Transcriber’s Note:
The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
Few people are able to read about lynch-executions,with atrocious forms of torture and cruel death, such ashave occurred from time to time within ten years in thiscountry, without a feeling of national shame. It is necessarythat facts should be known and that public opinionshould be corrected as to the ethics of that mode of dealingwith crime. Lynch-law is a very different thing wherelaws and civil institutions are in full force and activityfrom what it is where they are wanting. It is not admissiblethat a self-governing democracy should plead theremissness of its own selected agents as an excuse formob-violence. It is a disgrace to our civilization thatmen can be put to death by painful methods, which ourlaws have discarded as never suitable, and without theproofs of guilt which our laws call for in any case whatsoever.It would be a disgrace to us if amongst us menshould burn a rattlesnake or a mad dog. The badness ofthe victim is not an element in the case at all. Tortureand burning are forbidden, not because the victim is notbad enough, but because we are too good. It is on accountof what we owe to ourselves that these methods areshameful to us, if we descend to them. It is evident,however, that public opinion is not educated up to thislevel. The reader of the present book will learn veryinteresting facts about the causes alleged for lynching,and about the public view of that crime. Many currenterrors will be corrected, and many notions which areirrelevant, although they are popularly believed to begermane and important, will be set aside.
New Haven, Conn., February, 1905.
In making this investigation into the history of lynchingin the United States, my point of view has been that of astudent of society and social phenomena. The purposeof the investigation has not been primarily to write the historyof lynching, but to determine from the history thecauses for the prevalence of the practice, to determine whatthe social conditions are under which lynch-law operates,and to test the vali