Lynch-law an investigation into the history of lynching in the United States

Lynch-law; an investigation into the history of lynching in the United States

It has been said that our countrys 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 2punishment 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 3has 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. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 67353
Author: Cutler, James Elbert
Release Date: Feb 7, 2022
Format: eBook
Language: English
Publisher: Frank A. Munsey Company,1918
Publication Date: 1918
Publisher Country: United States