Cheyenne transporter. [volume] (Darlington, Indian Terr.) 1879-1886, 1882-05-25
LYNCHlNG.
a Few Pertinent Remarks on the Evil
Tendency of the Lawless Practice.

the border states ana IHe IeTTlJOIlGS
in substituting mob violence for the
action of the courts. A few weeks
ago there was a lynching in Indiana
which was attended by such adjuncts
of a legal execution as clergyman
and o surgeon. Wednesday night two
men were lynched together in Ken
lucky, two together in one town in
Colorado, and one in another, and at
an early hour yesterday morning man
was lynched in Minneapolis. In all
these cases but one there is little or no
doubt about the guilt of the victims,
but in one case man was lynched on
suspicion, and in Indiana only week
ago man was hanged by mob after
he had been tried by jury and acquit
ted. These violent and lawless pro.
ceedings raise once more the qHestion,
Is civilization failure?
1t is no Justification of murder by
a mob that the victim deserves hang
ing. The only one of these recent
cases in whicl there is any approach
to Justification is the one that occurred
in Minneapolis. There the mob killed
~ Dldu WllO dbAOClOoo
crime as can be conceived of, but one
for which it was not at all likely that
he could be legally hanged. In all the
other cases the penalty Of the law was
sufficient. The worst case of all was
the one in Indiana, where mob MUIR
dered man who had been tried and
found innocent by jury. To justify
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be equivalent to the obliteration of all
criminal courts and procedure, and the
return to the methods of savages. The
man may have been guilty, in spite of
the verdict, but if verdicts are to be
disregarded, and if people are to
hang every man whom they think
a scoundrel merely because they
think so, and without regard to le-
gal evidence, then there is an end to
organized society, and to the security
of life and property, and social chaos
and baIbarism are already introduced.
Civilization involves something more
than the punishment of criminals;
criminals are punished by Indians and
HOttentots. 1t involves the ascertain
ment of guilt by rules of evidence, the
execution of the penalties of the law
by authorized persons, and the settle
ment of disputes between man and
man, and between society and the
individual, by duly-organized courts.
The vendetta and the lynching process
are calculated to Overturn the reign of
law, and substitute therefor the lelgn
of what preceded law-namely, vic.
lence and passion. The interests of
society demand the repression of lynch
ing as much as they do the repression
of crime in any other form; more so,
in fact, for the crimes Of individuals
are less hostile to the permanence of
social order than the crimes of masses
of men sustained by the public senti-
ment of whole communities. Social
order rests on the assumption that law
is supreme. But law ceases to be
supreme where it is overridden by a
mob. The first duty of government is
to maintain the law and suppress mob
murder, cost what it may.
That one lynching leads to another
is undoubtedly true. There is a con-
tagion in lawlessness. The fact that
hundred men can vent their rage
against an evil-doer with impunity
incites a hundred men in another To-
cality to do the same thing. These
frequent lynchings in comparatively
old and established communities, where
all the instrumentalities for the legal
punishment Of crime exist, are not
sporadic outbreaks of inhamed public
sentiment. They are the symptoms of
an epidemic. They beget contempt