"Lynching" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... between, around and under the wagons to keep out of the range of his guns, which we succeeded in doing, for not a man was hit. Finally, two of the drivers succeeded in getting behind him and overpowered him. His brother bushwhackers were in for lynching him on the spot, but wiser council prevailed, and his disposal was left to Mr. Perry who sentenced him to be escorted back three miles from the corral and left to walk the remaining two miles to Fort Carney alone. He covered less than a mile when he was ...
— Dangers of the Trail in 1865 - A Narrative of Actual Events • Charles E Young
... Lynching: Lynching is only permissible when the incident happens in the days when Lynch Law was the only law, i.e., in the early days of the Far West when the Vigilantes were the only effective ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... assertions. They lashed themselves into a state in which they really believed, for the time being, that Mead's continued existence would be a peril to themselves and a danger to the community. Suggestions of lynching were hazarded and quickly taken up and discussed. There were many who thought this the best thing that could be done, and a little group of these got together in the coolest corner of the White Horse saloon and formed themselves into a secret vigilance committee. ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... heroic dignity and beauty to the obscure smuggler, George Robertson. It is the happy privilege of the true romancer to find history his handmaid, and to make obscure events immortal, whether they be the scuffles of Greeks and barbarians outside a small town in Asia Minor, or the lynching of a dissolute adventurer by an Edinburgh ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... released her by-and-by—and spread the news, which was natural. They raised the country with lynching intentions, but the bird had flown. The young wife shut herself up in her father's house; he shut himself up with her, and thenceforth would see no one. His pride was broken, and his heart; so he wasted ...
— A Double Barrelled Detective Story • Mark Twain
... the first daily paper in the West to illustrate a local feature. During the summer of 1859 a man by the name of Jackson was lynched by a mob in Wright county, and Gov. Sibley called out the Pioneer Guards to proceed to the place where the lynching occurred and arrest all persons connected with the tragedy. The Pioneer Guards was the crack military company of the state, and the only service any of its members ever expected to do was in the ballroom ...
— Reminiscences of Pioneer Days in St. Paul • Frank Moore
... his great influence against the lynching evil and in an article in the North American Review for October, 1905, pronounced lynching "a blot on our American civilization."[509] It should be stated too that in Catholic countries of Central and South America we rarely ever hear ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... centuries. Its zenith came in Boxer times: White supremacy was all but world-wide, Africa was dead, India conquered, Japan isolated, and China prostrate, while white America whetted her sword for mongrel Mexico and mulatto South America, lynching her own Negroes the while. Temporary halt in this program was made by little Japan and the white world immediately sensed the peril of such "yellow" presumption! What sort of a world would this be if yellow ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... "laid close" and waited to escape from that part of the country, so that I might not compromise Mr. Dansley. He was already under surveillance by slave-owners, and was in danger of being driven from the country; in fact, threats of lynching had been made ...
— Biography of a Slave - Being the Experiences of Rev. Charles Thompson • Charles Thompson
... of the lynchings in the South have indicated a barbarous feeling toward Negroes, Southern white men here and there, as well as newspapers, have spoken out strongly against lynching. I quote from the address of the Rev. Mr. Vance, of Nashville, Tennessee, delivered before the National Sunday School Union, in Atlanta, not long since, ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... Another case of attempted lynching was witnessed this evening near Kernville. The man was observed stealing valuable articles from the houses. He was seized by a mob, a rope was placed around his neck and he was jerked up into the air. The rope was tied to the tree and his would-be lynchers left him. Bystanders cut him down before ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... inscriptions of picture writing, up to the modern inventions in electricity, the complex constitutions of government, and the classic productions of literary art; and as revealing its possibilities finally in the brutal acts of the mob, the crimes of a lynching party, and the deeds of collective righteousness performed by our humane and ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... care of the wounded and prisoners. And now, my dear Sinclair, I suggest that you get the passengers into the cars, and go on as soon as those rails are spiked. When they realize the situation, some of them will feel precious ugly, and you know we can't have any lynching." ...
— The Denver Express - From "Belgravia" for January, 1884 • A. A. Hayes
... don't think they are any worse than the white people. I don't believe, if we had the power, we would do any more lynching, burning, and murdering ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... certain phases of southwestern society which it is most important for us to perceive and to understand. The influence of slavery, the prevalence of feuds, the conditions and the circumstances that make lynching possible—all these things are set before us clearly and without comment. It is for us to draw our own moral, each for himself, as we do when we see ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... hoity-toity young woman; Babsy's rival in good looks and her superior in tidiness] They shoot for the love of it. Look at them at a lynching. Theyre not content to hang the man; but directly the poor creature is swung up they all shoot him full of holes, wasting their cartridges that cost solid money, and pretending they do it in horror of his wickedness, though half of them would have a rope ...
— The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet • George Bernard Shaw
... Life on the Mississippi always call up to my mind the most vivid pictures—pictures that are eternally unforgettable. The memorable scene in which Colonel Sherburne quells the mob and his scathing remarks upon lynching; the reality and the pathos of the feuds of those Kentucky families, the Shepherdsons and the Grangerfords, shooting each other down at sight in vindication of honour and pride of race; the lordly life ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... not the aggregate of enjoyment of a score of cannibals outweigh the suffering of the one man whom they have sacrificed to their appetite, or the delirious excitement with which a brutal crowd witnesses a lynching overbalance the pain of their solitary victim? Yet our souls revolt against such things. We cry, ruat caelum, fiat justitia! Justice is prior to all expediency! Is this irrational, or can it be ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... it was, stumbling awkwardly over his unaccustomed skirts, shouting womanly imprecations upon his own head in a weird falsetto to sustain his part, and to the roaring note of a crowd bent upon lynching him, that the original discoverer of Herakleophorbia IV. proceeded down the corridor of Chesterfield Mansions, mingled with that inflamed disorderly multitude, and passed out altogether from the thread of events that constitutes ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... that burst from a clear sky, apparently without cause, and the great final tornado. There had been cause enough for that. Why was it, mused Mr Ferguson, that every girl in every country town in every county of England who had ever recited 'Curfew shall not ring tonight' well enough to escape lynching at the hands of a rustic audience was seized with the desire to come to London and ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... made them, either, although Bud said he could sew, and insisted upon trying. He cut up several yards of cloth, and at the end of the week, when we saw the product of his needle, he narrowly escaped lynching. If Lilian had not interceded for Uncle Bud, of whom she is very fond, I'm afraid we'd have no little Buddy now. No, we sent down to Omaha for a dressmaker and boarded her in town until she had Lil all fixed up, as becomes the heiress of the La ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... a bad way. Through some sad, sudden indiscretion, he had tackled a porcupine and paid the penalty. His mouth, jaws and face, neck and legs, were bristling with quills. He was sick and emaciated. He could not have lasted many days longer, and Skookum's summary lynching was ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... the mob, and whenever it showed signs of flagging a louder cry from some quarter would renew its strength, and a blast of shouts and screams, a rush of struggling men toward the one who had uttered the cry, and a waving of fists, arms, and hats, suggested visions of lynching and ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... the lynchings are even chargeable to rape. The causes include the whole catalogue of offenses, serious and trifling, from the committal of murder to jostling against a white man on the street. The attempt to show that lynching and rape are coextensive ...
— A Review of Hoffman's Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 1 • Kelly Miller
... "if anything like that starts, Belsher and Hallstock and Ravick won't be the only casualties. Between Ravick's goons and Hallstock's police, they have close to a hundred men. I won't deny that they could be cleaned out, but it wouldn't be a lynching. It would be a ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... of the hardest tasks among us is the suppression of lynching. In the very nature of things, as conditions now exist, there cannot be such a thing as a trial of a charge of outrage by a Negro man upon a white woman. Often in cases of that nature the crime charged is disproved, by proving another offense involving collusion. Well, no lawyer ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... frenzy commits a homicide: they can do no more to the brutal buck negro who ravishes and murders a white babe—so Judge Lynch takes cognizance of his case and builds for him a beautiful bonfire; but the average lynching appeals no more strongly to the savage instincts of man than does a hanging by the sheriff. Then, it may be asked, why do lynchings occur. I have treated this subject at considerable length in former ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... his proposal to give Texas over to England. It might not be safe for that little fact generally to be known in Texas as it is known to me. We will keep it secret. You might ask Mr. Van Zandt if he would value a seat in the Senate of these United States, rather than a lynching rope! So much do I value your honorable acquaintance with Mr. Polk and with Mr. Van Zandt, my dear lady, that I do not go to the latter and demand his signature in the name of his republic—no, I merely suggest to you that did you ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... Carolina Literary and Commercial Journal,' of January 20, 1838, published at Elizabeth City, devotes a column and a half to a description of the lynching, tarring, feathering, ducking, riding on a rail, pumping, &c., of a Mr. Charles Fife, a merchant of that city, for the crime of 'trading with negroes.' The editor informs us that this exploit of vandalism was performed very deliberately, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... Socialist Party repeats its declaration of support of all economic organizations of the working class and declares the lynching, deportation, prosecution and persecution of the Industrial Workers of the World is an attack upon every toiler in America, and we now call attention to the fact that the charges of incendiarism, the burning of crops ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... had no thought of making a run for it to a district where he was still unknown. Why should he? There was not a guilty thought in his mind, unless it were the recollection of the trick he had played on the lynching party to save ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... never draw another glass o' beer in this camp. You know me, lads, an' I never draw except fer business. Shut your mouth, Lacy; don't touch that gun, you fool! I am in charge here—this is my job; and if there is going to be any lynching done, it will be after you get me. Stand back now; all of you—yes, get out into that barroom. I mean you, Mike! This man is my prisoner, and, by God, I'll defend him. Ay! I'll do more, I'll let him defend himself. Here, Westcott, pick up your gun on the floor. Now stand here with me! We're going ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... ex-bride's feet became badly frozen. Public opinion in this case was strongly roused against the husband and probably if there had been a tree handy he would have been lynched. This would have been the first lynching recorded in Canada. The feeling of the Eskimo community was that, when the wife announced her intention of enforcing a divorce, the bounden duty of the husband was either to drive her himself in proper state to her father's door or to let her ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... administrator had been deducted, and even smiled when told of Bradley's reckless and almost criminal escapades. Henley had once remarked in his keenly observant way that Welborne, being the next of kin, would be glad to hear that his nephew had died with his boots on in some one of the lynching affairs to which Bradley was ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... list of battles in which he had fought, from the first Bull Run to the last siege of Richmond. Some farmer passing by handed a copy of this paper to Lizzie, adding that if there was any more treason-talk in this locality there was going to be a lynching bee. So Jimmie found his wife in tears again. She was absolutely determined that he should not go to that meeting. For three days she wept and argued with him, and for ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... gun, Hogboom." "Do you prefer drowning or lynching?" "Kill him quick, somebody." "Look pleasant, please, while the operator is working." "What do you charge for dying?" Oh, we guyed him good and plenty, which is a way they have at old Harvard and middle-aged Siwash and Infant South Dakota University ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... now to take seriously a duel between a slim man of near forty who had rarely fired a shot in sport, never in anger, and a stoutly built irascible Irishman, for whom a good shot meant lynching or lasting opprobrium. Visions of Bob Acres and Sir Lucius O'Trigger flit before us. We picture Tierney quoting "fighting Bob Acres" as to the advantage of a sideways posture; and we wonder whether the seconds, if only in regard for their own safety, did not omit to insert bullets. ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... this going to be dragged out?" asked the judge in disgust. "The worst lynching I ever see, that's what I call it! They ain't no justice in it—it's just plain torture." "Partner," declared Riley Sinclair, "I'm sure glad to see that you got a good appetite for a killing. But it's just come home to me that in spite of everything, this here gent might be innocent. ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... needed no championing, if they did—and other letters poured in calling for various expressions of popular disapproval, from simple boycott up through tarring and feathering to plain and elaborated—with gasoline and castration—lynching. The grass was a ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... is a shame, sir," he continued, "the way they are lynching the negroes around here. Have you read the Extra?" passing it over to me —"Another this morning at Cramptown. It's an infernal ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... he has been inoculated with new rascality by the mysterious crowd influence, but because his habitual rascality now has its only chance to function safely. In other words, the numskull is vicious, but a poltroon. He refrains from all attempts at lynching a cappella, not because it takes suggestion to make him desire to lynch, but because it takes the protection of a crowd to make him ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... Express—Necessity for it —Its Originator—The Firm of Majors, Russell, & Waddell—The Route— Organization—Its Paraphernalia—Daring Riders—J. G. Kelley's Story— Colonel Cody's Story—Incidents and Stories—Old Whipsaw and Little Cayuse, the Pawnee—Slade, the Desperado—The Lynching of Slade— ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... legal conditions existing in both Spain and Italy have developed among these peoples the idea of "self-help." They have taken law into their own hands, and, according to their lights and passions, have meted out their rude justice. Assassination has been defended in these countries, as lynching has been defended recently, as some will remember, by a most eminent American anarchist, the ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... to teach, And 'South-side' Gospels in your pulpits preach, Transfix the Law to ancient freedom dear On the sharp point of her subverted spear, And imitate upon her cushion plump The mad Missourian lynching from his stump; Or, in your name, upon the Senate's floor Yield up to Slavery all it asks, and more; And, ere your dull eyes open to the cheat, Sell your old homestead underneath your feet While such as these your loftiest outlooks hold, While truth and conscience with your ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... the syrup, Happy.) T'morrow's Sunday, so we'll have time t' burn. We'll dig up all the guns we can find, and catch up the orneriest cayuses in our strings, and have a real, old lynching bee—sabe?" ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... dangers of civilization. Occasional newspapers had filtered into the wild places and in the peaceful security of our tents we had read of frightful mining disasters in America, of unparalleled floods in France, of the clash and jangle of rival polar explorers, of disasters at sea, of rioting and lynching in Illinois. Automobile accidents were chronicled with staggering frequency, and there were murmurs of impending rebellions in India, political crises in England, feverish war talk in Germany, volcanic ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... good deal of the affair. I was charged with indifference, with cowardice, with venality. Some journals even declared that I had instigated the lynching and participated in it, and said that I ...
— The Spectre In The Cart - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page
... self-satisfaction, among those who had seen them, to the ever-surprising fact that our continent is apparently of no interest to Europe. There were some meagre New York stock-market quotations in the papers; a paragraph in fine print announced the lynching of a negro in Alabama; another recorded a coal- ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... he told his father; "he talked of nothing but lynching railroad magnates and destroying their property. He wants to blow up the Pacific Mail docks and burn the steamers ... to drop ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... of excuse. If we have bad laws, or if our good laws are not enforced; if corporations and capital are "tyrannous and strong;" if white men murder one another and black men outrage white women, all this is our own fault—the fault of those, among others, who seek redress or revenge by rioting and lynching. The people have always as good government, as good industrial conditions, as effective protection of person, property and liberty, as they deserve. They can have what ever they have the honesty to desire and the sense to set about getting in the right ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... in the back seat," she said. "They think there's going to be a lynching at Tascosa—that the mob is going to hang the Mexican who killed my brother. Are you going to let them ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... destroyed the ardor of the lynching party after a time, and they dispersed to their homes. Little was said of this expedition afterward, and it became quite impossible to find a man who would admit having joined it. For the story went the rounds of the mountain that there had been a mistake as to unfair dealing on the part of the ...
— 'way Down In Lonesome Cove - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... letters and memoranda to various members of The World staff in New York. None of these were ever sent through me, but it was a common thing for J. P. to say: "Have you got your writing pad with you? Just make a note: Indianapolis story excellent, insufficient details lynching, who wrote City Hall story? and give it to Thwaites and tell him to remind me of it ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland
... Twain), who happened to be in Vienna during these uproarious sittings of Parliament, and witnessed one of them, declared that the nearest approach to such a riot in his experience was the lynching of a man out West for stealing a horse—but even that was a mild scene compared to the proceedings ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 55, November 25, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... lynching in the South is carried on largely by the ignorant and baser elements of the white population. It is also well known that the chief method of religious influence and training of the black man and the ignorant white man is impulsive and emotional revivalism. It is a highly dangerous situation, ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... material taken from statistical reports. The author discusses such questions as the reliability of Negro laborers, the antagonism of the labor unions, housing conditions, and the like. Taking up the institution of lynching, Dean Brawley goes over old ground but gives striking facts to portray this blot on the American civilization. Then without showing any close connection between the two the author takes up Negro education since the Civil War. Here we see another failure to treat an important question intensively ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... "Poll Parrot." By the next morning the evidence collected seemed to amount to a certainty, and a crowd caught the Parrot with the intention of lynching him. He succeeded in breaking away from them and ran under the Dead Line, near where I was sitting in, my tent. At first it looked as if he had done this to secure the protection of the guard. The latter—a Twenty-Sixth Alabamian —ordered him out. ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... was full of the double lynching and the murder. Conservative editors wrote leaders about it in which they deplored the rashness of the hanging but warned the negroes that the only way to stop lynching was to quit the crimes of which they so often stood accused. But only in one little obscure sheet did an editor ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... horrified me. It made me doubt humanity," responded Cavanagh. "We of the North cry out against the South for lynching black rapers; but here, under our eyes, goes on an equally horrible display of rage over the mere question of temporary advantage, over the appropriation of free grass, which is a Federal resource—something which belongs neither to one claimant ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... expounded for the benefit of the lawyers and their clients, the malefactors, that a very large proportion of American murderers escape the proper penalty of their acts; and these dilatory and dubious judicial methods are undoubtedly one effective cause of the prevalence of lynching in the South. There is more to be said in favor of our civil than of our criminal courts. In spite of a good deal of corruption and of subserviency to special interests, the judges are usually honest men ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... from which I should in vain attempt to shut my eyes. But the summons has gone forth. The youthful champions of the rights of human nature have buckled and are buckling on their armor; and the scourging overseer, and the lynching lawyer, and the servile sophist, and the faithless scribe, and the priestly parasite, will vanish before them like Satan touched by the spear of Ithuriel. I live in the faith and hope of the progressive ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... honesty was the way in which he treated the question of negro-lynching in the South. This is delicate ground, and as I have been accused by a Southern newspaper most absurdly, as I am certain all reasonable Americans will agree, of attacking America and the American people because ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... believe it!" announced Jerry. "There've been too many German spy scares. They all turned out to be fakes. And, anyhow, there won't be any lynching." ...
— Ned, Bob and Jerry on the Firing Line - The Motor Boys Fighting for Uncle Sam • Clarence Young
... Mr. Mitchell answered. "A trial and a big funeral is glory for a negro, and the penitentiary means nothing to them but free board and clothes. I tell you, sheriff, lynching is the only thing ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... the indignant passengers were with difficulty prevented from lynching the wretch; but he fled into the woods, and there for a ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... herewith a report from the Secretary of State, with accompanying papers, touching the lynching in 1895 at Yreka, Cal., of Luis Moreno, a Mexican citizen, and the demand of the Mexican Government for an indemnity for ...
— Messages and Papers of William McKinley V.2. • William McKinley
... driven to an extremity, was clear to all; and in fact, since that editor could not be found, there was some talk about lynching the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... have not. You were afraid to. Why, good God! Cynthia Lennox, I don't know but you will stand in danger of lynching if people ever find this out, that you have taken in this child and kept her in this way—I don't know ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... of all this? The lynching would have been an atrocious injustice, but if you did not intend to hang me why should you have taken the trouble ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... slaves in the whole United States. It has been shown that the law of recapture and the penalties of rescue have been almost invariably executed. Count up all the cases of rescue of negroes in the north, and you can find in your newspapers more cases of unlawful lynching and murder of white men in the south. These cases have now become so frequent and atrocious, as to demand the attention of the general government. The same article of the constitution that secures the recapture of fugitives from service and justice, also secures ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... and his grandsons, and negro voting, and the huge lie of "equality" which our lips vociferate and our lives daily disprove. This took us comfortably away from weddings and cakes into the subject of lynching, my violent condemnation of which surprised him; for our discussion had led us over a wide field, and one fertile in well-known disputes of the evergreen sort, conducted by the North mostly with more theory than experience, and by ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... known and liked as Richardson; but not after public sentiment had been aroused as the Bulletin had aroused it. The crowds continued to gather. Several men made violent street-corner speeches. There was some talk of lynching. A storm of yes and no burst forth when the question was put. Bells rang. A great mob surged to the jail, were firmly met by a strong armed guard, and fell ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... your lynching bee. Commons, Ralston, Schwartz, you make a committee to raise enough money to send Mrs. Robins and the boy back to New Hampshire with the body. Here is ten to start with. They must leave this noon. Tom Weeks, you make the funeral arrangements. ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... don't take much stock in this lynching idea. Still, you can't tell. I don't know whether the police could help us much or not. It's a damned outrage. Cowperwood has a fair proposition. What's the matter ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... deal has been said and written lately about feuds and lynch-law in the districts around the lower Mississippi. The reports of recent lynching there have probably been very much exaggerated; and it would certainly be unfair to form a positive opinion about the matter without a thorough knowledge of all ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... as these. After their arrival the nightly proceedings at the Britannia bar and at the gambling hell behind it became more riotous than ever. Violent quarrels, frequently ending in bloodshed, were of constant occurrence. The more peaceable frequenters of the bar began to talk seriously of lynching the two strangers who were the principal promoters of disorder. Things were in this unsatisfactory condition when our evangelist, Elias B. Hopkins, came limping into the camp, travel-stained and footsore, with his spade strapped across ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the early days—" "Pshaw! this to-night wasn't anything! Why, once in a saloon in Arizona when I was there—" and so on, over and over again. Osterman solemnly asserted that he had seen a greaser sawn in two in a Nevada sawmill. Old Broderson had witnessed a Vigilante lynching in '55 on California Street in San Francisco. Dyke recalled how once in his engineering days he had run over a drunk at a street crossing. Gethings of the San Pablo had taken a shot at a highwayman. Hooven had bayonetted a French Chasseur ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... idea. Everybody knows you hate Reeve, and Reeve fears you. Otherwise would he act like this, aside from being afraid of a lynching, in case you should die? No, he wouldn't. Well, one of these days you take this gun"—here Harry shoved one under the pillow of Bull—"and call Pete Reeve over to you, and when he leans over your bed, blow his brains out! That's easy, and it'll do what you'll want ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... lay over the men at the bar lasted till the barkeeper softly muttered: "Boys, that's news to me. It does make it just too tough." Then those who had hitherto opposed the lynching of the murderer changed their minds and directed new malediction against him, and those who had handled the rope took keener comfort and greater ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... all parts of the country and to some extent all over the world. Through his press clipping service, supplemented by myriads of letters and personal reports, practically every event of any significance to his race came to his notice. When he heard of rioting, lynching, or serious trouble in any community he sent a message of advice, encouragement, or warning to the leading Negroes of the locality and sometimes to the whites whom he knew to be interested in the welfare of the Negroes. ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... other things that happened. When he came to, he found a single-jack hammer lying beside him, and Larsen's body across him. Could n't he naturally believe that he had killed him while in a daze? He was afraid of Rodaine—that Rodaine would get up a lynching party and string him up. Harry here and Mrs. Howard helped him out of town. And ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... get the robbers," the man who seemed to be leader of the party said, "but we can amuse ourselves lynching these spies!" ...
— Boy Scouts on the Great Divide - or, The Ending of the Trail • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... to the lynching Saturday morning down at Nashville, Tennessee, was a far cry, but when Colonel Ingersoll was asked what he thought of mob law, whether there was any extenuation, any propriety and moral effect resultant from it, he quickly ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... everyone wanted to hear Milligan's version of the affair. He had a short and vigorous one, trimmed with neat oaths. It was all the girl in the blue calico dress, according to him. The posse couldn't storm a house with a woman in it or even conduct a proper lynching in her presence. And no one was able to smile when Milligan said this. Neither was anyone nervy enough to question the courage of Landis. It looked strange, that sudden flight of his, but then, ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... state in their relations to each other. Many individual interests conflict in business and society and different opinions clash, but all points of difference within the nation are settled by due process of law, except when elemental passions break out in a lynching, or a family feud is perpetuated among the hills. But war continued to be the mode of settling international difficulties. Military force restrained a vassal from hostile acts under the Roman peace. But the next necessary step was for states ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... business affairs without fear of being shot in the back. My plan is this: Let us assemble our force quietly, ride into Crawling Water, capture Moran and his followers, and escort them out of the county. There must be no lynching or unnecessary bloodshed; but if they resist, as some of them will, we must use such force as is needed to ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... a friendly relation based upon the integrity of the Southern whites, there could be no lynching; the friendship of the white man would cause ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... often stained the reputation of the South by defiance of the law and by horrible cruelty as well do not represent the best elements of the South. The statement so often made that the most substantial citizens of a community compose lynching parties may have been partially true once, but it is not true today. These mobs are chiefly made up from the lowest third of the white community. Perhaps the persistence of the belief has prevented the wiser part ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson
... with the retort that that might do for a theory, but that the fact still remained that these men had been absolutely isolated, seeing no one but policemen, who constantly frightened them with tales of public clamor and threatened lynching. ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... mebby, till some one minute of craziness may strike one of them, and then he is a devil temporary. Mebby, when the crazy fit has passed, some white woman is worse off than if she was dead, or mebby she IS dead, or mebby a loonatic fur life, and that nigger is a candidate fur a lynching bee and ginerally elected ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... he said, No, don't shoot; there is some law left, and we have EVIDENCE now. Let's go and indict them. Then if the sheriff won't arrest them, we can find plenty of chances to pull the trigger on them. I go in for law first, and LYNCHING afterwards.' Well, it was a hard thing to lose such a chance when we were boiling over, but I put my gun on my shoulder, and my friend let the bars of the pen down, and we drove the other cattle out as quietly ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... The lynching at New Orleans in March last of eleven men of Italian nativity by a mob of citizens was a most deplorable and discreditable incident. It did not, however, have its origin in any general animosity ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... n. 2, p. 169.) It appears in the divine direction given to Nod: "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, his blood shall be shed." (Gen. ix. 6.) It appears in that popular sentiment, which in some parts of America displays itself in the lynching of murderers, who have unduly escaped the hands of the law; and which, under a similar paralysis of law in Corsica, broke out in blood-feuds, whereby the nearest relative of the deceased went about to slay the murderer. Such taking of justice into private hands is morally unlawful, ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... Mexico have long been held up as states where violence and lynch law prevail. The truth is that Arizona and New Mexico have no more lynchings than do many of the older states. An Arizona lynching can only follow an upheaval of public sentiment, when honest men are angered at having their fair fame sullied by the acts ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock
... He'll be in hell, for he's a dastard, until the time his trembling legs carry him to the scaffold. I want him to stay in this hell till he drops through into the other, if there is one. I want him to suffer some of the misery he has caused. Lynching is over in a moment. I want that murderer to die by the slow ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... to sit down to a late lunch, as his custom was, when he was interrupted by the mob. The rest of the incident is connected with what has been told. The crowd seized him with little ceremony, and it was only Philip's timely arrival and his saving of minutes until the police arrived, that prevented a lynching in Milton that night. As it was, Mr. Winter received a scare from which it took a long time to recover. He dreaded to go out alone at night. He kept on guard a special watchman, and lived in more or less terror even then. It was satisfactorily ...
— The Crucifixion of Philip Strong • Charles M. Sheldon
... deem me a most hardened scoundrel? Of course you will give me a hearing. You are an upholder of law, and do not approve of lynching. Here, put on the handcuffs, Dyke, and take me to prison. You will be sorry for this some time, but now that circumstances are against me your friendship falls to the ground. I did not expect such treatment. However, I can live through it; but I shall never ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton
... hand, Lady Louisa was right in objecting to the finale,—it has been admitted that Scott was never good at a conclusion,—and personally I have always thought George Staunton uninteresting throughout. But how much does this leave! The description of the lynching of Porteous and the matchless interview with Queen Caroline are only the very best of such a series of good things that, except just at the end, it may be said to be uninterrupted. Jeanie it is unnecessary to praise; the same Lady Louisa's admiration of the wonderful ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... Story.—After the lead, the details follow as in a normal story, the individual instalments being given the operator as fast as he can take them, each one marked "More" except the last, which is marked "30." Thus the continuation of the bulletin lead of the Frank lynching ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... borne sons who have become high officers of state in foreign lands. There you find rich people who devote their time and wealth to charitable works, sometimes endowing libraries not only in their own land, but all over the world; there you will find lynching tolerated, or impossible of prevention; there one man may kill another, and by the wonderful process of law escape the extreme penalty of death; there you meet the people who are most favorably disposed toward the maintenance of peace, and who hold conferences ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... me boxing the ears of a stubborn lawn-mower they said my punishment was heavy enough, so they threw away the lynching rope and ...
— You Can Search Me • Hugh McHugh
... country," said Halliday, the lawyer, making his way to the front. "It isn't the law, and in this country it's the law that counts. It's the Gover'ment's right to attend to that drunken dago that threw the horseshoe, and we've got to let the Gover'ment do it. No lynching on my plate, thank you. If Ingolby could speak to us, you can bet your ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... was not inclined to argue about the justice or injustice of the lynching. He went away with Injun, and tried to eat. And he tried, too, to forget the horror of the scene at the bridge. But all his life long he never quite ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... passing—time 1868. In a scrimmage at some public gathering in the town, A. had shot B. quite badly, but had not kill'd him. The sober men of Ellsworth conferr'd with one another and decided that A. deserv'd punishment. As they wished to set a good example and establish their reputation the reverse of a Lynching town, they open an informal court and bring both men before them for deliberate trial. Soon as this trial begins the wounded man is led forward to give his testimony. Seeing his enemy in durance and unarm'd, B. walks suddenly ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... of the "Constitution," under the editorship of Clark Howell, who sits in his father's old chair, with a bust of Grady at his elbow, is evidenced not only by its frequent editorials against lynching, but by its fearless campaign against another Georgia specialty—the "paper colonel." The ranks of the "paper colonels" in the South are chiefly made up of lawyers who "have been colonelized by custom for no other reason than that they have led their clients to victory in legal battles." Some ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... plain that his words impressed them, but they were reluctant to give over the hope of lynching ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... it was mere libel to say that it was held in the livery barn. Rumour said that the trial was over the case of a negro, or Mexican, or Indian, who had been charged with murder, and who was himself killed in an attempt at lynching, by whose hand it was never known. These things were remembered or talked about by but very few, these the old-timers, the settlers of two years ago. Somewhere to the north of the town, and in the centre of what ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... single clear notes. She mocked, with a ludicrously feminine croak, the hoarse voice of a crow sailing over them. She rallied Bennington mercilessly on his corduroys, his yellow flapped pistol holster, his laced boots. She went over in ridiculous pantomime the scene of the mock lynching, until Bennington rolled in his saddle with light-hearted laughter, and wondered how it was possible he had ever taken the affair seriously. When he returned with the axe she was hugely alarmed lest he harm himself by his awkward way of carrying it, ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... affecting the whole public welfare in which he himself might possibly become interested, he was roused to the point of administering justice. The punishments meted out were fines, flogging, banishment, and, as a last resort, lynching. Theft was considered a worse offense than killing. As the mines began to fill up with the more desperate characters who arrived in 1850 and 1851, the necessity for government increased. At this time, but after the ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... Lightning-like flashes shoot forth and great bodies of lurid smoky clouds fly on the surface. Looking into the aura of a man wild with rage and passion, is like peering into Inferno. The astral plane, in the region of a lynching mob, or other body of persons filled with rage, becomes a ...
— The Human Aura - Astral Colors and Thought Forms • Swami Panchadasi
... latest mishap. Marco was greatly worked up over it. He said the attempted trick on old Benares's partner had become noised about, and if the two plotters were arrested and brought anywhere near the circus, they stood a good show of lynching. ...
— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness
... a report from the Secretary of State reciting the circumstances attending the lynching at Hahnville, La., on the night of August 8, 1896, of three Italian subjects, named Salvatore Arena, Giuseppe Venturelia, and Lorenzo Salardino, and I recommend the appropriation by Congress, without admitting the liability of the Government of the United States in the premises, ...
— Messages and Papers of William McKinley V.2. • William McKinley
... recall him. The show was, as I said, The Merchant of Venice, and I'll leave it to anybody if my client wasn't at least as pleasing to the eye as Sir Henry in his Shylock togs. I suppose if it had been Othello, race feeling would have run so high that Sir Henry would hardly have escaped lynching. Well, to return. My client got loaded on gin about the time the case came up on demurrer and gave the snap away, and I dropped out of the practice to avoid being disbarred. And it was just as well. My landlord had protested against my using the office at night for ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... you're talking of lynching, and haven't a notion of how you're going to get your man. Don't even know where to lay hands on him. Do you think Marbolt's going to turn us all loose on the war-path? Not he. And how are two or three of us going ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... quite well-behaved boy, but his nerve had been shaken. He began his career by riding jump-races in Melbourne, where a few Stewards want lynching, and was one of the jockeys who came through the awful butchery—perhaps you will recollect it—of the Maribyrnong Plate. The walls were colonial ramparts—logs of jarrah spiked into masonry—with wings as strong as Church ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... worthless calf, which had been the cause of so much trouble, went to their home. Lopeman then went to the county seat and gave himself up to the authorities. As soon as the news spread over the neighborhood, excitement ran high and there was loud talk of lynching. The murdered man was very popular. His old neighbors smelled blood, and it was with some difficulty that they were prevented from taking the law into their own hands. Better judgment prevailed, however, ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds
... excitement. When sober he foolishly stuck to what he had said; and, in consequence, was sent by the diggers, under escort, to point out the spot, which of course he could not find. His reception in Coolgardie may be imagined! Doubtless on the Western goldfields of America, "lynching" would have been his portion. Even in order-loving Australia he might have had an unpleasant time, had not Mr. Finnerty, the popular Warden, quelled the turmoil, and placed the offender under Police protection. For want of the real article, a well-attended procession ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... here about that have."—Ibid. I will quote no more. It is shocking beyond endurance to turn over your records, in which the condition of your laboring classes is but too faithfully depicted. Could our slaves but see it, they would join us in lynching the abolitionists, which, by the by, they would not now be loth to do. We never think of imposing on them such labor, either in amount or kind. We never put them to any work, under ten, more generally at twelve years of ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... camp-fire not only caused some misgivings about the personal safety of the little company, but it suggested that the missing horse was lost beyond recovery. Horse-flesh is the most "sensitive capital" on the frontier, and he who pilfers it runs more danger of lynching than does the man who takes the life of a fellow being. To the Indian, the noble animal is as indispensable as to the settler, and, if the party who had made the halt in that neighborhood learned that an unusually ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... for an act of injustice. In Osman nepotism and corruption so prevailed, while distance began to dim the Apostolic glories, that the blood-thirsty turbulence of the Arab was aroused and caused the death of the third Caliph by what we should call in modern phrase "lynching." Ali succeeded, if indeed we can say he succeeded at all, to an already divided empire. He was only one of the four who could be described as a man of genius, and therefore he had a host of enemies: he was a poet, a sage, a moralist and even a grammarian; ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... that time I had lived in hopes that it might be my good fortune to meet them again under different circumstances. When I learned that two of their number had been hanged somewhere in Arizona for horse-stealing, I was sorry to hear it, and hoped the other would mend his ways and so escape lynching, for I wanted to settle with ...
— Elam Storm, The Wolfer - The Lost Nugget • Harry Castlemon
... all alive and uninjured, to the best of my knowledge and belief; though I understand that one of them narrowly escaped lynching at the hands of an ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... that the Legion was after his gold," went on Kells. "I suppose we have Pearce to thank for that. But it worked out well for us. The hell we raised there at the lynching must have thrown a scare into Overland. He had nerve enough to try to send his dust to Bannack on the very next stage. He nearly got away with it, too. For it was only lucky accident that ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... voice rose and rang over them. Those who had slipped past him on either side came back and faced him. In the distance Elizabeth had not stirred. Vance kept watching her face. It was cold as ice, unreadable. He could not believe that she was allowing this lynching party to organize under her own roof—a lynching party aimed at Terence. It began to grow in him that he had gained a greater victory ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... said Sharpe imperiously. "I'll have no lynching in a vessel I command. Now then, you, sir, how do you know he ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade |
