"Lynch law" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Dr. Opimian. And, you may add, Vandals dominating over society throughout half America, who deal with free speech and even the suspicion of free thought just as the Inquisition dealt with them, only substituting Lynch law and the gallows for a different mockery of justice, ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... himself openly, for the cost of such action would be too high. On the other hand, from my knowledge of Kirby's desperate character, and previous exploits, I seriously doubted the efficacy of threatening him with lynch law. He would be far more liable to defy a mob than yield to its demands. Yet memory of those two helpless girls—more particularly that one over whose unconsciousness there hung the possibility of slavery—urged ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... militia. It would need a state constabulary, subject to its control and numerous enough for all ordinary emergencies. Such bodies of state police, efficiently used, could not only prevent the lawlessness which frequently accompanies strikes, but it could gradually stamp out lynch law. Lynching, which is the product of excited local feeling, will never be stopped by the sheriffs, because they are afraid of local public opinion. It will never be stopped by the militia, because the militia is slow to arrive and is frequently undisciplined. But it can be stopped ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... Hays and Humphreys, finding that the carpenters were as bitter toward me as the apprentices, and that the latter were probably set on by the former, I found my only chances for life was in flight. I succeeded in getting away, without an additional blow. To strike a white man, was death, by Lynch law, in Gardiner's ship yard; nor was there much of any other law toward colored people, at that time, in any other part of Maryland. The whole sentiment of Baltimore ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... think of that Apache devil having the joy of you all this time, watching you grow back to health, taking care of you, carrying you, it makes me feel like a cave man. I could kill him with a club! Thank heaven, the lynch law can hold in this forsaken spot! And there isn't a man in the country but will back me up, not a jury that ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... devils cheered like madmen. I was so aroused that I felt that ecclesiastical lynch law should be applied to any minister whose utterances caused such jubilee among the ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... recently acquired territories, and built Virginia City, the capital of Montana, with the gold derived from the alluvium of a river channel which they excavated; and its inhabitants were the founders of an institution called the Vigilance Committee, with "Lynch law," and by it ruled supremely for many years. But their surface diggings, by the manual operations alone of multitudes, were soon exhausted in every direction, and then their energies and powers of invention were dedicated to discover and explore deeper and more permanent depositions, along ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various
... with the full strength of his historic sheet was kidnapped. The prosecuting attorney was shot in the court room by a former convict who afterward was found dead in his cell. There were moments when it looked as if excited mobs would reinstitute the lynch law ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... robbery and violence could not be suppressed. We have all heard of the way in which the decent element finally got together, formed special laws and executed offenders in short order. No one of course approves lynch law in the abstract, but when the circumstances of the case are taken into consideration, it is difficult to condemn very severely the men who made it possible for San Francisco to become ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... one feature in the administration of justice by an English court which is unhappily too often overlooked in the lynch law of schoolboys, and that is the principle that a man shall be considered innocent until he has been clearly proved guilty. Smarting under a sense of shame which was entirely unmerited, every boy sought eagerly for some object on which to vent his ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... my section are able to cope with crime, however treacherous and defiant, through their courts of justice; and I plead for the masterful sway of a righteous and exalted public sentiment that shall class lynch law in the category ...
— The Future of the American Negro • Booker T. Washington
... Bugle at once interviewed him about his plans and intentions, and Governor Coolidge talked very strongly on the subject of lynch law. He said that it was entirely wrong, unworthy even of barbarians, and was not to be endorsed or palliated in either principle or practice. He deplored the frequency of its operations in New Mexico, and emphatically declared his intention of stamping ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... within one mile of Castleisland, and because he paid his rent on getting a reduction of thirty per cent., he was taken out and shot in the thigh. His wife, who was only three days after her confinement, pleaded for mercy on this account, but these lynch law authorities were deaf to the appeal for mercy, and she did not recover the shock of the entry of these 'moonlight' Thugs. This man could have identified his assailants, but he did ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... was attended with difficulty, and had to be constantly delayed. 'It was hob or nob whether he should have been brought alive through such multitudes of unruly people as did exclaim against him;' and to escape Lynch law a whole week had to be given to the transit. 'The fury and tumult of the people was so great' that Waad had to set watches, and hasten his prisoner by a stage at a time, when the mob was not expecting him. The ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... their children greater educational advantages than are offered in the South is also impelling. The belief that race prejudice is less strong in the North is another inducement to leave the South, for "Jim Crow" cars and political disfranchisement have irritated many. Finally the dread of lynch law may be mentioned as a motive for migration, though its actual importance may be doubted. Not all the negroes who have moved to the North have remained there. Many do not allow for the higher cost of food ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson |
