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.”
The use of the word lynch in a story entitled “Jack Long; or lynch-law and vengeance,” which appeared in the American Whig Review for February, 1845, purporting to be a true story of frontier life in Shelby County, Texas, fully bears out the assertion that “to lynch” was generally understood at that time to mean to whip or to maltreat. According to the story a band of men calling themselves “Regulators,” led by a ruffian, terrorized the county. Once they lynched, that is, lashed to a tree, whipped and beat, Jack Long, leaving him for dead. He recovered and left the county in obedience to their orders, but later came back and shot all but two of the “Regulators.”
It should be said, however, that the instances of the application of lynch-law which are given in Niles’ Register and the Liberator from 1830 to 1860 show an increase in the severity of the punishment administered. As the slavery controversy went on and the breach widened between the North and the South, it was but natural that such should be the case. Many people in the South felt that no punishment was quite severe enough for an abolitionist. Crimes committed by negroes were also treated with greater severity. The following extract from a private letter, dated Houston, Texas, August 23, 1860, to a friend in Hartford, Connecticut, expresses a sentiment felt at that time in many sections of the South: “Tell your abolition friends to go on and soon they will have the pleasure of seeing the negro reduced to such a state of hopeless bondage that they may well pity them. I solemnly declare that to-day the negro is not as free as he was two or five years ago; and why? Simply because his master has been goaded on to desperation by incendiary acts and speeches. Now he fears the negro, and binds him down as you would a savage animal. One year ago, all was peace and quietness here. The negro was allowed to go out, to have dances and frolics; to-day one dare not show his head after nine o’clock in the evening. Seven companies of patrols are organized and guard the city each night, sixteen horse-patrol scour the country around. Forty-eight vigilance men say live, banish or die, as the proof may go to show. And so it is all over the country. Men are hung every day by the decision of planters, lawyers, judges and ministers. It is no hot impetuous act, but cool, stern justice. It is the saving of wife and daughter, mother and sister from the hand of desecration. It is the stopping of scenes that would make the Druses and Turks blush for shame.”[184]
At the time this letter was written, and during the three years preceding, there was a great deal of excitement in Texas. Vigilance societies were in active operation against desperadoes and abolitionists. In 1857 a vigilance committee in the “upper country,” as it was then called, was “raking the country fore and aft and swinging every horse-thief and murderer,” that could be found. A traveler saw twelve bodies suspended from one tree and on another tree five.[185] In the summer of 1860 there was an insurrection and conspiracy in Dallas, Ellis, Tarrant and Denton counties, in northern Texas. The three ringleaders, Sam, Cato, and Patrick, were hung by a vigilance committee on July 24. Twenty-two insurrectionists in all were said to have been hanged.[186] This condition of affairs must be taken into consideration in connection with the statements made in the above letter and the fears and prejudice therein expressed.
When drawing any conclusions from the instances recorded in the newspapers as to the history of lynch-law during this period, there is another fact to be kept in mind. During the later years the facilities for obtaining news were greatly increased; the means of communication between different parts of the country were very much improved and the number of newspapers published had rapidly increased. There were no doubt many cases of the administration of summary justice in the remote districts during the thirties and the early forties which never came to the notice of either the Liberator or Niles’ Register. There is, however, abundant evidence to make the conclusion a safe one that lynch-law was more and more resorted to during this period and that the punishments administered under that name by vigilance committees and mobs came to be more and more severe, death being frequently inflicted during the later years.
The Parkville (Mo.) Democrat made the following statement in the year 1856: “Deeds of daring and outrages perpetrated by negroes, are constantly becoming more frequent. We hope that the proper authorities will see to it that all such cases are punished to the extent of the law.”[187] The Liberator for May 2, 1856 (p. 72) contains an item which reads in this way: “In Hancock County, La., Samuel L. Watson, a negro overseer, whipped one of the negroes under him, and a few days after, the negro caught him in a field and beat him with a club till he died. The tragedy closed in the usual way, by the summary hanging of the negro by the populace.” There are indications, therefore, that crime was on the increase among the negroes at this time and that the whites had cause for inflicting more rigorous punishment.
The following editorial appeared in the Liberator, December 19, 1856 (p. 204): “A record of the cases of ‘Lynch Law’ in the Southern States reveals the startling fact, that within twenty years, over three hundred white persons have been murdered upon the accusation—in most cases unsupported by legal proof—of carrying among slave-holders arguments addressed expressly to their own intellects and consciences, as to the morality and expediency of slavery.” If this figure may be accepted as reliable for the whites, it is within the truth to say that a considerably larger number of negroes met with summary capital punishment during the various insurrection excitements which occurred.
The summary execution of negroes did not, however, become a serious evil previous to the Civil War. So long as the negroes were valuable as slaves, it was a direct economic loss to the slave-holder if an able-bodied slave were put to death. In general, it was only in cases of real or supposed conspiracy against the whites, or in cases of insurrection, that the negroes were killed in a summary manner. Such was the case in Virginia at the time of the Nat Turner insurrection; such was the case in Mississippi in 1835 when it was discovered that the Murrell gang had laid plans for a general uprising among the slaves. A similar condition of affairs existed in northern Texas in 1860, when it was thought that strychnine had been distributed among the negroes and they had been instructed to put it in the wells and in the food of their masters.
Damages were sometimes claimed by owners for the loss of their slaves through illegal procedure. A suit was instituted in the year 1857 in the Jefferson Circuit Court of Kentucky against the city of Louisville for the value of the slaves George, Bill, and Jack, the murderers of the Joyce family. George and Bill had been hung by an infuriated mob, and Jack had cut his own throat in jail, in order to escape the fate which befell his companions. $1,500 each was claimed as damages by the owners of the negroes. The Louisville Courier in commenting upon the case said the suit would be of interest and importance, involving some delicate principles of law.[188] In 1858 a vigilance committee was established in Shelby County, Kentucky, whose method of procedure was described as follows: “They order white men and free negroes who have been concerned in evil deeds, to leave the county within three days. Any property belonging to a white man is to be appraised by three disinterested persons, and the price paid, after such person has been directed to leave the county. Slaves who are vicious must be removed, also, from Shelby county, by their masters.”[189] The property right in the slaves was generally recognized in cases where they committed offenses against a neighbor or a neighbor’s slaves. A common way of settling such matters was for a number of the planters to meet together and decide upon the amount of damages to be paid and what should constitute an equitable settlement, without going through any formal legal procedure. In Louisiana a tribunal formed in this way tried and gave sentence of death upon two negroes for violating the person of a young white girl on Christmas eve, 1856.[190]
An examination of the files of the Liberator shows that, during the ten years 1830–1840, in cases where masters, overseers, or mistresses were murdered by slaves, the law was allowed to take its course almost without exception. The same is true in the case of rape committed upon white women by negroes. The record stands, three slaves and one free negro legally executed for rape and two slaves legally executed for attempted rape. There are some instances reported of summary punishment, not death, being administered to negroes for inducing white girls to run away with them, or for living with white women.
There were also three instances of burning negroes at the stake during this period. These cases have been described above: one was the burning of two slaves near Mobile, Alabama, for murdering two children; another was the burning of the free mulatto at St. Louis for killing an officer; and the other was the burning of a slave in Arkansas for the murder of his master.
For the ten years 1850–1860, the record is somewhat different. Out of forty-six negroes put to death for the murder of owners or overseers, twenty were legally executed and twenty-six were summarily executed. Of the latter, one was a female slave who was taken from the constable and hanged upon a tree for the crime of beating her mistress to death, and another was a negro woman who was burned to death for poisoning her master. Eight of the remaining twenty-four negroes were summarily executed by being burned at the stake. For the crime of rape upon white women, three negroes were legally executed, and for attempted rape two were legally executed; while twelve negroes were more or less brutally put to death by mobs for having committed the crime. Of the latter, four were burned at the stake, three of whom had committed the double crime of rape and murder. Some other instances of rape and of attempted rape are reported, but no statement is made as to the manner or the nature of the punishment inflicted.
It cannot be said, however, that these cases of the infliction of capital punishment upon negroes without process of law were anything more than sporadic and isolated cases. They were scarcely more than local in their influence. The most important thing brought to light by the above comparison of the two ten-year periods is the tendency, in the later period, toward less reliance on legal procedure and toward greater readiness on the part of the people to take matters into their own hands. The newspapers in the fifties not only frequently excused summary procedure but often openly advocated it. One instance only will be cited and it is from a southern newspaper. In 1856, a Mr. Pearce, residing in Morgan County, Georgia, attempted to give one of his negroes a flogging for some misdemeanor. The negro picked up an ax and at one blow split his master’s head open. He then fled. While he was still at large the Madison Messenger printed the following: “Beyond doubt he will be captured before many hours. If he is, although we admire submission to the course pointed out by the law of the land, in this case so much of the brute has been manifested, we should be glad to see our citizens rise en masse, and avail themselves of Lynch law, and hang the rascal without court or jury.”[191]
The preceding paragraphs have made it clear that negroes occasionally suffered death under lynch-law previous to the Civil War. It was not common, however, to characterize the summary hanging of negroes as lynching. Such occurrences were neither common nor general enough to give to the verb lynch its modern meaning, even though they had been always designated as lynchings.
It was with reference to the lawless proceedings which took place in the western and southwestern portions of the United States in the fifties that the term lynch was first used in its modern sense. The vigilance committees which were then common in that section of the country often hung desperadoes and horse-thieves, and frequently when such persons were thus executed they were said to have been lynched. A paragraph in the Liberator, November 9, 1860 (p. 179), has the heading: “Four men Lynched in Texas.” The paragraph contains a clipping from a Texas paper describing the circumstances under which four men were found one morning hung in the public square of a town in Navarro County, and refers to the “many accounts of lynchings in Texas.”
Howitt’s Journal for February 12, 1848 (3: 109), contains an article entitled “American Lynching—The Desperadoes of the South-West.” The article is really a review of a book published under the title “The Desperadoes of the South-West,” which, according to the reviewer, gives a picture of the state of society in that section of the United States. Quotations from the book are given in which the author outlines the way the West was settled up and the difficulty of keeping prisoners until a regular trial could be had, and the exasperating delays and postponements brought about by pettifogging lawyers. The author describes the operation of lynch-law at that time in the following words:
“Then, after all other means of redress have been exhausted, the honest, hard-working portion of the community organize themselves into a community of lynchers, elect a captain, appoint a committee, and, as they say, ‘take justice into their own hands.’... The company of lynchers once formed, they proceed to the execution of summary justice. It is easy to see what sad work they must make of it, rendered furious, as they have been, by multitudinous wrongs. And accordingly, they whip, bang, torture, burn, flay alive; and however they may begin, end at last by acting like a band of savages. What else could be expected of such men, however honest, however merciful, stung to ungovernable rage by so many injuries, and now placed as judges in their own case, in a position beyond responsibility? By and by, the more cunning rogues take shelter under their protection, and bawl out the loudest for justice. Then the fruit of ruin is ripe. Men accuse their enemies of the most appalling crimes, in order to glut feelings of private revenge. A hypocritical zeal for honesty becomes the cloak for rapine and murder. Vengeance supplants law, and brute force and fury trample down all show of order.... But the force is never wholly on one side only. The lynchers, or ‘regulators,’ as they are often called, soon find that their foes organize also; arm themselves, and prepare for systematic resistance, under the denomination of ‘moderators.’ Then commences a guerilla warfare as dark and deadly in its hate, as the old English contest between the Red and the White Roses. It is a war of utter extermination.”
Chambers’ Journal for February 17, 1855 (23: 101) contains an article entitled “American Jottings. Eccentricities in criminal jurisprudence—Lynch Law.” The following quotations are both illustrative and instructive:
“A respect for law and order is as conspicuous in general circumstances in the greater part of the United States as it is in England. This much may be said without prejudice to the fact, that very strange things occasionally come to pass, particularly in the south and west, in violation of the regular course of justice.... It is doubtless the perfunctoriness in the administration of justice which at times arouses the indignation of the public and causes them to have recourse to what is called Lynch Law, in which respect American society, in the more newly settled parts of the country, may be said to be at the stage of the rough populace of Edinburgh when they interrupted the ordinary course of justice, and laid violent hands on Captain Porteous. It is thus interesting to note how long it is before a people acquire the habit of implicit submission to the maxims of law—the time, of course, being proportioned according as the administrators of that law are in themselves unworthy of respect. The ancient venality of judges and juries in Scotland, now the theme of romance, would appear to be still matched on the banks of the Mississippi, and sometimes, as popular feeling inclines, it leads to similar results.... Objectionable and dangerous as lynching may be considered in the abstract there can be little doubt of its propriety practically in certain conditions of American society. When judges and courts are leagued with desperadoes, or when peculiar difficulties stand in the way of a prompt administration of justice, the public, in self-defense, feel impelled to interfere. At the settlement of California, and before society had time to establish regular tribunals, or to give due efficacy to the law, life and property would not have been safe for a moment, unless a Vigilance Committee had charged itself with the duty of lynching. Even when, in such newly opened territories, judges are appointed, only a small advance is made towards a vigorous legal administration. Of American judges it needs to be recollected that their position is often not such as to command respect. A judge of the supreme courts in England is a being aloof in every respect from the people, and he scrupulously abstains from interference personally in matters which might by possibility come before him in his judicial capacity. An American judge, on the other hand, is not dissevered from the ordinary action of society; and if he looks forward to a governorship, or some other high function, he requires to cultivate a certain popularity.”