A Lethal Transition: Regulator Movements, Law, and Extralegal Punishment in the Antebellum United States
 

Professor Michael J. Pfeifer, Faculty Member, American Social History, The Evergreen State College,
Olympia, Washington 98505, tel: (360) 867-6009, e-mail: pfeiferm@evergreen.edu,
home page: http://academic.evergreen.edu/p/pfeiferm/home.htm
Summary of a paper presented at the British Association of American Studies (BAAS) Meeting,
      Manchester Metropolitan University, United Kingdom, April 16, 2004.
 

    During the era of the American Revolution, informal, popular punishments, for instance those administered by Col. Charles Lynch and his bands of "Patriots" against Tories whom they flogged in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia in the 1780s, did not usually seek to kill victims (although victims occasionally died from the injuries inflicted).  During the Early Republic and in the Antebellum era, "lynching" (to which Colonel Lynch probably bequeathed his name) retained the connotation of non-lethal summary justice imposed by the community.  But in the Antebellum era’s prolonged and tortured contest over the contours of democracy and popular authority, settlers on the frontiers sought through lethal collective violence, especially hanging, to define their claims to social status, property, and community leadership versus more marginal settlers who defied that authority.  Vigilantes responded to changes in notions and practices of law in the fluid frontier social landscape, particularly the influence of skilled defense lawyers, the ways in which jurors could defy popular sentiments, and a growing emphasis on procedural fairness and meaningful due process that sought to protect unpopular defendants.
    The 'Slicker' movement in Alabama in the 1830s, numerous short-lived vigilante organizations in California in the late 1840s and early 1850s, and 'Regulator' movements in eastern Iowa in 1857 remade lynching into a synonym for collective murder by hanging.  Exploiting primary sources in the popular press, personal and governmental correspondence, and local histories, this paper analyzes the social and legal dimensions of the lethal transition in popular punishments in the United States in the early to mid nineteenth century.