"Lynch law" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of police service or of sharp punishment for their crimes. Order, in fact, was not always maintained, nor was justice always meted out, by recourse to judges and courts. Instead, a novel kind of lynch law was invoked. The name it bore was the ley fuga, or "flight law," in accordance with which malefactors or political suspects taken by government agents from one locality to another, on the excuse of securing ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... legitimate fruit of the State's essential hoodlumism. Here was the answer to local self-government—to democracy. Such a thing could not happen in Australia or Canada; only in America could lynch law become a dramatic pastime, a jest, an instrument of private vengeance. The South and the West were alike stained with the blood of the lynched, and the whole nation was ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... Brent, with a hardening of his square jaw, "I don't care if there is! If we can only put our hands on the murderers, I don't care if the people hang 'em to those lamp-posts! I shouldn't be sorry to see a little lynch law!" ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... the people of Manaos became excited. A mob of Indians and negroes hurried, in their blind folly, to surround the prison and roar forth tumultuous shouts of death. In this part of the two Americas, where executions under Lynch law are of frequent occurrence, the mob soon surrenders itself to its cruel instincts, and it was feared that on this occasion it would do justice ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... arrest, but Judge Miller, of the Beaver County circuit, who was in Clarendon that day, used his influence to discountenance any disorder, and promised a speedy trial of the prisoner. The crime was not the worst of crimes, and there was no excuse for riot or lynch law. The accused could not ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... freedom was guaranteed. The safeguards of trial by jury, regular judicial procedure, and habeas corpus were established, in order that the methods of civilized life might take the place of the rough-and-ready justice of lynch law. During the course of the debate on the Ordinance, Congress added the sixth article forbidding ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... source and the cause of most of our domestic troubles and misfortunes since those decisions were rendered. But for those unfortunate decisions our country would not be cursed and disgraced today by lynch law and other forms of lawlessness and racial proscription and discrimination. But for those unfortunate decisions lynchings could have been and I am sure would have been held to be an offense against the peace and dignity of the United ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... only an indiscretion. The humble black fool is often forced away from his own wife or sweet-heart at the point of a revolver, cowed by the feeling that a manly stand against a white man might cause incalculable loss of life. Yet the advocate of Lynch Law pictures this humble fellow, this man who is afraid to attempt to defend his own home, as a reckless dare-devil, keeping the whites in constant terror. How incompatible these two traits of character. No; it is not the reckless ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... did I," he admitted. "Lynch law is a horrible thing; don't make any mistake about that. But there's one thing more horrible, and that's no law at all. And that is the ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... He would never dare ally 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 me strongly to attempt even the apparently impossible. I had ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... established a reign of terror, driving out both ministers and magistrates, and killing without scruple those who interfered with them. The good men in such a case banded themselves together as regulators and put down the wicked with ruthless severity, by the exercise of lynch law, shooting and hanging the ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... him by the collar then remarked "Come, MR. AVERY, it's no use; you see, we know you, and we'll give you a touch of lynch law, and start you ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... firin' at?" he shouted. "That's my niece, Jinny Long, an' you let that boat alone. This ain't the land o' lynch law. Dingley ain't escaped from gaol. You got no right to fire ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Guard would constitute itself on its own authority a private council of war, and judge and execute a captured insurgent in five minutes. It was an improvisation of this sort that had slain Jean Prouvaire. Fierce Lynch law, with which no one party had any right to reproach the rest, for it has been applied by the Republic in America, as well as by the monarchy in Europe. This Lynch law was complicated with mistakes. On one day of rioting, a young poet, named Paul Aime Garnier, was pursued in the ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... 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
... public school branches. The graduates of these schools turn out well in the great majority of cases, and hardly any of them become criminals, while what little criminality there is never takes the form of that brutal violence which invites lynch law. Every graduate of these schools—and for the matter of that every other colored man or woman—who leads a life so useful and honorable as to win the good will and respect of those whites whose neighbor he or she is, thereby helps ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... I 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 would ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... 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 ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds |
