"Lynching" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in 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 a blessing ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... 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 ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... can quote Scripture, and law, and morality and reason and practicality. The devil can use the public conscience of his time. He does in wars, in racial and religious persecutions; he did in the Spain of the Inquisition; he does in the American lynching. ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... do. Foy'll never give up. He's desperate—and he's not pleased. There's no question of surrender and standing trial; understand that. He'd be lynched, probably, if they ever got him in Las Uvas. A trial, even, would be just lynching under another name. They don't want to capture him anyway—they want a chance ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... they dug long, unmerciful scratches in his person, clung to the shelter they gave and made off at top speed. He could hear the others shouting at one another as they galloped here and there trying to locate him, and he skulked where the bushes were deepest, like a criminal in fear of lynching. ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... succeeded in forcing the doors of the jail and overcoming the officers. The prisoner was hurried forth, amid the shouts and execrations of the multitude, a scaffold was erected, and at nine o'clock the same evening he was hung, with the ceremonies usually observed. An attempt at lynching was made in San Francisco about the same time. Two ruffians, having attempted to rob and murder a merchant of that city, the people assembled on the plaza and demanded an instant trial, with the understanding that if found guilty, the prisoners should be immediately ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... 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 boots ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... 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 with ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... chance of having my skin blown over my ears, and my teeth down my throat, on this cursed look-out place, because he's too well known there. What does that mean? Upon my soul, it looks bad. They may be lynching a J. P. down there, or making a spread eagle of the parish constable at this minute, for anything I know, and as sure as fate, if they are, I shall get my foot ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... feel like lynching him on the spot; and no wonder. But refrain; they would bid you, and he is already suffering a worse fate than any you ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... truth, 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 advancement of Christian liberty, and expect to abide by the same in death. You have ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... could be elicited from him. When Darrell was called upon, however, and gave his evidence, incredulity gave place to conviction. As he completed his testimony with a description of the scar, which, upon examination, was found correct, the crowd became angry and threats of lynching and personal violence were heard on various sides. The judge therefore ordered that the prisoners be removed from the court-room to the jail before any in the audience had left ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... he added, "that we didn't have our little lynching bee this afternoon, but the sinking of a billion dollars' worth of battleships must be almost as much ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... 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 to the Italian ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... sight of the crimes committed, and wished to defend the Constituent Assembly. Knowingly, and in a premeditated manner, the Bolshevist press excited the soldiers and the workmen against all other parties. And then when the unthinking masses, drunk with flattery and hatred, committed acts of lynching, the Bolshevist leaders expressed sham regrets! Thus it was after the death of Doukhonine, who was cut to pieces by the sailors; and thus it was after the dastardly assassination of the Cadets, Shingariev and Kokochkine, after the shootings ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... to an extremity, was clear to all; and in fact, since that editor could not be found, there was some talk about lynching the other one. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... would have preferred the novelty of dealing with a lynching party, if he had had ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... to her boudoir and Ross went away, leaving Janet and Adelaide to walk up and down the shaded west terrace with its vast outlook upon the sinuous river and the hills. To draw Janet from the painful theatricals, she took advantage of a casual question about the lynching, and went into the details of that red evening as she had not with anyone. It was now almost two months into the past; but all Saint X was still feverish from it, and she herself had only begun again to have unhaunted and unbroken sleep. While she was relating Janet forgot herself; ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... Tyson's store at five o'clock in the afternoon, and proceed thence to the jail, which was situated down the Lumberton Dirt Road (as the old turnpike antedating the plank-road was called), about half a mile south of the court-house. When the preliminaries of the lynching had been arranged, and a committee appointed to manage the affair, the crowd dispersed, some to go to their dinners, and some to secure recruits ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... fellow until we find him. And then, please God, if the gallows of Haman is still in existence, we'll hang him on it with promptness and dispatch. I believe in the due and orderly process of the law, but in this case lynching is not only justifiable, but it's an honor ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... politic to hint. It was like the giving way of the pebble that starts the avalanche. Soon they were deep in tales of lynchings. Peter knew only too well the trend of their talk, the "XXX" men were feeling the public pulse, as it were. Now, according to the unwritten code of the plains, lynching was "meet, right, just, and available" for the cattle-thief. And Peter felt himself false to his creed, false to his employer, false to himself, in seeking to evade the question. And yet that pitiful ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... Robert. "I 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 than ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... action," shouted Seth. "You, Pete, are sheriff of this county, and it is your duty to enforce the laws. If you permit this lynching to take place in your presence, you'll be guilty of the crime of murder, and I warn you ...
— Boy Scouts on the Great Divide - or, The Ending of the Trail • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... who have dared to protest, have been ridiculed, persecuted, outlawed. Sometimes their bones have bleached on the gibbet or rotted in dungeons. Still, the jail, the gallows and the lynching-bee have not kept experimenters quiet in the past, and they will probably not do so ...
— The Next Step - A Plan for Economic World Federation • Scott Nearing
... few words, since a similar institution, or call it custom, if that suits you better, has at some time prevailed among all peoples and has not yet become entirely obsolete, as attested by the continuance of duelling and lynching. Why, has not an American captain recently challenged Esterhazy, that the wrongs of Dreyfus be avenged? Among a savage tribe which has no marriage, adultery is not a sin, and only the jealousy of a lover protects a woman from abuse: so in a time which has no criminal court, murder is not a crime, ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... that if there had been such a horrible tragedy as Johnny had told of, the papers would tell all about it. She ran down to the street and came back with a copy. She looked rapidly over the paper, but she saw nothing about a lynching at the Fair grounds. Then the front page leader, with its half a column of head-lines caught ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... the fear of punishment, but if this fear were removed, such murders would probably become much more common, as may be seen from the present behavior of certain soldiers on leave. Moreover, certain kinds of conduct arouse public hostility, and would almost inevitably lead to lynching, if no other recognized method of punishment existed. There is in most men a certain natural vindictiveness, not always directed against the worst members of the community. For example, Spinoza was very nearly murdered by the mob because he was suspected of undue friendliness ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... 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 and forests and of vicious destruction of property, made by the ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... talk of a lynching in New Orleans and of a shooting in Old Virginia and there were even whispers of ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... 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 of ...
— 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
... 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 ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... 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 ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... 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
... was a 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 ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... New 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 Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock
... to, whoever he was, of course looked as innocent and as indignant as the most virtuous among them; the guilt, therefore, could not be brought home to him. Woe betide him if it had been, for there was a serious talk of lynching some one among the wrathful men, each of whom was ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... equality and human solidarity have here their perfect work. The result is so far satisfactory that there is little or no class friction. The white man does not lynch or maltreat the Negro; indeed I have never heard of a lynching anywhere in South America except occasionally as part of a political convulsion. The Negro is not accused of insolence and does not seem to develop any more criminality than naturally belongs to any ignorant population with loose notions of morality ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... 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 away, day by day, ...
— A Double Barrelled Detective Story • Mark Twain
... mobbed, The bakers all were shot, The penny press began to talk Of lynching Doctor Nott; And all about the warehouse steps Were angry men in droves, Crashing and splintering through the doors To ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... of cables, 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
... "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 at Sedan. An old Spanish-Mexican, a centenarian from ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... could hardly have been afraid of Ralph's acquittal. He may have been a little anxious at the manner in which he had been mentioned, and at the significant look of Ralph, and he probably meant to excite indignation enough against the school-master to break the force of his speech, and secure the lynching of the prisoner, chiefly by people outside his gang. He rose and asked the court in gentlest tones to hear him. He had no personal interest in this trial, except his interest in the welfare of his old schoolmate, ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... "hustle Shelton and Capps out quick before the rest of the men wake up to what it's all about, or we shall have a lynching instead of ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... 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
... their scapegoat rather than bring dishonor and shame upon their army? For that matter, does 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 shown to be ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... 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 that ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... 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 take this little ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... 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 dynamite from ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... 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 Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... Mr. John," interrupted Aristabulus, "there is an awful excitement! Some have even spoken of Lynching!" ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... life, how sound its philosophy, and how it records for us once and for all 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
... 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 ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... the upright character of his race, there were no speeches more significant nor more prophetic than his arraignment of the apathetic manner with which Congress had greeted his bill, designed "to give to the federal government entire jurisdiction over all cases of lynching and death by mob violence." If, he declared, the nation is to avoid the state of anarchy and moral decay to which conditions were then rapidly leading, there remained no alternative, save the enactment, by some future Congress, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... known that 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
... confused roar rose from 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 sudden death. ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... unjust to Mr. Washington not to acknowledge that in several instances he has opposed movements in the South which were unjust to the Negro; he sent memorials to the Louisiana and Alabama constitutional conventions, he has spoken against lynching, and in other ways has openly or silently set his influence against sinister schemes and unfortunate happenings. Notwithstanding this, it is equally true to assert that on the whole the distinct impression left by Mr. Washington's propaganda is, first, that the South is justified in its present ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... peaceable or unlawful rescue of fugitive 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 the rights of citizens ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... probably 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 or to participate in a Fourth of July parade. ...
— Reminiscences of Pioneer Days in St. Paul • Frank Moore
... 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 ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... indulgent.—True, and that is because between the crime and the assizes there is often an interval of six months. At the date of the crime it is the misfortune of the victim that excites the crowd, at the date of the assize it is the misfortune of the accused. Be this as it may, the practice of lynching amounts to a formal accusation that both magistrates and ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... 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. ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... viciously assaulted the practice of lynching, denouncing it in most scathing terms. In short, he was an outspoken advocate of giving the negro every right accorded him by the Constitution of the ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... of a 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 voluntarily to adjust their relations ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe |
