Q re "lynching"

[Joel S. Berson]

Black slaves were of course hanged in the South (and in the Middle
colonies and occasionally in New England) for various misbehaviors in
the colonial period (see, especially, the Stono Uprising of 1739 and
the New York "Slave Conspiracy" of 1741).  But these were "legal"
hangings in most cases (although legalized ex post facto in the case
of Stono) and surely not called "lynchings".

The OED attributes "lynch law" to Captain William Lynch, 1780, in
Virginia.  But were the actions of such "self-created judicial
tribunal[s]" aimed specifically at slaves, or rather at a general
perceived lawlessness at the time of the ouster of British authority
and uncertainty about what was the authorized, legal judicial
authority?  (Am I correct that the courts in Virginia were made
powerless by the revolutionaries in this period?)  And did the lynch
courts' actions result in hangings, or "merely" beatings, tar and
featherings, etc.?  (Note the OED's 1819 quotation  under "lynch law"
--  "he should receive Lynch's law, that is, a whipping in the
woods."  And its 1836 quotation under "lynch" -- "proceeded to the
mansion of judge Bermudez, with a view to Lynch him."; surely judge
Bermudez was not a black slave.)

But there is at least one OED quotation from before the Civil War
that does associate "lynching" with slavery -- "1837    Southern Lit.
Messenger 3 648   The outrages of the borderers, the frontier law of
'regulation' or 'lynching', which is common to new countries all over
the world, are ascribed to slavery."   Do the experts think the term
"lynching" became more than occasionally associated with blacks, and
with hanging, during the 1830s?  Or only after the Civil War?

Joel

At 4/13/2011 07:23 PM, James A. Landau <JJJRLandau at netscape.com> wrote:
><q>
>"lynching" has a long and diverse history, starting with Judge Lynch
>locking up Royalists during the Revolutionary War. If there were any
>"lynchings" of blacks between 1775 and 1860, they would have been
>isolated and would not qualify as a social phenomenon. "Lynching"
>became associated with black victims
>only during or shortly after the Civil War.</q>
>
>Perhaps.  But J. C. Furnas _Goodbye to Uncle Tom_ New York: William
>Sloane Associates, 1956, no ISBN page 134
>"Theoretically all whites did rotating service in the patrol, which
>was often tied into the militia system.  Actually the well-to-do
>usually shirked and paid nominal fines.  In many places this left
>the overseers as backbone of patrolling.  Elsewhere, the country
>hired a regular patrol from among poor whites or small farmers, thus
>giving young men from those strata a special taste for abusing
>[N-word plural] which until recently remianed lively in Southern
>lynch mobs.  These ill-disciplined parties of young fellows
>organized under community sanction, often pasing the bottle freely
>while on their rounds, may well have been the nucleus suggestion for
>the Ku Klux Klan of post bellum renown.  Well before the Civil War
>th paddy rollers bulked large in slave folklore.  Fractious children
>were threatened with them.  Ole Massa was mad at Sluefoot Tom so he
>gin him a pass and tole him he could go to town, but Tom he couldn't
>read and the paddy rollers cotch him and they lookat his pa!
>  ss, and it say, 'Give this [N-word] hell,' so they gin him hell
> right there on the big road.</q>

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