Nash, called Major Beard. Major John H. Drake lived near Hilliardston; he and his family were decided whigs. He had a daughter, beautiful and accomplished, by whose charms Beard was captivated; and the tradition runs, that the handsome figure and commanding air of Beard had its effect on the young lady, notwithstanding the difference in politics between him and her father. On one occasion, Beard encamped for the night near a mill on Swift Creek. This became known to Major Drake and other whigs, and they organized a force ... and captured him.... After some consultation it was resolved to take him as a prisoner to headquarters of Colonel Seawell, commanding in camp at a ford on Lynch Creek, in Franklin County, about twenty miles off. He was tied on his horse and carried under guard. After reaching camp, it was determined to organize a court-martial, and try him for his life. But before proceeding to trial, a report came that a strong body of tories were in pursuit to rescue him; this created a panic, for they knew his popularity and power, so they hung him. The reported pursuit proved a false alarm, and it being suggested that as the sentence had been inflicted before the judgment of the court had been pronounced, therefore it was illegal. The body was then taken down, the court reorganized, he was tried, condemned and re-hung by the neck until he was dead.

“The tree on which he was hung stood not far from Rocky Ford, on Lynch’s Creek; and it became a saying in Franklin, when a person committed any offence of magnitude, that ‘he ought to be taken to Lynch Creek’; and so the word ‘Lynch law’ became a fixture in the English language.”[^[24]]

In passing, the resemblance of this affair to Lydford law rather than lynch-law is to be noted, and also the fact that Wheeler, in his “History of North Carolina,” published thirty-three years earlier, gives an account of the hanging of “Captain Beard about 1778,” but says nothing about its being in any way connected with the origin of the term lynch-law. Indeed, according to this earlier account there was nothing irregular in the proceeding; he was hung in accordance with the ordinary rules of war. Beard and one of his band, named Porch, who had been captured with him, “were tried by a court-martial and both were forthwith hung. Such was the end of Captain Beard.”[^[25]] The two accounts vary somewhat, but there is no room for doubt as to their having reference to the same occurrence. In short, the “tradition” in the Drake family must have arisen between 1851 and 1884. There is no evidence, further than this statement found in Wheeler’s book, that “Lynch law” became a fixture in the English language because of a saying common in Franklin County, North Carolina, that any one who committed a grave offense “ought to be taken to Lynch Creek.”

Some evidence has recently been brought forward indicating that lynch-law may have derived its name from Lynch’s Creek, South Carolina.[^[26]] Some extracts from Boston newspapers in the year 1768, dated Charlestown, South Carolina, show the existence of “Regulators” at that time, and mention is made of a meeting that they were to have on Lynch’s Creek “where it was expected 1,200 would be assembled.” It is also evident that one of their methods of inflicting punishment was by whipping. One extract states that “the people called regulators have lately severely chastised one Lum, who is come to town; but we have not yet learnt the real cause of this severity to him.” The assertion has been made, therefore, that lynch-law derived its name from Lynch’s Creek, South Carolina, because at that place the practice of lynching began.

The practice which came to be known as “regulating” had its beginning earlier than 1768, however, and this beginning was not in the neighborhood of Lynch’s Creek. As early as 1766 it had begun in North Carolina and had extended from Granville County into Orange and Anson counties. Up to April, 1768, those who had taken part in these proceedings in North Carolina were designated by the appellation of the “Mob,” and seem to have adopted it themselves. But on April 4, 1768, at a general meeting, they dropped this name and formally adopted the name of “Regulators.”[^[27]] When this practice of “regulating” was started in South Carolina it was instituted by Thomas Woodward, Joseph Kirkland, and Barnaby Pope,[^[28]] who lived in the region between the Catawba and the Saluda Rivers, and not on the Pedee or Lynch’s Creek. Thus, a name—that of “Regulation,” not “Lynch Law,”—had been given this practice before it reached the Pedee section of the Province. If the conduct of the Regulators in South Carolina was to give the name to the practice of illegal punishment, it would have been called, not “Lynch Law,” but “Broad River Justice” or “Savannah Law.”[^[29]]

No evidence has yet been found which shows any connection between “Lynch Law” and “Regulation” at this time.[^[30]] Alexander Gregg, writing of the Regulator movement in the Carolinas, makes the statement: “They called themselves ‘Regulators’; and thus ‘Lynch law’ had its origin at this period.”[^[31]] Dr. R. W. Gibbes had written eight years earlier than Gregg: “The Regulation, an association of respectable planters, took the matter in hand, and enforced order by a system of Lynch law.”[^[32]] Neither of these writers, however, implies that the Regulation in South Carolina had anything to do with the origin of the term lynch-law. Joseph Johnson, in a book published in 1851, gave a brief account of the Regulators and Schofilites. He says, “the most respectable inhabitants united to inflict summary justice on the depredators and called themselves Regulators.”[^[33]] In this connection he does not refer to lynch-law at all. In another connection he writes: “This process, in what is now called ‘lynch law,’ was then designated ‘regulating,’ and the associates for this purpose were called ‘Regulators.’”[^[34]] No reference to lynch-law is to be found in Ramsay’s History of the Revolution in South Carolina which was published in 1785. Both of the accounts given by Wheeler of the occurrence at Lynch Creek, North Carolina, referred to above, imply that the term lynch-law was not in use any time previous to the Revolutionary War. As will appear later, the terms regulation and lynch-law are not found together until a much later date, and then they are not used in connection with events in the Carolinas.

Still another “Origin of Lynch’s law” is given in Niles’ Register for August 8, 1835.[^[35]] An anecdote is related of an occurrence “in Washington County, Pa., many years ago.” A poaching vagabond, long under suspicion, was finally detected and told to leave the neighborhood in twenty-four hours on penalty of prosecution. The poacher refused to comply and a party of five or six of his neighbors went to his home and “proceeded to try him in due form, choosing one of their number, a farmer named Lynch, to be judge.” The judge “decided that the poacher should be tied up and receive three hundred lashes, ‘well laid on,’ and then be given twenty-four hours to leave the place under penalty of receiving three hundred more if found after that time. The first part of the sentence was inflicted on the spot, with such good intent as to render its repetition unnecessary. The culprit made off as fast as his lacerated limbs would permit him.”

Nothing further is known of this farmer named Lynch, who acted as judge at this impromptu trial, and there is no reason for regarding this incident as in any way connected with the origin of lynch-law. It is merely an instance of recourse to summary procedure against an unpopular individual. It may or may not have been known at the time as punishment by Lynch’s law.

We now come to the explanation of the origin of the term which has been most frequently given and which was for years accepted without question. It is to the effect that lynch-law originally had reference to the kind of law administered by Charles Lynch, in Virginia, during the latter part of the Revolutionary War.

It is needless to recount here all the variations in the stories connecting the origin of lynch-law with the Lynch family in Virginia.[^[36]] In certain accounts Charles Lynch has been confused with his older brother, John Lynch, who remained a Quaker all his life and was the founder of Lynchburg, Virginia. Some accounts refer vaguely to a Virginia farmer, or planter, by the name of Lynch, whose vigorous methods of punishing wrongdoers gave rise to the term lynch-law.[^[37]] Haydn’s Dictionary of Dates (1860) apparently is responsible for the fiction that this mode of administering justice began about the end of the seventeenth century and derives its name from John Lynch, a farmer, who exercised it upon the fugitive slaves and criminals dwelling in the Dismal Swamp, North Carolina, when they committed outrages upon persons and property which the law could not promptly repress. This story is repeated in the editions of 1873 and 1885, and is also given in Harpers’ Popular Cyclopædia of the History of the United States,[^[38]] and seems to have become generally accepted in France.[^[39]] It is, however, wholly erroneous.

The movement for independence had from the first a great many opponents in the mountainous sections of Virginia, and there was a considerable number of Tories in Bedford County, where Charles Lynch lived.[^[40]] The unsettled condition of affairs also led many desperadoes to resort to this section of Virginia. Both Tories and desperadoes harassed the Continentals and plundered their property with impunity.[^[41]] The prices paid by both armies for horses made horse-stealing a lucrative practice, and the inefficiency of the judiciary made punishment practically out of the question. The county courts were merely examining courts in all such cases, and the single court for the final trial of felonies sat at Williamsburg, more than two hundred miles away. To take the prisoners thither, and the witnesses necessary to convict them, was next to impossible. Frequently the officers in charge of prisoners would be attacked by outlaws and forced to release their men, or be captured by British troops and themselves made prisoners.

It was under these circumstances that Colonel Lynch conferred with some of his neighbors as to what was best to be done. After deliberation they decided to take matters into their own hands, to punish lawlessness of every kind, and so far as possible restore peace and security to their community. For the purpose of attaining these ends they formed an organization with Mr. Lynch at the head. Under his direction suspected persons were arrested and brought to his house, where they were tried by a court composed of himself, as presiding justice, and his three neighbors, William Preston, Robert Adams, Jr., and James Callaway, sitting as associate justices.

The practice of this court was to have the accused brought face to face with his accusers, permit him to hear the testimony against himself, and to allow him to defend himself by calling witnesses in his behalf and by showing mitigating and extenuating circumstances. If acquitted, he was allowed to go, “often with apologies and reparation.” If convicted, he was sentenced to receive thirty-nine lashes on the bare back, and if he did not then shout “Liberty Forever,” to be hanged up by the thumbs until he did so. The execution of the sentence took place immediately upon conviction. The condemned was tied to a large walnut tree standing in Mr. Lynch’s yard and the stripes inflicted—with such vigor, it is said, that even the stoutest hearted Tory shouted for “Liberty” without necessitating a resort to further punishment.[^[42]]

The news of the invasion of Virginia by Cornwallis gave the Bedford Tories strong encouragement and a conspiracy was formed to overthrow the county organization and seize, for the use of Cornwallis on his arrival, the stores that Lynch had collected for Greene’s army in North Carolina. The conspirator’s plans, however, became known to Colonel Lynch, tradition says through one of their own number, and he had them all arrested. In the case of these conspirators, who were guilty of a treasonable offense, a more serious situation presented itself. Lynch himself was on the point of setting out with his regiment for the east to oppose the British under Benedict Arnold. It was not wise to inflict the usual punishment and then give the conspirators their freedom again; neither could he take them as prisoners along with him on the rapid march that he was forced to make. After careful deliberation, Colonel Lynch, as the presiding justice, sentenced them to terms of imprisonment varying from one to five years. Robert Cowan, who had formerly been a fellow justice on the county bench and who seems to have been the ringleader, was sentenced to a year’s imprisonment and a fine of £20,000.[^[43]]

This court, even though it be considered as still the regular county court, had clearly transcended its powers; the General Court alone had jurisdiction in cases of treason. After the war, therefore, the Tories who had suffered at his hands threatened to prosecute Colonel Lynch and his friends. To avoid lawsuits and as a means of finally settling the affair, Lynch brought the whole matter before the Virginia legislature. After a lengthy debate, which, according to Mr. Page, “aroused the interest of the whole country,” the following act was passed in October, 1782:

“An act to indemnify certain persons in suppressing a conspiracy against this state.

I. Whereas divers evil-disposed persons in the year one thousand seven hundred and eighty, formed a conspiracy and did actually attempt to levy war against the commonwealth; and it is represented to the present general assembly, that William Preston, Robert Adams, junior, James Callaway, and Charles Lynch, and other faithful citizens, aided by detachments of volunteers from different parts of the state, did, by timely and effectual measures, suppress such conspiracy: And whereas the measures taken for that purpose may not be strictly warranted by law, although justifiable from the imminence of the danger;

II. Be it therefore enacted, That the said William Preston, Robert Adams, junior, James Callaway and Charles Lynch, and all other persons whatsoever, concerned in suppressing the said conspiracy, or in advising, issuing, or executing any orders, or measures taken for that purpose, stand indemnified and exonerated of and from all pains, penalties, prosecutions, actions, suits, and damages, on account thereof. And that if any indictment, prosecution, action, or suit, shall be laid or brought against them, or any of them, for any act or thing done therein, the defendant, or defendants may plead in bar, or the general issue, and give this act in evidence.”[^[44]]

“The proceedings in Bedford, which the legislature thus pronounced to be illegal, but justifiable, were imitated in other parts of the State, and came to be known by the name of Lynch’s Law. In justice to Colonel Lynch, it should be remembered that his action was taken at a time when the State was in the throes of a hostile invasion. The General Court, before which the conspirators should have been tried, was temporarily dispersed. Thomas Jefferson, then the governor of the State, was proving himself peculiarly incompetent to fill the position. The whole executive department was in a state of partial paralysis. It was, therefore, no spirit of insubordination or disregard of the law that induced Lynch to act as he did. There were few men living more inclined than this simple Quaker farmer to render due respect in word and deed to the established authorities.”[^[45]]

The old walnut tree on which lynch-law is said to have been first administered was still standing, in 1900,[^[46]] on the lawn of the Lynch homestead, two miles from the village of Lynch Station on the Southern Railway. A part of it was dead but the rest was still vigorous and bore its annual crop of nuts. The death penalty, however, was never inflicted under its shadow. Some say that the Quaker proclivities of “Judge Lynch”[^[47]] prevented him from passing sentence of death; others say that it was due to his native sense of humanity. Mr. Page presents some evidence showing that “both custom and sentiment were violently opposed to visiting capital punishment upon the detected Tory conspirators.”[^[48]]

In the determination of origins it is frequently impossible to obtain direct evidence bearing on the point in question. In this case there is direct evidence for connecting the name of Charles Lynch with the origin of “lynch-law.”[^[49]] In 1817 Judge Spencer Roane wrote in a letter to William Wirt: “In the year 1792 there were many suits on the south side of James River, for inflicting Lynch’s law.” Mr. Wirt adds, in a note explanatory of the words “Lynch’s law,” “Thirty-nine lashes, inflicted without trial or law, on mere suspicion of guilt, which could not be regularly proven. This lawless practice, which, sometimes by the order of a magistrate, sometimes without, prevailed extensively in the upper counties on James River, took its name from the gentleman who set the first example of it.”[^[50]] Though Wirt does not mention Charles Lynch by name, he does say that the lawless practice “prevailed extensively in the upper counties on James River,” and Charles Lynch was for years closely identified with the interests of Campbell[^[51]] and Bedford counties—two of the upper counties on the James River.

Henry Howe, in his “Historical Collections of Virginia,” in a section entitled “Lynch Law,” says: “At that time (the time of the Revolution), this country (Campbell County and vicinity) was very thinly settled, and infested by a lawless band of tories and desperadoes. The necessity of the case involved desperate measures, and Col. Lynch, then a leading whig, apprehended and had them punished, without any superfluous ceremony. Hence the origin of the term ‘Lynch Law.’ This practice of Lynching continued years after the war, and was applied to many cases of mere suspicion of guilt, which could not be regularly proven.”[^[52]]

In a book written a few years later than the above, Howe has the following to say on the same subject: “The Lynch Law, as it is termed, originated in Virginia at the time of the American Revolution, and was first adopted by Colonel Lynch against a lawless band of tories and desperadoes, who infested the country at the base of the Blue Ridge. This plan was afterwards followed in the west, and its operation was salutary in ridding the country of miscreants whom the law was not strong enough to punish. The tribunal of Squire Birch, as the person who personated the judge was called, was established under a tree in the woods; the culprit being usually found guilty was tied to a tree and lashed without mercy, and then expelled from the country. In general, ‘the regulators’ only exercised this law upon the most base and vile characters.”[^[53]]

This account given by Howe cannot be considered as wholly independent of the influence of Wirt. In his “Historical Collections of Virginia,” Howe quotes from Wirt’s book in substantiation of his statement that the “practice of Lynching continued years after the war.” On the other hand, however, the fact that he repeated his assertions in regard to the origin of “Lynch Law” in emphatic terms in his later book, and therewith described the operation of “Lynch Law” in the west, is strong evidence that he had other sources of information than Wirt’s book on the matter.[^[54]]

An account, entirely independent of any influence from either Wirt or Howe, is found in “Colonel William Martin’s Narrative of Frontier Life,” prepared about 1842 for Dr. Lyman C. Draper and now in the Draper MS. Collections in the Wisconsin State Historical Society Library. It is as follows:

“In those times there were a great many bad men settled along the frontiers who by their thefts annoyed the country greatly. Insomuch that the people entered into combinations to suppress them and formed companies called regulators. They formed in military style, with officers, etc.

“They also organized a court and appointed some three or four of their aged, discreet men judges to try criminal causes, award punishment, etc. The company would bring up suspected fellows and the court would try them. But they seldom extended punishment beyond whipping and driving them from the country, sometimes making them pay for property stolen, when they had the means.

“This method of breaking up combinations of rogues was first set on foot by Col. Charles Lynch, of Bedford county, Va., where I was raised. He and my father were acquainted. (The same man for whom Lynchburg was named.) This plan was started some seventy or eighty years ago.[^[55]]

“The measure seemed to be called for from the situation of the country at the time. And it has been practiced more or less in the settling of new countries from that time until within a few years past, since the laws operate with more efficiency. The authorities generally connived at it from the necessity of the case. And perhaps nowhere has it been more common than in Tennessee. Lynch at first punished with thirty-nine stripes, taking, as I suppose, Moses for his model. And this was for a great while called Lynch’s law, meaning all unlawful whipping. Any of the old men now in the South and West can tell the meaning of Lynch’s law.

“Lynch, however, has been improved upon and more severe punishments sometimes inflicted. I have given this feature of Western history from the presumption that you may not have known it.”[^[56]]

Such is the strongest evidence bearing directly on the point under consideration. It is true that Martin’s account, as well as Howe’s, was not written until more than forty years after the death of Charles Lynch. It is true, also, that many stories have referred to a man by the name of Lynch in Virginia, sometimes specifically mentioning Charles Lynch or Colonel Lynch, at other times naming some other Lynch.[^[57]] But it is likewise true that it is in this way that tradition has been persistent in attributing the origin of lynch-law to a member of the Lynch family in Virginia. Furthermore, since no evidence whatsoever has been found for tracing the beginning of lynch-law to any other member of that family, it may be said that tradition has thus persistently pointed to Colonel Charles Lynch as the first lyncher. Traditions are in general far from trustworthy, but, on the other hand, they usually have some basis in fact. In this case Wirt’s statement gives, at the very least, a presumption in favor of the tradition, which facts to the contrary only can remove.[^[58]]

The earliest use of the expression “Lynch’s law” that is known at the present time is this one found in Wirt’s book which was published in 1818. Judge Roane wrote that there were many suits in the year 1792 for inflicting Lynch’s law. From his statement it does not follow that the term Lynch’s law was in use in the year 1792. It does follow, however, that the term was at least a localism in Virginia in the year 1817.

Other terms were also in use for summary and illegal punishment in the period 1780–1830. The following appeared in the Salem Gazette of October 2, 1812: “People who clamored violently against Mr. Adams’ ‘gag law’ in ‘99, see nothing to disapprove in the ‘club law’ enacted at Baltimore, as a substitute for it.—Messenger.”[^[59]]

In the year 1819 two passages entitled “Summary justice” appeared in Niles’ Register. They read as follows: “Summary justice.—A tin pedlar at Easton, Pa. was discovered to have two negro children in his cart. On examination, one of the little sufferers was found to have been crammed in such a manner, that his ear was rubbed off! The people indignantly rose and cut off the fellow’s ear. I am no advocate for the violation of the laws, but from my heart I can’t feel sorry for him.—Village Recorder.”[^[60]] “Summary justice. After a late extensive fire which happened at Charleston, a fellow was found secreting some goods that had been stolen during the calamity. The alternative was offered to him, whether he would be prosecuted at law, or suffer punishment on the spot; he chose the latter, was tied to a tree, received fifty lashes well laid on, and got off clear, having restored the stolen goods.”[^[61]]

In the year 1822 Niles’ Register contained the following: “Riot. A parcel of Irish laborers employed in the navy yard at Charlestown, lately attempted to rescue some property of one of their fellows out of the hands of the sheriff. The affray was a severe one—but ‘club law’ did not prevail. Captain Hull exposed himself considerably to quell the riot.”[^[62]]

Writing under the date of November 29, 1819, W. Faux describes an instance of the use of summary methods against an unpopular individual in Princeton, Indiana, and says: “The people of the place deputed four persons to inform him, that unless he quitted the town and the state immediately, he should receive Lynch’s law, that is, whipping in the woods.”[^[63]] Under the date of December 16, 1819, referring to “the Rowdies of Kentucky,” the same author writes: “These regulators are self-appointed ministers of justice, to punish or destroy those whom the law cannot touch.”[^[64]]

On July 17, 1824, Niles’ Register published the information that several murders had been committed in Kentucky “by persons who called themselves ‘regulators.’”[^[65]]

W. N. Blane published in London in 1824 an account of his travels in America and described “the practice of Regulating” that then existed in parts of Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois. He tells how the bands of Regulators were organized and their methods of inflicting punishment, but does not use the term lynch or lynch-law.[^[66]]

Judge James Hall, in his “Letters from the West,” published in 1828, uses the following words: “No commentator has taken any notice of Linch’s Law, which was once the lex loci of the frontier. The citizens formed themselves into a ‘regulating company.’ Sometimes the sufferers resorted to courts of justice for remuneration, and there have been instances of heavy damages being recovered of the regulators.”[^[67]]

It thus appears that summary and illegal methods of punishing offenders were known under various names between 1780 and 1830. The term Lynch’s law was not exclusively applied to such practices. The evidence obtainable at present, therefore, indicates that at some time between 1780 and 1817 the term Lynch’s law became a localism in Virginia in the region of the James River. By the year 1819 it had spread as far west as Indiana, and by 1828 it had become still more widely used but had not superseded all other terms for the popular administration of justice.

To the question why or how Lynch’s name came to be attached to this practice, there is at present no conclusive answer. It may be said that Colonel Charles Lynch was a prominent man in his community, and when he adopted extra-legal methods of punishing public offenders during the troublous times of the Revolution, he no doubt attracted considerable attention to himself, and thus his name became identified with such practices. It may also be said that the uniqueness of some of his punishments, such as compelling the Tories to shout “Liberty forever,” probably brought his name into prominence with the practice. The fact remains, however, that no contemporaneous evidence has yet been discovered which will explain why Lynch’s name came to be applied to the practice. We know definitely only that the form of the expression was at first Lynch’s law, and that tradition, supported by all the evidence that we have, ascribes its origin to Colonel Lynch. Equally certain it is that Lynch’s law originally signified a whipping for reformatory purposes with more or less disregard for its legality, and was so used at a time subsequent to the American Revolution and not before that time. Evidently the term originated in Virginia, and as the tide of emigration moved westward it was carried along the frontier where conditions were such as to encourage the use of extra-legal methods against public offenders.

This becomes more evident when the early history of the popular administration of punishment in the United States is taken into account. A consideration of early lynch-law, or lynch-law down to 1830, constitutes the following chapter.

CHAPTER III
Early Lynch-law

In the preceding chapter we have been concerned with the origin of the term by which the practice has come to be known. In this chapter we are concerned with the practice itself. Something of the nature of lynch-law procedure during the Revolutionary epoch has already become apparent, but a more detailed investigation into the early history of such procedure will reveal other characteristics.

It has been said by some that the first instance of the operation of lynch-law in America was in December, 1763, at Paxtang (now Harrisburg), Pennsylvania. Indian scalping parties had been laying waste the settlements with relentless fury, and the appeals of the settlers to the Quaker government for help had been treated with contempt. Exasperated at the policy pursued by the Quakers toward the Indians, the Scotch-Irish who had settled in Lancaster and Cumberland counties formed several companies of Rangers to patrol the borders and give protection. “About the middle of December, word was brought to the settlers living at Paxtang, that an Indian known to have committed depredations in the vicinity had been traced to Conestoga. Matthew Smith, a man of influence and popularity among his associates, called together a number of the Paxtang Rangers, and led them to the Conestoga settlement. One of the men saw an Indian issuing from a house, and thought that he recognized him as the savage who had killed his own mother. Firing his rifle, he brought the Indian down. Then, with a loud shout, the furious mob rushed into the cabins, and killed all the Indians whom they found there, some six in number. Fourteen of the Conestogas managed to escape, and, fleeing to Lancaster, were given a place of refuge in the county jail. While there, word was again carried to the Paxtang men that an Indian, known to have murdered the relatives of one of their number, was among those who had received the protection of the Lancaster magistrates. This again aroused a feeling of rage and resentment amongst the Rangers. On December 27, some fifty of them, under the leadership of Lazarus Stewart, marched to Lancaster, broke open the jail, and with the fury of a mob massacred every Indian contained therein, man, woman, and child.”[^[68]]

In connection with this incident it has been suggested that the Scotch-Irish are to blame for the introduction of lynch-law in America; that they brought with them traditions of the administration of summary justice in Mediæval Scotland, and, amidst the perils of the frontier, quickly resorted to the ancient methods of suppressing violence and depredation. The case of the Regulators in the Carolinas is also cited as an instance of the Scotch-Irish backwoodsmen taking the administration of justice into their own hands, when their rulers failed to provide for them a safe government. It is said that this same self-reliant spirit is exhibited in the “family feuds of Kentucky, which for the most part seem peculiar to families bearing Scottish names.”[^[69]]

Undoubtedly the Scotch-Irish played an important part in the early history of lynch-law in the United States. But it was rather because they were the vanguard of a new civilization than because they were of Scottish descent that they played this important part. Environmental influences of old had made them pioneers. Before coming to this country they had behind them a century of frontier life. Their experience in Ireland, where the soil was poor and where by reason of the difference in religion they lived apart from, and often in open hostility to, the natives, led them to be self-reliant and self-assertive. Their training had thus made them sturdy frontiersmen, quite the sort to subdue the wilderness and become the founders of a new civilization. Amid the vicissitudes incident to settlement in a virgin territory it was often necessary, as a matter of self-preservation, to use prompt and decisive measures against depredators. That the early settlers did not always observe “due process of law” can scarcely be urged as deserving condemnation. They merely adopted the means which seemed to them the most expedient under the existing circumstances.

The adoption of summary measures by Scotch-Irish Rangers in Pennsylvania in 1763, however, does not furnish an isolated instance, nor indeed the earliest instance, of the use of such measures against Indians. The provincial governments were not infrequently called upon to take note of such occurrences in order to preserve amicable relations with the various Indian tribes, and considerable difficulty was commonly experienced when the attempt was made to bring to justice white men who had murdered Indians.

In the Province of New Hampshire in June, 1753, two white men killed two Indians who were accused of having carried off two negroes the preceding year. After several months the men were arrested, indicted for the murder, placed in the jail at Portsmouth, and their trial set for March 21, 1754. The night previous to the day appointed for the trial a party of their neighbors appeared in Portsmouth, broke open the jail and set them free. “This outrage produced great excitement in the community—some endeavoring to discover and retake the murderers, and others favoring their escape. Both the murder and the rescue, however, were generally justified in the community. And, although rewards were offered by Governor Wentworth for the apprehension of Bowen and Morrill, yet in a short time they went openly about their business, without fear of molestation, and the men engaged in breaking the jail at Portsmouth, though well known, were never called to account, but, on the contrary, were considered as having performed a most meritorious act. In fact, some of the most substantial men in the country were engaged in the rescue,—by act or advice,—and the Government could not have made an arrest had they made the attempt. Presents were afterwards made to the relatives of these Indians by the Government of New Hampshire, and thus the ‘blood was wiped away’ to the satisfaction of the Indians.”[^[70]]

In May, 1795, in the county of St. Clair in the Illinois country, two Indians were murdered while they were in the custody of the sheriff who was conveying them to jail upon warrant. An effort was made to bring the murderers to justice, but although “the most positive evidence was adduced to the grand jury against two persons, inhabitants of the county of St. Clair, that the murder was committed by them,” no bill of indictment was found against them. Three attempts were made to secure an indictment from the grand jury, all of which were unsuccessful. Referring to another instance where Indians were murdered by whites, which occurred at about the same time but the circumstances of which were “not only not blameable but laudable,” Governor St. Clair wrote, in his report to the Secretary of State, “had the affair been ever so criminal in its nature, it would have been, I believe, impossible to have brought the actors to punishment.”[^[71]]

In several respects there is a resemblance between the means which were employed by the early settlers for protection against Indian depredators and the methods which have been adopted in more recent years for the punishment of public offenders. In their purpose, in their organization, and in their summary infliction of the death penalty, the Rangers were not unlike the vigilance committees which have been closely identified with the later operation of the frontier type of lynch-law. In breaking open jails, and, as in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in massacring inmates against whom there was a strong popular resentment, or, as in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in liberating prisoners whose criminal conduct was generally justified in the community, there appear some of the distinctive features which have marked the later operation of lynch-law in well settled communities. It is also probably true that the antagonistic relations which existed between the whites and the Indians during the early history of this country directly encouraged a popular disregard of all legal procedure on the part of the whites when dealing with Indians. But the use of summary measures against Indians and the attendant occurrences can scarcely be said to mark the beginning of the operation of lynch-law in America. The meaning which was at first attached to the term Lynch’s law and the nature of the practice which first came to be known by that name preclude such a beginning for the practice. Lynch’s law originally corresponded much more closely to what was known as “regulating,” a practice which was early adopted not only where the frontier type of society existed, but also where there was the stable and better organized form of society characteristic of older communities.

The following appeared in the New York Gazette of December 18, 1752: “We hear from Elizabeth-Town, that an odd Sect of People have lately appeared there, who go under the Denomination of Regulars: there are near a Dozen of them, who dress themselves in Women’s Cloaths, and painting their Faces, go in the Evening to the Houses of such as are reported to have beat their Wives: where one of them entering in first, seizes the Delinquent, whilst the rest follow, strip him, turn up his Posteriors and flog him with Rods most severely, crying out all the Time, Wo to the Men that beat their Wives:—It seems that several Persons in that Borough, (and ’tis said some very deservedly) have undergone the Discipline, to the no small Terror of others, who are in any Way conscious of deserving the same Punishment. ’Twere to be wish’d, that in order for the more equal Distribution of Justice, there wou’d arise another Sect, under the Title of Regulatrixes who should dress themselves in Mens Cloathes, and flagilate the Posteriors of the Scolds, Termagants, &c., &c.”[^[72]]

In a letter dated December 7, 1753, “Prudence Goodwife,” after relating how her husband beats and maltreats her, writes as follows: “My Case being happily nois’d abroad, induced several generous young Men to discipline him. These young Persons do stile, or are stiled, Regulators: and so they are with Propriety: for they have regulated my dear Husband, and the rest of the bad Ones hereabouts, that they are afraid of using such Barbarity; and I must with Pleasure acknowledge, that since my Husband has felt what whipping was, he has entirely left off whipping me, and promises faithfully he will never begin again. Tho’ there are some that are afraid of whipping their Wives, for fear of dancing the same Jigg; yet I understand, they are not afraid of making Application, in order to have those dear Regulators indicted; and if they should it might discourage them for the future, to appear to the Assistance of the Innocent and Helpless; and then poor Wives who have the unhappiness to be lockt in Wedlock with bad Husbands, take care of your tender Hides; for you may depend upon being bang’d without Mercy.”[^[73]]

These may be regarded as sporadic cases of “regulating,” as illustrations of the kind of “regulating” which is found in a stable and well organized form of society. They are instances of the infliction of summary corporal punishment upon individuals for whose punishment under the law little tangible evidence can be adduced, and the nature of whose offense is such that legal penalties are popularly believed to be inapplicable.

In North Carolina, from 1765 to 1771, under frontier conditions combined with political dissension, “regulation” assumed a well-organized form and gained considerable strength.[^[74]] The movement was inaugurated in the north-central part of the province to resist what was considered oppressive exactions laid by government officials. Specifically, the grievances were excessive taxes, dishonest sheriffs, and extortionate fees. A meeting “to inquire into the abuse of power and take proper measures for amendment” was held at Maddock’s mill on October 10, 1766, and several resolutions were drafted and adopted.[^[75]] Nothing was done by the authorities to alleviate the grievances, however, and a general meeting was held on April 4, 1768, at which the organization into a body of Regulators was perfected. An agreement was drawn up and the members bound themselves by oath to its observance. This agreement reads as follows:

“We the subscribers do voluntarily agree to form ourselves into an association, to assemble ourselves for conference for regulating public grievances and abuses of power, in the following particulars, with others of the like nature that may occur.

“1. That we will pay no more taxes until we are satisfied they are agreeable to law, and applied to the purposes therein mentioned; unless we cannot help it, or are forced.

“2. That we will pay no officer any more fees than the law allows, unless we are obliged to it; and then to show our dislike, and bear an open testimony against it.

“3. That we will attend our meetings of conference as often as we conveniently can, and is necessary, in order to consult our representatives on the amendment of such laws as may be found grievous or unnecessary; and to choose more suitable men than we have done heretofore for burgesses and vestrymen; and to petition the houses of assembly, governor, council, king and parliament, &c., for redress in such grievances as in the course of the undertaking may occur; and to inform one another, learn, know, and enjoy all the privileges and liberties that are allowed and were settled on us by our worthy ancestors, the founders of our present constitution, in order to preserve it on its ancient foundation, that it may stand firm and unshaken.

“4. That we will contribute to collections for defraying necessary expenses attending the work, according to our abilities.

“5. That in case of difference in judgment, we will submit to the judgment of the majority of our body.

“To all which we solemnly swear, or being a quaker, or otherwise scrupulous in conscience of the common oath, do solemnly affirm, that we will stand true and faithful to this cause, till we bring things to a true regulation, according to the true intent and meaning hereof, in the judgment of the majority of us.”[^[76]]

As this agreement indicates, this organization was primarily for the purpose of “regulating public grievances and abuses of power,” not for the purpose of bringing to justice public offenders beyond the reach of law, such as horse thieves and desperadoes. Their methods of procedure, however, closely resembled those that have been adopted by other bands of Regulators for the purpose of meting out justice to frontier criminals. Their favorite method seems to have been to administer whippings. In an intercepted letter from Rednap Howell to James Hunter, both leading Regulators, the following passage occurs: “I give out here that the Regulators are determined to whip every one who goes to law, or will not pay his just debts, or will not agree to leave his cause to men, where disputed. That they will choose representatives, but not send them to be put in jail. In short, to stand in defence; and as to thieves, to drive them out of the country.”[^[77]] From time to time, however, serious disturbances and riots occurred. In September, 1770, about 150 Regulators attacked the superior court which was in session at Hillsboro, severely whipped several men who had incurred their enmity, and destroyed considerable property. New laws were hurriedly enacted by the legislature and the leaders of the riots were arrested, but the Regulators were not easily subdued or conciliated. In 1771 Governor Tryon called out the militia, and a battle took place between the Regulators and the militia, in which the Regulators were utterly defeated and their organization broken up. Each side, however, had several men killed and many wounded.

A similar attempt at “regulating” was made in South Carolina at about the same time.[^[78]] The “Back Country,” as it was called, had become infested with robbers and brigands. Prior to the year 1769 the only court of criminal and civil jurisdiction in the Province—except the courts of Justices of the Peace, which had jurisdiction in civil causes as high as twenty pounds current money—“was holden in Charlestown.” This gave practical immunity from punishment to those who were lawlessly inclined in the distant parts of the Province. As early as the year 1752, the inhabitants along the Pedee River near the mouth of Lynche’s Creek petitioned the Upper House of Assembly for the creation of a new county in which twelve or more Justices should be appointed who should have a general jurisdiction over both civil and criminal causes. This and other petitions which were presented in the following years from different parts of the Province received scant attention on the part of the Provincial Government. For several years the Government did not seem to comprehend the real nature of the evils, or the remedies necessary to be applied. Consequently, there was a very decided opposition between the Regulators and the Government.

The earliest account we have of the operations of the organization which became known as the Regulators is in the South Carolina Gazette of May 26, 1767, in an extract from a letter from Pine Tree Hill (Camden), dated May 14, 1767. It is as follows: “On the 6th inst., a number of armed men, being in search of Horse Stealers, robbers, &c., discovered a parcel of them in camp on Broad River, where an engagement soon ensued, and the Thieves were put to flight; and though none of them were taken, it is reasonable to suppose, from the quantity of blood on the ground, that some of them were killed. They left behind them ten horses, thirteen saddles, some guns, &c.”[^[79]]

The South Carolina Gazette of July 27–August 3, in the same year, made this statement: “The gang of Villains from Virginia and North Carolina, who have for some years past, in small parties, under particular leaders, infested the back parts of the Southern Provinces, stealing horses from one, and selling them in the next, notwithstanding the late public examples made of several of them, we hear are more formidable than ever as to numbers, and more audacious and cruel in their thefts and outrages. ’Tis reported that they consist of more than 200, form a chain of communication with each other, and have places of general meeting; where (in imitation of Councils of War) they form plans of operation and defence, and (alluding to their secrecy and fidelity to each other) call their places Free Mason Lodges. Instances of their cruelty to the people in the back settlements, where they rob or otherwise abuse, are so numerous and shocking, that a narrative of them would fill a whole Gazette, and every reader with horror. They at present range in the Forks between Broad, Saludy, and Savannah Rivers. Two of the gang were hanged last week at Savannah, viz., Lundy Hart and Obadiah Greenage. Two others, James Ferguson and Jesse Hambersam, were killed when these were taken.”[^[80]]

Apparently, it was for the purpose of breaking up and bringing to justice this “gang of Villains” that Thomas Woodward, Joseph Kirkland, and Barnaby Pope “instituted the Regulation.”[^[81]] At any rate, an organization had been formed in the region surrounding the Broad River, and, as early as 1767, the members of this organization had come to be known as Regulators. In an address to both Houses of Assembly, November 5, 1767, the Governor of the Province, referring to the “unhappy situation in the Back Parts of this Country,” made the following statement: “The means to suppress those licentious spirits that have so lately appeared in the distant parts of the Province, and, assuming the name of Regulators, have, in defiance of Government, and to the subversion of good order, illegally tried, condemned, and punished many persons, require an attentive deliberation.”[^[82]]

The courts that were asked for by the inhabitants were not established, however, and the “regulation” continued. The following is taken from the South Carolina Gazette of June 13, 1768: “It seems hardly probable that the disturbances in our back settlements will entirely subside, notwithstanding all the prudent steps that have been taken, or can be taken, by the Government to suppress them, until the late Act of the General Assembly of this Province for establishing Circuit Courts,[^[83]] takes effect: for we daily hear of new irregularities committed by the people called Regulators, who, seeming to despair of rooting out those desperate villains that remain among them any other way, still take upon themselves to punish such offenders as they can catch. We hear, that within this month, one Watts and one Distoe, have received 500 lashes each by their direction; and that an infamous woman has also received corporal punishment. We hear, also, that one John Bowles has lately lost his life in attempting to take Mr. Woodward, one of the leaders of the people called Regulators. According to our account, Woodward, refusing to surrender himself, Bowles fired at, and would have killed him, but the ball struck the barrel of a gun which he held across his breast, upon which, some people in company with Woodward, fired, and killed Bowles.”[^[84]]

On July 25, the following intelligence was given in the South Carolina Gazette: “The last accounts from the Back Settlements say, that the People called the Regulators were to have a meeting at Lynche’s Creek, on last Friday, where it was expected 1200 would be assembled. The occasion of this meeting is said to be, a Party of them lately having been roughly used by a Gang of Banditti, consisting of Mulattoes, Free Negroes, &c., notorious Harborers of runaway slaves, at a place called Thompson’s Creek, whom they ordered to remove. It is added, they anxiously wait to hear the fate of the Act for establishing Circuit Courts in this Province, sent home for the Royal approbation, which, if it obtains, will restore good order in those parts.”[^[85]]

The Governor of the Province, not understanding the situation in the remote settlements, made an attempt to enforce order and compel obedience to law by sending an officer with full discretionary power against the Regulators. The course of events is described by Ramsay in the following words: “The extreme difficulty of bringing criminals from the remote settlements to a legal condemnation had induced a number of men, who called themselves regulators, to take the law into their hands. They, by their own authority, inflicted corporal punishment on sundry persons without any regular condemnation. To remedy abuses of this kind, lord Charles Greville Montague, then governor of the province, advanced to the rank of colonel a man of low character, of the name of Scovil, and employed him to enforce regular law among these self-constituted regulators. In execution of his commission he adopted severe measures, which involved multitudes in great distress.”[^[86]] This Colonel Scovil (or Schovel—his name is written in various ways), instead of redressing the grievances on both sides, armed the depredators and paraded them for battle. Before a battle took place, however, between the Regulators and the Schofilites, as they were known from the name of their leader, wiser counsels prevailed and both parties sent delegates to the Governor asking for his intervention.[^[87]] In this way the disastrous results of the conflict in North Carolina between the Regulators and the Government were avoided in South Carolina.

Finally, the necessity for courts in the interior of the Province could no longer be denied. The Royal approval was given, and in the year 1769 seven new courts, with suitable jails and court-houses, were established in different parts of the interior.[^[88]] This marked the end of the Regulation movement in South Carolina. The condition of affairs which had called it into existence had ceased to prevail and the practice of “regulating” was, therefore, discontinued.

A single quotation will conclude all that need here be said in regard to the Regulation in South Carolina. It is an “extract of a letter from a Gentleman at Pedee, to his friend in Town,” and appeared in the South Carolina Gazette, September 2, 1768. It reads as follows:

“I wish you would inform me what is generally thought in town of the Regulators, who now reign uncontrolled in all the remote parts of the Province. In June, they held a Congress at the Congarees, where a vast number of people assembled; several of the principal settlers on this River, men of property, among them. When these returned, they requested the most respectable people in these parts to meet on a certain day; they did so, and, upon the report made to them, they unanimously adopted the Plan of Regulation, and are now executing it with indefatigable ardour. Their resolution is, in general, effectually to deny the Jurisdiction of the Courts holden in Charlestown over those parts of the Province that ought to be by right out of it; to purge, by methods of their own, the country of all idle persons, all that have not a visible way of getting an honest living, all that are suspected or known to be guilty of malpractices, and also to prevent the service of any writ or warrant from Charlestown; so that a Deputy Marshal would be handled by them with severity. Against those they breathe high indignation. They are every day, excepting Sundays, employed in this Regulation work, as they term it. They have brought many under the lash, and are scourging and banishing the baser sort of people, such as the above, with universal diligence.

“Such as they think reclaimable, they are a little tender of; and those they task, giving them so many acres to tend in so many days, on pain of flagellation, that they may not be reduced to poverty, and by that be led to steal from their industrious neighbours. This course, they say, they are determined to pursue, with every other effectual measure, that will answer their purpose; and that they will defend themselves in it to the last extremity. They hold correspondence with others in the same plan, and are engaged to abide by and support each other whenever they may be called upon for that purpose. This, it seems, they are to continue till County Courts, as well as Circuit Courts, shall be rightly established, that they may enjoy, by that means, the rights and privileges of British subjects, which they think themselves now deprived of. They imagine that, as the Jurisdiction of the Courts in Charlestown extends all over the Province, Government is not a protection, but an oppression; that they are not tried there by their Peers; and that the accumulated expenses of a law-suit, or prosecution, puts justice out of their power; by which means the honest man is not secure in his property, and villainy becomes rampant with impunity.

“Indeed, the grievances they complain of are many, and the spirit of Regulation rises higher and spreads wider every day. What this is to end in, I know not; but thus matters are situated; an account of which, I imagine, is not unacceptable, though perhaps disagreeable to hear.”[^[89]]

This letter may be regarded, upon the whole, as an impartial account of the Regulation movement in South Carolina.[^[90]] It exhibits the character of those who were taking the lead in the matter, and indicates the objects which they proposed to accomplish. It also indicates that their usual procedure was to whip and banish all persons whom they considered inimical to the interests of the community. In this respect the Regulation movement in South Carolina closely resembled the Regulation movement in North Carolina. It may be said, therefore, that lynch-law was in operation at this time in the Carolinas, though not known by that name. The practice of administering corporal punishment for reformatory or corrective purposes, the practice of “regulating” public offenders and public grievances, is the essence of lynch-law procedure.

As events shaped themselves for the outbreak of the Revolution in 1775, conditions became such as to encourage the frequent use of summary methods of redressing grievances in all of the colonies. The increasing dissatisfaction among the colonists with the way they were being governed by the mother country, the obnoxious Stamp Act and other measures which they thought to be unjustly imposed upon them, rendered recourse to summary procedure not only easy but popularly justifiable.[^[91]] It was a time of excitement when neighbor looked upon neighbor with suspicion and the slightest offense was deemed worthy of severe punishment. Social conditions were unsettled; the civil authorities were fast losing the respect and support of the people in the community; threats and taunts, satire and insult, were prevalent.[^[92]] Under such conditions it is not strange that summary procedure came to be in vogue from Maine to Georgia.

Furthermore, during the entire period of the Revolutionary War not only were the usual unsettled conditions incident to a war prevailing, but, in addition, there was disaffection and disagreement among the colonists themselves. Almost every community had its Tories who frequently sought, openly or secretly, to further the Royal cause and injure the American cause. In return, the American sympathizers often adopted retaliatory measures against the Tories. In such cases it was hopeless to appeal to the civil or the judicial powers for they were badly disorganized. Not infrequently conditions were such as to preclude action under martial law, and thus the only recourse possible was the popular administration of justice in the form of summary procedure of one sort or another.

Particularly characteristic of the Revolutionary period was the practice of tarring and feathering.[^[93]] It has been said that “this singular punishment” was begun in America by British troops who tarred and feathered an inhabitant of the town of Billerica, Massachusetts, on March 9, 1775.[^[94]] But a number of instances may be cited showing that this punishment had been administered in more than one of the colonies several years earlier. It is probable that many of the early immigrants knew of this manner of punishment before they left their native shores[^[95]]; at any rate, they did not wait until 1775 for the British troops to set them an example.[^[96]]

On September 7, 1768, at Salem, Massachusetts, a “Custom-House Waiter” informed an officer of the customs that some measures had been taken on board a vessel, in the harbor to elude the payment of certain duties. This “engaged the Attention of a Number of the Inhabitants. Between the Hours of Ten and Eleven, A.M. he was taken from one of the Wharves, and conducted to the common, where his Head, Body and Limbs were covered with warm Tar, and then a large Quantity of Feathers were applied to all Parts. The poor Waiter was then exalted to a Seat on the Front of a Cart, and in this Manner led into the Main Street, where a Paper, with the Word Informer thereon, in large Letters, was affixed to his Breast, and another Paper, with the same Word, to his Back. This Scene drew together, within a few Minutes, several Hundred People, who proceeded, with Huzzas and loud Acclamations, through the Town.”[^[97]]

On Saturday, September 10, 1768, “two Informers, an Englishman and a Frenchman, were taken up by the Populace at Newbury-Port, (Mass.) who tarred them & feathered them; but being late they were hand-cuffed and put into custody until the Sabbath was over:—Accordingly on Monday Morning, they were again tarred and rolled in Feathers, then fixed in a Cart with Halters, and carried thro’ the principal Streets of the Town.”[^[98]] Upon his release the Englishman, Joshua Vickery by name, went before a justice of the peace and took oath “that he never did directly or indirectly make or give any Information to any Officer of the Customs nor to any other Person either against Capt. John Emmery, or any other Man whatever; that he was no ways concerned with Francis Magno in his Information, nor ever wrote one Line for the said Francis, on that Account.”[^[99]] These statements were corroborated by the Frenchman and it was shown that the only ground for suspicion against Vickery was the fact that he had been in the company of the Frenchman on the day that the “Information” was given.

On the evening of May 18, 1769, at Providence, Rhode Island, Jesse Saville, “a Tidesman belonging to the Custom-House” who was accused of “Informing,” was seized by a number of people, stripped naked, covered from head to foot with turpentine and feathers and severely beaten. “For the better bringing to Justice and condign Punishment the Authors of this daring & atrocious Outrage, the Commissioners of His Majesty’s Customs” offered a reward of fifty pounds sterling for their discovery and conviction.[^[100]]

A similar case of tarring and feathering, the offender being “a Person who had informed against a Merchant, respecting a Vessel then in the West-Indies,” occurred in New Haven, Connecticut, in September, 1769.[^[101]]

In New York, in October, 1769, “one Kelly, an Oysterman, Mitchner, a Tavern-keeper, and one or two more, having, it is said, made an Information to the Custom-House Officers, which occasioned the Seizure of a few Casks of Wine belonging to the Mate of a Vessel, and was, it is said, the whole Saving he had made of three Years Wages: The Populace being greatly incensed against the Informers, after several Days Search, found and seized them, placed and tied them in Carts, and carried them thro’ great Part of the City, attended with many Thousand People, who huzza’d, insulted and treated them with the utmost Indignity, often besmearing their Faces and Clothes with Tar, and sprinkling them with Feathers.... The Magistrates interposed, but were for some Time unable to stop the Cavalcade, till the Populace had in some Measure satiated their Resentment.”[^[102]]

The Boston Chronicle for October 26–30, 1769,[^[103]] contained the following under the heading of “Boston”: “Last Saturday evening, a person suspected to be an informer, was stripped naked, put in a Cart, where he was first tarred, then feathered, and in this condition, carried through the principal streets of the town, followed by a great concourse of people.”

During the year 1770 there was much popular feeling against merchants who imported goods contrary to the non-importation agreement. Such importers were threatened with many dire punishments including tar and feathers, and in several instances the threatened punishments were administered.[^[104]]

At Philadelphia, in October, 1773, a certain Ebenezer Richardson, accused of “seeking an opportunity to distress the Trade of Philadelphia,” was publicly notified, by “Tar and Feathers,” of the punishment which was in store for him, a punishment which he narrowly escaped by leaving the city “closely pursued by many well-wishers to peace and good order.”[^[105]]

On November 1, 1773, John Malcolm who had rendered himself obnoxious “by being an Informer” was “genteely Tarr’d and Feather’d” by “about 30 Sailors” at Pownalborough (Mass.).[^[106]] On January 25, 1774, Malcolm was in Boston, and when some taunting remarks were made to him to the effect that he had been tarred and feathered but not in the proper manner, he dared any one to do it better and assaulted one man, slightly injuring him. In the evening a number of people took Malcolm out, stripped him, tarred his head and his body, feathered him, set him in a chair in a cart, and thus carried him through the streets, finally whipping and beating him before they let him go.[^[107]] On the morning of January 30 the following handbill[^[108]] was found pasted up in the most public places:

Brethren, and Fellow-Citizens!

This is to Certify, That the modern Punishment lately inflicted on the ignoble John Malcolm, was not done by our Order—We reserve that Method for bringing Villains of greater Consequence to a Sense of Guilt and Infamy.

JOYCE, jun^r.

(Chairman of the Committee for Taring and Feathering.)

☞ If any Person should be so hardy as to tear this down, they may expect my severest Resentment.

J. jun.

During the years 1773 and 1774 tea commissioners and tea consignees, in addition to customs informers and importers of British goods, fell into popular disfavor, and thus became subjects for tarring and feathering. “Tiewaghnodago” in the Boston Gazette, December 20, 1773,[^[109]] said that he had been informed that “some little Shopkeepers in this Town,” finding that tea was not likely to be used, had raised the price of coffee a few coppers per pound, and he asked “whether Tar and Feathers would not be a constitutional encouragement for such eminent Patriotism.”

In the period 1765–1775 there were likewise cases of mob violence where houses were attacked and damaged by having missiles thrown at them and where property was destroyed.[^[110]] In one instance at least the owner of goods which were destroyed by a mob recovered damages in the courts. Early in the year 1772, according to S. G. Arnold,[^[111]] there occurred “a memorable instance of the triumph of law over popular prejudice.” One David Hill was detected in selling goods included in the non-importation agreement, and the goods were seized and destroyed by a mob. Hill brought action in the Rhode Island courts, and the superior court confirmed the judgment of the inferior court and gave the plaintiff two hundred and eighty-two pounds damages and costs.

Tarring and feathering was not reserved for certain informers and importers or for tea consignees alone, however. This punishment was administered in at least two instances for offenses other than those growing out of the political controversies of the time.

The Boston Gazette for November 6, 1769,[^[112]] contained the following item: “Last Thursday Afternoon a young Woman from the Country was decoyed into one of the Barracks in Town, and most shamefully abused by some of the Soldiers there:—the Person that enticed her thither with promises of disposing of all her marketing there (who also belonged to the Country) was afterwards taken by the Populace and several times duck’d in the Water at one of the Docks in Town; but luckily for him he made his escape from them sooner than was intended;—however, we hear, that after he had crossed the Ferry to Charlestown, on his return home, the People there being informed of the base part he had been acting, took him and placed him in a Cart, and after tarring and feathering him (the present popular Punishment for modern delinquents) they carted him about that Town for two or three Hours, as a Spectacle of Contempt and a Warning to others from practising such vile Artifices for the Delusion and Ruin of the virtuous and innocent: He was then dismissed, and permitted to proceed to the Town where he belonged, for them to act with as they should see fit.”

In January, 1774, smallpox became prevalent in Marblehead, Massachusetts, and an inoculating hospital was erected on Cat Island as a private enterprise. This hospital, however, was popularly regarded with suspicion and disfavor, for it was thought to be a source of contagion. When four men were detected in the act of stealing clothing from the hospital, they were promptly tarred and feathered, and, after being placed in a cart and exhibited through the principal streets of the town, were carried to Salem, accompanied by a procession of men and boys, marching to the music of a fife and several drums. A number of new cases of smallpox developed soon after this affair, and popular indignation ran so high against the proprietors of the hospital that they were openly threatened with personal violence and were finally compelled to close its doors. Subsequently a rumor that the hospital was to be opened again awakened fresh opposition, and on January 26 a party of disguised men visited the island, and as a result of their visit the building was completely destroyed by fire. Two men were arrested as being implicated in the incendiarism and were confined in the Salem jail, but a large number of men from Marblehead marched to Salem, surrounded the jail, broke open the doors, overpowered the jailer and his assistants, released the two prisoners and conducted them home in triumph. A force of citizens was later organized by the sheriff for the purpose of going to Marblehead to recapture the men, but when it became known that an equally large force was organizing and arming in Marblehead to protect them, the sheriff abandoned his purpose and no further effort was made to prosecute the incendiaries. Before the trouble connected with the hospital was finally ended, however, one of the four men who had been tarred and feathered was again the subject of popular indignation because of his bringing away clothing from Cat Island. He was taken from his bed one night by a mob and carried to the public whipping-post where he was severely whipped and beaten.[^[113]]

During the year 1775, when the spirit of rebellion rose to the height of armed resistance and open warfare, there was increased occasion for recourse to summary procedure. In that year mobs gathered in many places,[^[114]] riots were numerous and cases of tarring and feathering occurred in several of the colonies.

In June, 1775, Laughlin Martin and James Dealy were stripped of their clothes, tarred and feathered, and carted through the Streets of Charleston, South Carolina, by order of the “Secret Committee,” one of the committees which had been formed to carry on an independent government in that Province.[^[115]] In August of the same year, this committee had another man, “a Mr. Walker, Gunner of Fort Johnston,” treated in the same way.[^[116]]

In September, 1775, James Smith, a judge of the Court of Common Pleas for Duchess County, New York, together with Coen Smith of the same place, were “handsomely tarred and feathered” for acting in open contempt of the resolves of the County Committee. “The judge undertook to sue for, and recover the arms taken from the Tories by order of said committee, and actually committed one of the committee, who assisted at disarming the Tories, which enraged the people so much, that they rose and rescued the prisoner, and poured out their resentment on this villanous retailer of the law.”[^[117]]

In December, 1775, “at Quibbletown, New Jersey, Thomas Randolph, cooper, who had publicly proved himself an enemy to his country, by reviling and using his utmost endeavors to oppose the proceedings of the continental and provincial conventions, in defence of their rights and liberties; and being judged a person not of consequence enough for a severer punishment, was ordered to be stripped naked, well coated with tar and feathers, and carried in a wagon publicly around the town—which punishment was accordingly inflicted. As soon as he became duly sensible of his offence, for which he earnestly begged pardon, and promised to atone, as far as he was able, by a contrary behavior for the future, he was released and suffered to return to his home, in less than half an hour. The whole was conducted with that regularity and decorum that ought to be observed in all public punishments.”[^[118]]

In the later years of the Revolution, also, there were cases of tarring and feathering. At Charleston, South Carolina, in 1776, “John Roberts, a dissenting minister, was seized on suspicion of being an enemy to the rights of America, when he was tarred and feathered; after which, the populace, whose fury could not be appeased, erected a gibbet on which they hanged him, and afterwards made a bonfire, in which Roberts, together with the gibbet, was consumed to ashes.”[^[119]]

During the campaign of April to December, 1776, for the possession of the Hudson River, Tryon, who when governor of North Carolina had led the militia against the Regulators, was “fomenting plots of a most dastardly character against the persons and property of patriots. One of these was the seizure of Washington himself. The plotters were sometimes discovered, and, when they were, such was the exasperation of the New York patriots that they did not hesitate to cruelly maltreat them, a coat of tar and feathers being among the lightest penalties.”[^[120]]

In Virginia the manner of punishing by tarring and feathering was likewise sometimes followed. According to Wirt, “The name of ‘British tory’ was of itself enough, at that period (the close of the Revolution), to throw almost any company in Virginia into flames, and was pretty generally a signal for a coat of tar and feathers; a signal which was not very often disobeyed.”[^[121]]

The practice of tarring and feathering was thus mainly confined to cases in which popular indignation was aroused against Tories, or against persons expressing Tory sentiments and conspiring to injure the American cause. It is this fact that makes tarring and feathering particularly characteristic of Revolutionary times. It is to be remembered, however, that summary punishment was also administered in other ways. Various other forms of corporal punishment, as well as the occasional infliction of capital punishment, were very frequently adopted during the period of the Revolution.

In the preceding chapter, in the discussion of the origin of the term lynch-law, the legislative act was cited which indemnified Charles Lynch and some others for the part which they had taken in suppressing a conspiracy. A similar act of indemnification was passed by the legislature of Virginia in the year 1779. This act reads as follows:

“Whereas divers evil disposed persons on the frontiers of this commonwealth had broke out into an open insurrection and conspiracy, and actually levied war against the commonwealth, and it is represented to the present general assembly, that William Campbell, Walter Crockett, and other liege subjects of the commonwealth, aided by detachments of the militia and volunteers from the county of Washington, and other parts of the frontiers did by timely and effectual exertion, suppress and defeat such conspiracy: And whereas the necessary measures taken for that purpose may not be strictly warranted by law, although justifiable from the immediate urgency and imminence of the danger: Be it therefore declared and enacted, That the said William Campbell, Walter Crockett, and all other persons whatsoever concerned in suppressing the said conspiracy and insurrection, or in advising, issuing or executing any orders or measures taken for that purpose, stand indemnified and clearly exonerated of, and from all pains, penalties, prosecutions, actions, suits, and damages on account thereof: And that if any indictment, prosecution, action, or suit, shall be laid or brought against them, or any of them, for any act or thing done therein, the defendant or defendants may plead in bar, or the general issue, and give this act in evidence.”[^[122]]

In the year 1836 the editor of the Southern Literary Messenger said that frequent inquiry had been made in the preceding year as to the origin of Lynch’s law. After an allusion to the historical interest of the subject, he answered the inquiry in the following words:

“It will be perceived from the annexed paper, that the law, so called, originated in 1780, in Pittsylvania, Virginia. Colonel William Lynch, of that county, was its author; and we are informed by a resident, who was a member of a body formed for the purpose of carrying it into effect, that the efforts of the association were wholly successful. A trained band of villains, whose operations extended from North to South, whose well concerted schemes had bidden defiance to the ordinary laws of the land, and whose success encouraged them to persevere in depredations upon an unoffending community, was dispersed and laid prostrate under the infliction of Lynch’s law. Of how many terrible, and deeply to be lamented consequences—of how great an amount of permanent evil—has the partial and temporary good been productive!

“‘Whereas, many of the inhabitants of the county of Pittsylvania, as well as elsewhere, have sustained great and intolerable losses by a set of lawless men who have banded themselves together to deprive honest men of their just rights and property, by stealing their horses, counterfeiting, and passing paper currency, and committing many other species of villainy, too tedious to mention, and that those vile miscreants do still persist in their diabolical practices, and have hitherto escaped the civil power with impunity, it being almost useless and unnecessary to have recourse to our laws to suppress and punish those freebooters, they having it in their power to extricate themselves when brought to justice by suborning witnesses who do swear them clear—we, the subscribers, being determined to put a stop to the iniquitous practices of those unlawful and abandoned wretches, do enter into the following association, to wit: that next to our consciences, soul and body, we hold our rights and property, sacred and inviolable. We solemnly protest before God and the world, that (for the future) upon hearing or having sufficient reason to believe, that any villainy or species of villainy having been committed within our neighborhood, we will forthwith embody ourselves, and repair immediately to the person or persons suspected, or those under suspicious characters, harboring, aiding, or assisting those villains, and if they will not desist from their evil practices, we will inflict such corporeal punishment on him or them, as to us shall seem adequate to the crime committed or the damage sustained; that we will protect and defend each and every one of us, the subscribers, as well jointly as severally, from the insults and assaults offered by any other person in their behalf: and further, we do bind ourselves jointly and severally, our joint and several heirs &c. to pay or cause to be paid, all damages that shall or may accrue in consequence of this our laudable undertaking, and will pay an equal proportion according to our several abilities; and we, after having a sufficient number of subscribers to this association, will convene ourselves to some convenient place, and will make choice of our body five of the best and most discreet men belonging to our body, to direct and govern the whole, and we will strictly adhere to their determinations in all cases whatsoever relative to the above undertaking; and if any of our body summoned to attend the execution of this our plan, and fail so to do without a reasonable excuse, they shall forfeit and pay the sum of one hundred pounds current money of Virginia, to be appropriated toward defraying the contingent expenses of this our undertaking. In witness whereof we have hereunto set our hands, this 22d day September 1780.’”[^[123]]

The only indication of the source from which the editor obtained this agreement is found in the reference to “a resident, who was a member of a body formed for the purpose of carrying it into effect.” It is upon this reference that its authenticity depends. The agreement sounds genuine and is not out of harmony with the condition of affairs at that time in Virginia. Nothing is known, however, of any Colonel William Lynch in the county of Pittsylvania, Virginia.[^[124]] It is possible that the man referred to was Colonel Charles Lynch of Bedford County.

An instance of summary corporal punishment occurred in Virginia on October 10, 1783, as is shown by the following act entitled “An act of indemnity to certain persons”: “Be it enacted by the General Assembly, That all and every person or persons who either directly or indirectly committed any insult or injury against the person of a certain Joseph Williamson, on the tenth day of October, in the year one thousand seven hundred and eighty three, or breach of the peace on that occasion, and which was previous to the ratification of the definitive treaty between Great Britain and America, shall be, and they are hereby respectively indemnified for the same, and shall be exonerated and discharged of and from any fines, penalties, or forfeitures, which they might have incurred thereby.”[^[125]]

Judge Roane’s statement that there were many suits in 1792 for inflicting Lynch’s law indicates that there were many cases of its infliction in the years preceding that date. It seems probable, therefore, that the practice of administering corporal punishment in a summary manner was very prevalent in Virginia from 1780 to 1792.

During the period 1792–1819 accounts of lynch-law procedure are very rare. There are but few sources of information on the subject during that period. Indeed, it is true that the chief source of information on the subject from 1792 to 1830 is the writings of travelers who have chanced to witness or hear of instances of such procedure.

Under the date of November 29, 1819, W. Faux describes the treatment given a young Yankee, of the name of Williams, near Princeton, Indiana, two years earlier. He was suspected of having robbed a store, but only circumstantial evidence could be adduced against him and he was acquitted. “The people of the place, however, prejudiced against him, as a Yankee, deputed four persons to inform him, that unless he quitted the town and state immediately, he should receive Lynch’s law, that is, a whipping in the woods. He departed, with his wife and child, next day, on foot; but in the woods, four miles from Princeton, they were overtaken by two men, armed with guns, dogs, and a whip, who said they came to whip him, unless he would confess and discover to them the stolen money, so that they might have it. He vainly expostulated with them; but, in consideration of his wife’s entreaties and cries, they remitted his sentence to thirteen lashes. One man then bound him to a tree and lashed him with a cow-hide whip, while the other held and gagged him; the alarmed wife, all the time, shrieking murder. He was then untied, and told to depart from the state immediately, or he should receive another whipping on the morrow, as a warning and terror to all future coming Yankees.

“This poor fellow was of respectable parents at Berlin, in the state of New York, and possessed a well-informed mind. He quitted the state, and returning, soon after, to prosecute his executioners, died at Evansville, before he had effected so desirable an object.”[^[126]]

In “Letters from Illinois,” the second edition of which was published in London in 1818, Morris Birkbeck writes:

“There is nothing that I anticipate with so much satisfaction and security as the rapid development of society in our new country. Its elements are rude certainly, and heterogeneous. The first settlers, unprotected, and unassisted amid dangers and difficulties, have been accustomed from early youth to rely on their own powers; and they surrender with reluctance, and only by halves, their right of defence against every aggression, even to the laws which themselves have constituted.

“They have been anxiously studious of mildness in the forming of these laws, and when, in practice, they seem inefficient, they too frequently proceed with Indian perseverance to acts of vengeance, inconsistent with the duty of forbearance essential to social man. Hence deeds of savage and even ferocious violence are too common to be viewed with the abhorrence due to them.

“This disposition is evinced continually, and acted on without any feeling of private or personal animosity.

“If a man, whom the public voice has proclaimed a thief or a swindler, escapes from justice for want of a legal proof of his guilt, though the law and a jury of his fellow citizens have acquitted him, ten to one but he is met with before he can quit the neighborhood, and, tied up to a sapling, receives a scourging that marks him for the rest of his life.

“In Kentucky, whose institutions have acquired greater maturity, such events have taken place some years ago; but now they would scarcely be tolerated, and they will soon be matter of history only, in Indiana and Illinois.

“No crime but murder ‘of the first degree’ is punished with death, in any of the western states, nor, I believe, in the Union. In Kentucky there is a general penitentiary, for the punishment of other offences by imprisonment and labour.”[^[127]]

William Newnham Blane, who traveled through the United States and Canada in the years 1822 and 1823, described the lynch-law procedure of that time as follows:

“After leaving Carlyle, I took the Shawnee town road, that branches off to the S. E., and passed the Walnut Hills, and Moore’s Prairie. These two places had a year or two before been infested by a notorious gang of robbers and forgers, who had fixed themselves in these wild parts, in order to avoid justice. As the country became more settled, these desperadoes became more and more troublesome. The inhabitants therefore took that method of getting rid of them, that had been adopted not many years ago in Hopkinson and Henderson counties Kentucky, and which is absolutely necessary in new and thinly settled districts, where it is almost impossible to punish a criminal according to legal forms.

“On such occasions therefore, all the quiet and industrious men of a district form themselves into companies, under the name of ‘Regulators.’ They appoint officers, put themselves under their orders, and bind themselves to assist and stand by each other. The first step they then take, is to send notice to any notorious vagabonds, desiring them to quit the State in a certain number of days, under the penalty of receiving a domiciliary visit. Should the person who receives the notice refuse to comply, they suddenly assemble, and when unexpected, go, in the night time, to the rogue’s house, take him out, tie him to a tree, and give him a severe whipping, every one of the party striking him a certain number of times.

“This discipline is generally sufficient to drive off the culprit; but should he continue obstinate, and refuse to avail himself of another warning, the Regulators pay him a second visit, inflict a still severer whipping, with the addition probably of cutting off both his ears. No culprit has ever been known to remain after a second visit. For instance, an old man, the father of a family, all of whom he educated as robbers, fixed himself at Moore’s Prairie, and committed numerous thefts, &c. &c. He was hardy enough to remain after the first visit, when both he and his sons received a whipping. At the second visit the Regulators punished him very severely, and cut off his ears. This drove him off, together with his whole gang; and travellers can now pass in perfect safety, where it was once dangerous to travel alone.

“There is also a company of Regulators near Vincennes, who have broken up a notorious gang of coiners and thieves who had fixed themselves near that place. These rascals, before they were driven off, had parties settled at different distances in the woods, and thus held communication and passed horses and stolen goods from one to another, from the Ohio to Lake Erie, and from thence into Canada or the New England States. Thus it was next to impossible to detect the robbers, or to recover the stolen property.

“While I was staying at the house of a Mr. Mulligan in Illinois, thirty miles from St. Louis, one of the men, who had belonged to the gang near Vincennes, was taken up on the charge of passing counterfeit money....

“This practice of Regulating seems very strange to an European. I have talked with some of the chief men of the Regulators, who all lamented the necessity of such a system. They very sensibly remarked, that when the country became more thickly settled, there would no longer be any necessity for such proceedings, and that they should all be delighted at being able to obtain justice in a more formal manner. I forgot to mention, that the rascals punished, have sometimes prosecuted the Regulators, for an assault. The juries however, knowing the bad characters of the prosecutors, would give but trifling damages, which divided among so many, amounted to next to nothing for each individual.”[^[128]]

In a book entitled “Letters from the West,” which was published in London in 1828, Judge James Hall wrote on the subject of lynch-law as follows:

“Among the early settlers there was a way of trying causes, which may perhaps be new to you. No commentator has taken any notice of Linch’s Law, which was once the lex loci of the frontiers. Its operation was as follows: When a horse thief, a counterfeiter, or any other desperate vagabond, infested a neighborhood, evading justice by cunning, or by a strong arm, or by the number of his confederates, the citizens formed themselves into a ‘regulating company,’ a kind of holy brotherhood, whose duty was to purge the community of its unruly members. Mounted, armed, and commanded by a leader, they proceeded to arrest such notorious offenders as were deemed fit subjects of exemplary justice; their operations were generally carried on in the night. Squire Birch, who was personated by one of the party, established his tribunal under a tree in the woods, and the culprit was brought before him, tried, and generally convicted; he was then tied to a tree, lashed without mercy, and ordered to leave the country within a given time, under pain of a second visitation. It seldom happened, that more than one or two were thus punished; their confederates took the hint and fled, or were admonished to quit the neighborhood. Neither the justice nor the policy of this practice can be defended; but it was often resorted to from necessity, and its operation was salutary, in ridding the country of miscreants whom the law was not strong enough to punish. It was liable to abuse, and was sometimes abused; but in general, it was conducted with moderation, and only exerted upon the basest and most lawless men. Sometimes the sufferers resorted to courts of justice for remuneration, and there have been instances of heavy damages being recovered of the regulators. Whenever a county became strong enough to enforce the laws, these high-handed doings ceased to be tolerated.”[^[129]]

In the above extracts we have a fair description of the operation of lynch-law as it was carried westward by the emigrants from Virginia and the neighboring States. The weakness and inadequacy of the civil regulations, and the presence of such criminals as the horse-thief, the counterfeiter, the robber, and the desperado, who find the frontier both a retreat from the consequences of past crime and a new theater for the perpetration of crime, gave a constant justification for recourse to lynch-law.

The usual manner of proceeding was for the settlers to consult together and in a more or less formal way to establish “the institution of Regulators.” Sometimes the Regulators were small bodies of men chosen by the people to look after the interests of the community—in effect, they were committees of safety. At other times, the Regulators were bodies of men who voluntarily assumed the duty of policing a district. The duties of such companies, whether known as Regulators or as Rangers or by some other name, were to ferret out and punish criminals, to drive out “suspicious characters,” and to exercise a general supervision over the interests of the settlements in which they lived. Their statute-book was the “code of his honor, Judge Lynch”[^[130]]; their order of trial was similar to that of a “drum-head court-martial”; the principles of their punishment were certainty, rapidity, and inexorability. They were in themselves judges, juries, witnesses, and executioners.

These bodies of men bound themselves by a regular compact, to the people and to each other, to rid the community of all thieves, robbers, plunderers, and villains of every description. Such compacts were usually verbal but they were sometimes in writing.[^[131]] The compact entered into by the Regulators of North Carolina has already been cited. If the agreement of 1780 in Virginia, to which the editor of the Southern Literary Messenger gave his indorsement, be accepted as genuine, we have a record of another such compact. There is recorded, also, a compact entered into by a company of Regulators in Illinois in 1820. It reads as follows:

“Know all men by these presents:

“That we (here follow twelve names), citizens of —— settlement, in the state of Illinois, have this day, jointly and severally, bound themselves together as a company of Rangers and Regulators, to protect this settlement against the crimes and misdemeanors of, all and singular, every person or persons whomsoever, and especially against all horse-thieves, and renegades, and robbers. And we do by these presents, hereby bind ourselves, jointly and severally as aforesaid, unto each other, and to the fellow-citizens of this settlement, to punish, according to the code of his honor, Judge Lynch, all violations of the law, against the peace and dignity of the said people of —— settlement; and to discover and bring to speedy punishment, all illegal combinations—to rid the country of such as are dangerous to the welfare of this settlement—to preserve the peace, and generally to vindicate the law, within the settlement aforesaid. All of which purposes we are to accomplish as peaceably as possible: but we are to accomplish them one way or another.

“In testimony whereof, we have hereunto set our hands and affixed our seals, this twelfth day of October, Anno Domini, eighteen hundred and twenty.

(Signed by twelve men.)

“Acknowledged and subscribed in the presence of

“C——T. H——n,

“J——P. D——n,”

and five others, who seem to have been a portion of “the fellow-citizens of this settlement,” referred to in the document.[^[132]]

The companies of Regulators were generally organized only temporarily to meet some emergency in particular communities. The one striking exception is the Regulation movement in the Carolinas. The circumstances surrounding that movement, however, were not paralleled elsewhere. The duration and strength of the organization there, was undoubtedly due to the prominence of the political factor in its existence. Leaving out of consideration the Carolina Regulation and the summary practices which were incident to the Revolutionary War, there existed almost exclusively down to 1830 what may be called the frontier type of lynch-law pure and simple. This form of lynch-law procedure has always been justified on the ground of necessity, and has been condemned only because of its liability to abuse. As one writer has said, referring to the Regulators: “Their acts may sometimes have been high-handed and unjustifiable, but on the whole—and it is only in such a view that social institutions are to be estimated—they were the preservers of the communities for whom they acted. In time, it is true, they degenerated, and sometimes the corps fell into the hands of the very men they were organized to punish.

“Every social organization is liable to misdirection, and this, among others, has been perverted to the furtherance of selfish and unprincipled purposes; for, like prejudices and habits of thought, organized institutions frequently survive the necessities which call them into existence. Abuses grow up under all systems; and, perhaps, the worst abuse of all, is a measure or expedient, good though temporary, retained after the passing away of the time for which it was adopted.”[^[133]]

If it be said that “all law emanates from the people, and is, in fact, whether written or not, nothing more or less than certain rules of action by which a people agree to be governed,” then the frontier type of lynch-law is scarcely more than one step removed from genuine law. For instance, in the year 1834, a large number of persons, citizens of the United States, but of no particular state or territory, and beyond the pale of the regular operations of the law, were collected at a place called Dubuque’s mines, west of the Mississippi, and north of the State of Missouri. On May 29 of that year, Patrick O’Conner, who had the reputation of being a desperate character, shot and killed George O’Keefe. O’Conner “was arrested by mutual consent of all parties, and, on the next day, was duly tried, by a jury of twelve citizens, taken from the multitude. Privilege was given to the prisoner to object to all such as he chose not to be tried by, and he made no objections to the mode of trial. He was allowed the privilege of choosing a friend to counsel with him, and assist in conducting the trial.”

After hearing the testimony of the witnesses that were called, the jury retired, and “after a session of about two hours,” returned the following verdict: “We, the jury selected to try Patrick O’Conner, for the murder of George O’Keefe, on the 29th inst. after examining the witnesses on oath, and attentively hearing and considering the testimony against the prisoner, do unanimously agree that the said O’Conner is guilty of murder in the highest degree, and are of opinion that the said O’Conner has done an act which, in a land of laws, would forfeit his life. And inasmuch as the security of the lives of the good citizens of this country requires that an example should be made, to preserve order and convince evil disposed persons that this is not a place where the lives of men may be taken with impunity—we are of opinion that the said O’Conner should be carefully secured until the 20th day of June, and that, at the hour of 12 o’clock, of said day, the said Patrick O’Conner be conducted to the place of execution, and there be hung by the neck until he is dead.” This verdict was signed by the twelve members of the jury.

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:

“Wilmington, N. C., Sept. 28.—Three ringleaders of the late diabolical conspiracy were executed at Onslow Court House, on Friday evening last, 23d inst. by the people. There was a fourth, who escaped during the tumult.”[^[136]] The editor of the Liberator adds: “‘Executed by the people’ doubtless means executed by a mob, on suspicion of guilt, without investigation or trial.”

A Mr. Robinson was lashed on the bare back at Petersburg, Virginia, for saying “that black men have, in the abstract, a right to their freedom.” After the scourging he was told to leave Petersburg and never return or he would be treated “worser.”[^[137]]

In Georgia, a man, named John Lamb, was severely treated because he had subscribed to the Liberator. “A mob of unprincipled vagabonds assembled around his house and violently took him out and tarred and feathered him. They then poured oil on his head and set fire to it. They next carried him on a rail to the river and ducked him. And then they returned with him to a post near Darraugh and Simms’ Tavern, and whipped him.”[^[138]]

The slave insurrection in Virginia under the leadership of Nat Turner took place in August of the year 1831. The nature and extent of this insurrection has been frequently misunderstood. On the one hand, it has been represented as having been confined to a magisterial district; on the other hand, its leader is said to have recruited his forces through all Eastern Virginia and through North Carolina. Both of these views are in a measure true.[^[139]]

Nat was a negro endowed with a mind capable of high attainments. He was a careful student of the Bible and a Baptist preacher. He read the newspapers and every book within his reach, and he was an attentive listener at discussions of the political and social questions of the day. But his mind grappled with things beyond its reach. The example of Toussaint L’Ouverture in the island of Hayti, and that of Gabriel Prosser in Richmond in 1800, together with the speeches and writings of abolitionists, inspired him to make an attempt to “call the attention of the civilized world to the condition of his race.” He became a complete fanatic and believed that the Lord had destined him to free his race. The red tint of the autumn leaves was a sign of the blood which was to be shed. The eclipse of the sun in February and its peculiar appearance in August, 1831, were to him omens indicating that the time had come for him to put his plans into operation.

For several years plans for insurrection had been maturing in Nat’s mind, and by February, 1831, he had so far determined upon his scheme that he related it to four of the most influential negroes of his section. From that time every effort was made to enlist the co-operation of other slaves, but with the greatest patience and prudence. He deemed it possible to conquer the county of Southampton, march to the Dismal Swamp, collecting the slaves as he went, and so gradually overcome the State, as the Americans had the British in the Revolutionary War.

On the night of Sunday, August 21, Nat opened the insurrection. A misunderstanding in regard to the date deprived him of a few of his followers, but, at the head of a small party which increased in numbers as it proceeded, he went from house to house murdering every white person that could be found. It is characterized as a massacre “barbarous beyond degree.” Depredations, murders, and the most revolting crimes were committed in cold blood. Before the insurrection was put down about sixty whites,—men, women and children,—were slaughtered. The condition of affairs in Southampton for about ten days after the massacre is best described by a committee of citizens in a letter to President Jackson, on the 29th of August, of which the following is an extract: “Most of the havoc has been confined to a limited section of our county, but so inhuman has been the butchery, so indiscriminate the carnage, that the tomahawk and scalping knife have now no horrors. Along the road traveled by our rebellious blacks, comprising a distance of something like twenty-seven miles, no white soul now lives to tell how fiendlike was their purpose. In the bosom of almost every family this enemy still exists. Our homes, those near the scenes of havoc, as well as others more remote, have all been deserted and our families gathered together and guarded at public places in the county; and, still further, the excitement is so great that were the justices to pronounce a slave innocent, we fear a mob would be the consequence.”[^[140]]

Many of the rebellious slaves were shot on sight and some innocent negroes suffered. Some prisoners taken near Cross Keys were shot by the Murfreesboro troops and their heads were left for weeks stuck up on poles as a warning to all who should undertake a similar plot. The captain of the marines, as they marched through Vicksville on their way home, bore upon his sword the head of a rebel. A negress who attempted to kill a Mrs. Francis was dragged out, after she had been taken prisoner, tied to an oak tree, and her body riddled with bullets. It is said that some of the slaves suffered fearful torture, being burnt with red-hot irons and their bodies being horribly mutilated, before death came to their relief. Nat was persecuted with pin-pricks and soundly whipped before he was put in jail to await his trial.

According to Drewry, however, although “much excitement and rashness had prevailed in the pursuit and capture of the rebels, the cases of mercy and humanity overshadow those of barbarity and leave the decision in favor of the former.” Fifty-three of the sixty or seventy negroes connected with the massacre were brought before the county court. Of these seventeen were executed and twelve transported. The rest were discharged, except the four free negroes who were sent on to the Superior Court, three of whom were executed. Nat and his three associate-leaders, Hark, Nelson, and Sam, were hung according to the sentence of the court. “The bodies of those executed, with one exception, were buried in a decent and becoming manner. That of Nat Turner was delivered to the doctors, who skinned it and made grease of the flesh.”

The execution of the plot was thus confined to a magisterial district of three thousand inhabitants. Yet every effort had been made to rouse the negroes of neighboring counties in Virginia and North Carolina. The influence of the insurrection was wide-spread, extending to the North as well as the South. The immediate result in many parts of the South was the greatest excitement, alarm, and confusion. “Men went about in groups, the militia drills were renewed, and the arms called in a few months before, reissued.” Thomas Gray, who lived in Southampton, said: “It is the first instance in our history of an open rebellion of the slaves, and attended with such atrocious circumstances of cruelty and destruction as could not fail to leave a deep impression, not only on the minds of the community where the fearful tragedy was wrought, but throughout every portion of our country in which this population is found.” In the North the immediate effect was a more pronounced conviction of the evils of slavery. In general, the effect of the Southampton insurrection was to center public consideration on the slave question.[^[141]] Its influence was indirect, rather than direct, in stimulating recourse to lynch-law in the country.

During the spring and summer of 1834 there was a great deal of rioting in which Irishmen were principally concerned. Several riots occurred in New York City and in Philadelphia between whites and blacks, which were said to be due to the abolitionists having stirred up the blacks.[^[142]] The following appeared in the Boston Whig in October, 1834: “The history of the proceedings of the past year furnishes examples of outrage and violence altogether unprecedented in the annals of our country. It would seem that the supremacy of the laws is to be no farther regarded than it coincides with the caprices and prejudices of an infuriated and misguided and ignorant populace.... Mobs, which now seem to be the order of the day, are of recent origin among us.... Our newspapers now, with a few honorable exceptions, encourage these outrages and barbarous proceedings, and by the inflammatory articles in their columns, incite to the commission of the most heinous crimes.”[^[143]]

The expression “Lynch’s law” first appears in the Liberator in the issue of September 27, 1834 (4: 153), in an extract from the Lancaster (Pennsylvania) Journal. The passage quoted is as follows: “In our quiet village of New Holland, we understand Lynch’s law was carried into execution last week, against a stranger who had given some offence to the inhabitants. The man was taken from his domicile, tarred and feathered in the true Yankee style, marched out of town and let run. We have not heard the cause of this summary proceeding.”

Another extract from the Lancaster Journal reads as follows: “We have heard of another case of an appeal to Lynch’s code. A celebrated Philadelphia doctor, a disciple of the Tappan school, who could not find room for the overflowings of his milk of human kindness in the city of brotherly love, paid a visit to Columbia, in this county, a few days since, prepared, it is said, to deliver a course of amalgamation lectures. A barrel of tar was purchased, and a pillow well stuffed with feathers procured for the occasion. A hint of these proceedings was given to the learned Doctor’s friends, who did not keep the secret, and the Doctor not wishing to be exhibited in the costume of a goose, took wing in an eastern direction, and has not been heard of since.”[^[144]]

The expression “Lynch’s law” first appears in Niles’ Register under the date of October 5, 1833 (45: 87), in an extract from the St. Louis Republican. The quotation is as follows: “‘Lynch’s Law.’ We have heard, that capt. Slick summoned his corps the other night, and obtained possession of a man with whose misdeeds they had become familiar, carried him to the prairie near town, and administered ‘Lynch’s Law’ upon him in fine style. He received about fifty lashes—and was ordered to decamp. The offence consisted in cheating at the gaming table—whereof he was over-fond.... Several very effective demonstrations have been made upon the gamblers in and about town, and they have been obliged to make themselves scarce. This is as it should be.”

Lynch-law proceedings were inaugurated against gamblers in Virginia about a year later. Niles’ Register for October 4, 1834 (47: 66) says: “Large nests of gamblers in Richmond and Norfolk were completely routed, a short time ago, by summary processes—numerous bodies of young men having taken the matter in charge. They broke into the gambling houses, and destroyed all the apparatus and furniture—but farther than this, committed no acts of violence. Some curious disclosures of the great profits made by the knaves have been brought to light by these proceedings.”

The most notorious case of an appeal to summary procedure against gamblers occurred in July, 1835, at Vicksburg, Mississippi. Professional gamblers had for years made Vicksburg their rendezvous and certain sections of the city were almost wholly given over to them. Frequently, in armed bodies, they disturbed the good order of public assemblages, insulted citizens on the streets, and openly defied the civil authorities. The laws were found ineffectual for their punishment; their numbers and their crimes continually increased.[^[145]] At a barbecue on the Fourth of July one of these gamblers, named Cakler, became insolent and created a disturbance. Later a meeting was held and an anti-gambling society was organized. “It was determined to take him (Cakler) into the woods and Lynch him—which is a mode of punishment provided for such as become obnoxious in a manner which the law cannot reach. He was immediately carried out under a guard, attended by a crowd of respectable citizens—tied to a tree, punished with stripes—tarred and feathered; and ordered to leave town in forty-eight hours.” The following morning public notice was given that all gamblers must leave the town in twenty-four hours. That night another was “Lynched.” The next morning the citizens understood that a noted gambler, named North, had defied them, barricaded his house, and together with some of his fellows had made preparations to stay in the town. The volunteers were immediately assembled and, followed by a crowd of citizens, marched to North’s residence and demanded an unconditional surrender. This was refused. The house was then surrounded and an attempt made to force an entrance. Just as the door was burst open, Dr. H. S. Bodley, a highly respected citizen, was shot and instantly killed by the gamblers. Greatly incensed at this, the crowd rushed into the building and dragged out the inmates, one of whom had been seriously wounded, hurried them without ceremony to the common gallows and hanged them. Five gamblers were thus executed at this time and their bodies left suspended for twenty-four hours.[^[146]]

About the time of the Vicksburg affair suspicion was aroused in Madison County, Mississippi, that the Murrell gang had organized the blacks for an insurrection.[^[147]] “Two individuals, by name Cotton and Saunders, both of them steam doctors by profession,” were thought to be prominently connected with the scheme. A “committee of investigation” was appointed by a mass-meeting of the citizens and as a result of the investigation the two “steam doctors” and three other white men were hanged, and also several negroes, “some ten or fifteen,” without any process at law.[^[148]]

J. H. Ingraham, writing of conditions in Mississippi at about this time, after describing a “chain gang” of negroes, uses the following language: “In Natchez, negro criminals only are thus honored—a coat of tar and feathers’ being applied to those white men who may require some kind of discipline not provided by the courts of justice. This last summary process of popular justice, or more properly excitement, termed ‘Lynch’s law’, I believe, from its originator, is too much in vogue in this state. In the resentment of public as well as private wrongs, individuals have long been in the habit of forestalling and improving upon the decisions of the courts, by taking the execution of the laws into their own hands.... The want of a penitentiary has had a tendency to keep this custom alive in this state longer than it would otherwise have existed. When an individual is guilty of any offence, which renders him amenable to the laws, he must either be acquitted altogether or suffer death.”[^[149]]

Lynch-law was also known in the eastern states at this time. Not only were there mobs which dealt summarily with offenders, as in the year 1831, but their proceedings were known by a different name. It was now no longer simply “mobs” and “mobocracy,” but “Lynch’s law,” and “Judge Lynch’s court” as well. The Boston Daily Advertiser in July, 1835, gave expression to the following, under the heading “Lynch’s Law”: “We have had occasion of late to advert to the use of this term in our paper, as indicating punishments, wantonly and in disregard of law, applied in certain portions of our country to individuals suspected or guilty of crime.”[^[150]] On the night of September 10, 1835, a gallows was erected in Brighton Street, Boston, in front of Mr. Garrison’s house, with two ropes suspended therefrom. On the crossbar was the inscription “Judge Lynch’s law.”[^[151]]

The following appeared in Niles’ Register, October 3, 1835 (49: 76–7): “Our village (Kanawha Salines, W. Va.) was thrown into considerable commotion on Friday morning last in consequence of the arrival of judge Lynch among us. His business was soon ascertained, and by his authority four white men from Ohio were soon arrested and tried before 12 intelligent persons of our county, for endeavoring to persuade several slaves to leave their masters, for some free state.... These congenial spirits of Garrison, Tappan & Co. were arrested in the neighborhood of our village, tried, condemned, and received the sentence pronounced on them by the jury. That is to say, Joe Gill and the elder Drake to receive nine and thirty lashes each, and leave the county in 24 hours; the younger Drake, with Ross, to be discharged for want of evidence, but with a promise from them that they would also quit the county in 24 hours. The evidence ... produced an unanimous verdict on the part of the jury, that two should be lynched and the other two excused, provided they would leave this part of the country.”

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.

In the month of May, 1835, two negroes were burned to death near Mobile, Alabama, for “most barbarously murdering” two children. The murderers had their trial, the result of which is given in the following paragraph taken from a Mobile paper: “As the Court pronounced the only sentence known to the law—the smothered flame broke forth. The laws of the country had never conceived that crimes could be perpetrated with such peculiar circumstances of barbarity, and had therefore provided no adequate punishment. Their lives were justly forfeited to the laws of the country, but the peculiar circumstances demanded that the ordinary punishment should be departed from—they were seized, taken to the place where they had perpetrated the act, and burned to death.”[^[164]]

A case of burning alive, which on account of the subsequent events gained great notoriety, occurred at St. Louis, Missouri, April 28, 1836. One writer designated it as “the execution of ‘Lynch Law’ upon a yellow fellow, by means of a slow fire.” A colored man was arrested on board a boat by a deputy sheriff and a constable. Another colored man, a free mulatto, assisted him to escape, and the officers immediately arrested the mulatto. He, however, turned upon the officers, drew a knife and stabbed Deputy Sheriff Hammond, killing him instantly, and also seriously wounded Mr. Mull, the constable. He was finally captured, however, and locked up in the jail. Later the people assembled and, after threatening to tear down the jail if he was not delivered to them, secured the prisoner, conducted him to the outskirts of the city, placed a chain round his neck and a rope round his body, and thus fastened him to a tree a few feet from the ground. A fire was then placed round the tree and he was roasted alive.[^[165]]

When this case came up for consideration before the Grand Jury of St. Louis County, Judge Lawless—according to subsequent comments rightly named—made the following charge:

“I have reflected much on this matter, and after weighing all the considerations that present themselves as bearing upon it, I feel it my duty to state my opinion to be, that whether the Grand Jury shall act at all, depends upon the solution of this preliminary question, namely, whether the destruction of McIntosh was the act of the ‘few’ or the act of the ‘many.’

“If on a calm view of the circumstances attending this dreadful transaction, you shall be of opinion that it was perpetrated by a definite, and, compared to the population of St. Louis, a small number of individuals, separate from the mass, and evidently taking upon themselves, as contradistinguished from the multitude, the responsibility of the act, my opinion is that you ought to indict them all, without a single exception.

“If on the other hand, the destruction of the murderer of Hammond was the act as I have said, of the many—of the multitude, in the ordinary sense of those words—not the act of numerable and ascertainable malefactors, but of congregated thousands, seized upon and impelled by that mysterious, metaphysical, and almost electric phrenzy, which, in all nations and ages, has hurried on the infuriated multitude to deeds of death and destruction—then, I say, act not at all in the matter—the case then transcends your jurisdiction—it is beyond the reach of human law.”[^[166]]

It was for denouncing the burning of this colored man and violently attacking Judge Lawless in his Observer that the Rev. E. P. Lovejoy had his printing-office destroyed by a mob in St. Louis, and was forced to remove his paper to Alton, Illinois. He did not cease to express his convictions, however, and neither did his persecutions cease. Three times his press was destroyed by mobs. On November 7, 1837, while endeavoring to protect his property, he met his death at the hands of an Alton mob.

In an address on “The Perpetuation of our Political Institutions,” delivered before the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois, on January 27, 1837, Abraham Lincoln characterized the spirit of the times in the following way:

“Accounts of outrages committed by mobs form the everyday news of the times. They have pervaded the country from New England to Louisiana; they are neither peculiar to the eternal snows of the former nor the burning suns of the latter; they are not the creature of climate, neither are they confined to the slaveholding or the non-slaveholding States. Alike they spring up among the pleasure-hunting masters of Southern slaves, and the order-loving citizens of the land of steady habits. Whatever then their cause may be, it is common to the whole country.

“It would be tedious as well as useless to recount the horrors of all of them. Those happening in the State of Mississippi and at St. Louis are perhaps the most dangerous in example and revolting to humanity. In the Mississippi case they first commenced by hanging the regular gamblers—a set of men certainly not following for a livelihood a very useful or very honest occupation, but one which, so far from being forbidden by the laws, was actually licensed by an act of the legislature passed but a single year before. Next, negroes suspected of conspiring to rise an insurrection were caught up and hanged in all parts of the State; then, white men supposed to be leagued with the negroes; and finally, strangers from neighboring States, going thither on business, were in many instances subjected to the same fate. Thus went on this process of hanging, from gamblers to negroes, from negroes to white citizens, and from these to strangers, till dead men were literally dangling from the boughs of trees by every roadside, and in numbers almost sufficient to rival the native Spanish moss of the country as a drapery of the forest.

“Turn then to that horror-striking scene at St. Louis. A single victim only was sacrificed there. This story is very short, and is perhaps the most highly tragic of anything of its length that has ever been witnessed in real life. A mulatto man by the name of McIntosh was seized in the street, dragged to the suburbs of the city, chained to a tree, and actually burned to death; and all within a single hour from the time he had been a freeman attending to his own business and at peace with the world.

“Such are the effects of mob law, and such are the scenes becoming more and more frequent in this land so lately famed for love of law and order, and the stories of which have even now grown too familiar to attract anything more than an idle remark.”[^[167]]

The following paragraph appeared in the Southern Literary Messenger in the year 1839 (5: 218): “Forty years ago, the practice of wreaking private vengeance, or of inflicting summary and illegal punishment for crimes, actual or pretended, which has been glossed over by the name of Lynch’s Law, was hardly known except in sparse, frontier settlements, beyond the reach of courts and legal proceedings.”

The above quotations set forth clearly the condition of affairs in the United States at this time. It was the spirit of the times, rather than any particular cause, which brought about recourse to lynch-law practices. Lynch-law was invoked for no particular offense to the exclusion of all other offenses; neither was it peculiar to any one section of the country. From having been practised only in the border settlements as a temporary means of suppressing lawlessness until the civil regulations could be established, lynch-law methods had come to prevail even in well settled communities. Those writers who expressed the opinion about 1830 that lynch-law was dying out did not foresee the great popular excitement which existed during Jackson’s administration. The anti-slavery agitation acted as a spark in a tinder-box and seemed to beget a spirit of lawlessness in every part of the country. To the inflamed imagination of the popular mind the slightest provocation seemed a serious offense. The law did not reach such offenses, or they were deemed to be inadequately punished by the law, and this seemed to the people a justification for summary punishment.

In the slave States such punishment was generally a whipping or flogging, often followed by tarring and feathering, inflicted upon abolitionists or any persons suspected of “tampering with the slaves,” or distributing “incendiary tracts.” In cases of a suspected conspiracy for an insurrection among the slaves the supposed leaders were often summarily punished, sometimes by the infliction of the death penalty.

Along the Mississippi River, the gamblers had aroused the resentment of the peace-loving portion of the community by their vices and excesses of various kinds. In many places they were able to bid defiance to the civil authorities and laugh at threats of enforcing the law against them. Here again the exigencies of the situation seemed to the people to justify the adoption of lynch-law. This case of the summary treatment of the gamblers may be regarded as a transition from the frontier type of lynch-law to the sporadic and epidemical type which later prevailed in the well settled States.

The author of a book published in London in 1837 wrote: “The Lynch-law, is not, properly speaking, an opposition to the established laws of the country, or, is at least, not contemplated as such by its adherents; but rather as a supplement to them,—a species of common law, which is as old as the country, and which, whatever may be the notion of ‘the learned in the law,’ has nevertheless been productive of some of the happiest results.”[^[168]]

In 1839, F. Marryat wrote: “The Lynch law of the present day, as practiced in the States of the West and South, may be divided into two different heads: the first is, the administration of it in cases in which the laws of the States are considered by the majority as not having awarded a punishment adequate, in their opinion, to the offence committed; and the other, when from excitement the majority will not wait for the law to act, but inflict the punishment with their own hands.”[^[169]]

Occasionally innocent persons suffered the violence of lynching mobs,[^[170]] and sometimes damages were secured through the courts for having suffered lynch-law. Cases of this nature were not uncommon in the early history of the operation of lynch-law in Virginia,[^[171]] and in the later thirties similar suits were instituted in the courts. On September 4, 1835, certain inhabitants of Brownsville, Tennessee, constituted themselves a lynch court for the trial of Anson Moody, suspected of being a kidnapper, or slave stealer. They seized him in the dead of night, tried him, convicted him, and then proceeded to punishment by inflicting one hundred lashes with a “cowskin,” branding him on the cheek with the letter R and commanding him to leave the country. A jury in the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of West Tennessee gave him a verdict of $2,000 and costs against five of the members of the Lynch court.[^[172]]

In Yazoo, Mississippi, a Mr. Harris, for some real or supposed offense, was “severely lynched” by H. W. Dunn, C. W. Bain, and others. He prosecuted those two individuals for the outrage, and the case was tried in the circuit court of Yazoo County. The jury returned a verdict for the plaintiff of $20,000.[^[173]]

Two young men in Fayette County, Tennessee, were sentenced to three months’ imprisonment and to pay a fine of $50 each for assisting to ride John T. Foster on a rail. The said Foster died in consequence of the injuries he received during the outrage.[^[174]]

Sherman Thompson and Samuel Thompson, of Meriden, Connecticut, were sentenced to pay a fine of $20 each and to suffer imprisonment in the common jail for the term of six months for having participated in an outrage upon the Rev. Mr. Ludlow in October, 1837.[^[175]]

The Grand Jury of Alton, Illinois, found bills of indictment against a number of individuals concerned in the affair of November 7, 1837, when Lovejoy was killed, but the suits were evidently not pushed against them. In the trial of Rock, one of the assailants, which came up before the municipal court, the jury returned a special verdict that the defendant, in their opinion, was guilty of the various charges in the indictment, but that they return him not guilty on a question of jurisdiction.[^[176]]

Previous to 1840 the verb lynch was occasionally used to include capital punishment, but the common and general use was to indicate a personal castigation of some sort. “To lynch” had not then undergone a change in meaning and acquired the sense of “to put to death.”[^[177]] Webster’s Dictionary, edition of 1848, gives: “Lynch, v. t. To inflict pain, or punish, without the forms of law, as by a mob, or by unauthorized persons,” and “Lynched, pp. Punished or abused without the forms of law.” These same definitions still stand in the edition of 1876. It was not until a time subsequent to the Civil War that the verb lynch came to carry the idea of putting to death. Men were punished with death “by Lynch-law” and “by order of Judge Lynch,” but it is so stated in every such case that death was inflicted.

A few typical instances of the use of the word will illustrate the point. The St. Louis Bulletin, November 21, 1835, contained the following item: “Fuller and Bridges, the men suspected of having kidnapped Major Dougherty’s slaves ... were soundly flogged, or in other words—Lynched, and set on the opposite side of the river, with the positive assurance that, if they were again found within the limits of the State of Missouri, their fate should be death by hanging.”[^[178]]

Niles’ Register for December 5, 1835 (49: 228) heads a paragraph taken from the Louisiana Advertiser “More Lynching.” The paragraph tells of the murder of John W. Brock by John Joseph Short, who was “tried in a summary manner, and executed, by hanging.”

Under the title “Lynchers Lynched” the following language was used in the Liberator for September 24, 1836 (6: 155): “A party of from 6 to 12 persons proceeded to the house of Judge Bermudez last night ... their object being, as it is supposed, to assault or Lynch the Judge.”

The following passage is from the Liberator, August 17, 1838 (8: 131): “Lynching. A man named John Miles, who hails from Cincinnati, received 100 lashes in Adams county, Mississippi, for endeavoring to entice negroes away.”

Under the heading “Horrible Lynching” the following item, taken from the Southern Mississippi Sun of the 19th ult., appears in Niles’ Register for December 14, 1839 (57: 256): “Crook and Carter who were confined in the jail of Scott county for murder, have been taken by force from prison by some of the citizens of that county and hung! It will be recollected that they once made their escape from the jail and were retaken.—They were brought to Rankin county two or three weeks since for trial, but were remanded for want of some testimony. The people have taken the law into their own hands, and executed them without a trial.”

The ordinary use of the term at this time was very well stated by Philip Hone when he wrote in his diary on August 2, 1835: “A terrible system prevails in some of the Southern and Western States, which consists in ... beating, tarring and feathering, and in some cases hanging the unhappy object of their vengeance, and this is generally called ‘Lynch’s Law.’”[^[179]]

Instances may be cited showing that the term continued to be used in this way down to 1860. Niles’ Register for August 24, 1844 (66: 428) has this paragraph: “Judge Lynch. Four men, Rea, Mitchell, White and Jones, were tried and condemned before his honor, Chief Justice Lynch, on the 16th inst. at South Sulphur, Texas, for killing two men and one boy of the Delaware tribe of friendly Indians. They were executed under said sentence, the next day, in the presence of a large number of persons.”

In the year 1845 there were some lawless proceedings in Scott County, Missouri. Niles’ Register for July 26, 1845 (68: 325) describes the occurrence in the following way: “A party of men ... were charged with burning the houses, stocks, etc. and doing other injuries to a man named Lane. Some of his neighbors collected and caught several of the persons charged, lynched them, and ordered them to leave the county, which they did. A few days ago, they returned with a considerable party and avowed their determination to drive out or be avenged on Lane and those who had assisted to lynch and drive them away.”

The following item is taken from the St. Louis Reveille for October 2, 1845: “It is reported that the two men named Redman, brothers, with five others, were recently arrested in the vicinity of Davenport, charged with the murder of Colonel Davenport. Suspicion was strong as to their guilt. We have heard rumors that Lynch law had been inflicted upon both the Redmans since their arrest—that they both were hung.”[^[180]]

Niles’ Register for January 17, 1846 (69: 320) gives the following: “Lynching in Florida. A man by the name of Yeoman, accused of being a noted slave stealer—having been discharged by Judge Warren, of Baker County, Georgia, on a writ of habeas corpus ... on his arrival at Jefferson County, Florida, ninety citizens assembled and took a formal vote, which stood 67 for and 23 against hanging him. He was executed accordingly at 12 o’clock, on the 2d inst.”[^[181]]

In 1855 several negroes were summarily executed by mobs in Tennessee. The Liberator gives an account of these occurrences under the heading, “Hanging Negroes in Tennessee by Judge Lynch’s Code.”[^[182]]

In the Liberator, January 18, 1856 (p. 12), it is stated that “Judge Thomas Clingman, of Carroll county, Missouri, was murdered, about the middle of October, by one of his field slaves. The murderer was instantly hung by Lynch law.”

The Liberator, May 2, 1856 (p. 72), contains this paragraph, taken from the Western Herald: “Lynch Law in Virginia.—A man named William Hornbeck, living in Lewis County, Virginia, for the alleged ill-treatment of his family, was lynched by the young men in the neighborhood, one night last week.—Stripped of his clothing, rode on a rail, made to run through a briar patch, a stout paddle used to keep him going, and a coat of tar and feathers applied.”

The Liberator, December 4, 1857 (p. 196) copies the following account of the manner in which an abolitionist was lynched in Mississippi: “... A crowd took him to the woods, told him to strip, carried to a hollow and tied around a tree. He was then told what was their intention: to lynch him until he told something. The lashing was commenced by two who used straps fastened to sticks about 10 in. long....”

The same issue of the Liberator contains the following: “Lynch Law Proceedings.—In Barton County, Southwestern Missouri, great excitement has recently existed on account of the doings of a set of lawless wretches called ‘Slickers,’ who pretended to be after a horse-thief, but who ‘slicked’[^[183]] or barbarously beat several men until their lives were despaired of, and when women interfered, some were badly beaten and others violated....”

The following paragraph appeared in the Liberator, December 31, 1860 (p. 211): “Lynch Law Again.—Two white men named Waters and a mulatto named Wilson, at Mosely Hall, a village in North Carolina, were arrested a few days ago for hurraing for Lincoln and the Abolitionists and severely beating a citizen who remonstrated with them. They were immediately tried by a jury, who ordered them to be whipped, and to have their heads shaved. The verdict was carried out on the spot.”