In these extracts there is presented very clearly the character of the illegal and summary proceedings to which the term lynch-law was generally and commonly applied in the fifties. The quoted passages likewise indicate the attitude of public sentiment at that time toward such proceedings and the frequency of their occurrence. The tendency for vigilance societies organized in the interests of law and order to pass quickly into the control of the lawless and the vicious, or for counter-organizations to be formed by the lawless element in the population, is also given due prominence.
The Vigilance Committee movement in the West attained its highest state of organization and effectiveness under the San Francisco Committees of Vigilance of 1851 and of 1856. The discovery of gold in 1848 had brought to California in a few years men from all parts of the world. National characteristics came into conflict. Mexicans, Frenchmen, Irishmen, and Americans were suddenly thrown together in a virgin territory. The establishment of civil government and judicial tribunals could not keep pace with the rapid increase in population. When such civil government was begun, the control which the vicious and corrupt element in the population was able to exercise over it rendered it ineffectual. It was a time of social irresponsibility, and serious crimes were of common occurrence. Out of five hundred and thirty-five homicides which occurred in California during the year 1855, there were but seven legal executions.[192] It was under these conditions and on the ground that some such organization was necessary to bring about order and security, that the two San Francisco Vigilance Committees were organized. “Each hanged four men and banished about thirty. Each rescued two prisoners from the county jail by means of surprise parties.... The crimes committed by the victims of the first tribunal were against property and life, while those of the second were strongly tinctured with political immorality.... The reformation of 1851 was superficial and temporary; that of 1856 radical and permanent.”[193] On the whole, though the measures taken seem extreme, these committees accomplished their end remarkably well, and it is to their credit that they promptly disbanded when their time of usefulness had passed.
Committees of Vigilance were formed elsewhere than in the city of San Francisco, however. Many places in California during the early history of the State had similar committees, though outside of San Francisco they were usually organized only temporarily to deal with particular cases. Similar “Popular Tribunals” existed in Utah, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado during the early period of their settlement. Bancroft says at the close of his first volume on Popular Tribunals: “I have given in this volume many examples of Popular Tribunals, but the half has not been told. It is safe to say that thus far in the history of these Pacific States far more has been done toward righting wrongs and administering justice outside the pale of law than within it.”
Further evidence of the prevalence of lynch-law during the colonization of the territory west of the Mississippi River is furnished by an editorial in the New York Times of March 19, 1864, written under the title “Judge Lynch.” The opening sentences are as follows: “Our fellow-citizens in the far West, in the mineral territories bordering upon the Rocky Mountains, and in those on the other side of the mountains, are holding Lynch courts in extraordinary number, and carrying out the decrees of that ferocious judge with unprecedented energy. Our latest files from the distant regions of Idaho, Nevada, Utah, &c., contain accounts of executions in numbers that we think were never equalled even in the early days of California settlement, nor in any part of the West.” Then follows a recital of various instances, twenty or more robbers and murderers hung in Idaho Territory, four murderers hung by a “Citizens Association” in the Territory of Nevada, &c. It is stated that on Thursday of that week bills were passed in Congress enabling Nevada and two other Territories to form constitutions preparatory to their admission to the Union as States. As a condition to their admission an irrevocable ordinance was provided prohibiting slavery, and the writer of the editorial remarks, “we think lynching might have been added.”
Lynch-law prevailed to a large extent, also, during the border troubles attending the outbreak of the Civil War. Particularly was this the case in Kansas where, along with the guerrilla warfare that went on for a number of years, many instances of summary procedure occurred that may be properly classified under lynch-law. A correspondent of the New York Tribune in Lawrence, K. T., wrote on May 30, 1858: “There is a very general disposition to pass over the helplessly useless forms of Territorial law and corrupt Federal courts, and try these parties (i.e., horse-thieves) by Lynch law.”[194]
The lynch-law procedure of the fifties that was most commonly mentioned and described in the newspapers and periodicals was that that prevailed in the western part of the United States. Bodies of citizens, organized secretly or openly under the names of “vigilance committees,” “vigilance societies,” “vigilantes,” “regulators,” “law-and-order men,” “Citizens’ Associations,” &c., punished with summary severity horse-thieves, cattle-thieves, highway robbers, counterfeiters, burglars, and swindlers, as well as murderers. Certain rude forms of trial were generally observed, acquittals were rare but not entirely unknown, and the punishment was usually death by hanging. The frequency with which lynch-law was resorted to at this time is to be referred, both to the lack of a well established civil government, and to a doubt on the part of the people as to the adequacy of the ordinary legal machinery.
It was the use of the word lynching in connection with these summary proceedings against white men of desperate character, the criminals of the frontier region west of the Mississippi, during the period of settlement, that first gave to it its modern meaning of putting to death. After the Civil War, when the Southern States were being reconstructed and the whites were threatened with negro domination, summary practices were adopted against the negroes. The negro had ceased to be valuable as property and was looked upon as a dangerous political factor in the community; to take his life was thought to be the easiest and quickest way to dispose of him. The adoption of this plan in many parts of the South gave for the word lynching a new application. Since the Reconstruction Period, then, to lynch has generally meant to put to death. The infliction of any minor punishment without legal trial still constitutes lynch-law, but the simple term “lynching” usually implies capital punishment. It is in this sense that the term will be used throughout the remainder of this investigation.