James Redpath, The Roving Editor: or, Talks with Slaves in the Southern States.

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[193] criminal both in point of morals and in the Southern social code.

He said enough, his self-constituted judges thought, to criminate himself — and such extorted testimony, however perverted, however contradictory, is as good as gospel (and, indeed, a good deal better) in all trials for offences against the darling institution of the Southern States.

Thus the matter stood when I joined the crowd.

After a private conversation between the members of the committee, the rabble entered the office, and soon filled the forms and the vacant chairs.

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Ruffian Lynoh Law Pleas.

Col. Summers opened the meeting, by alluding to the circumstances that had called them together. There was a kind of property in this community (he said), guaranteed to us by the Constitution and the laws, which must not be tampered with by any one.

“Dammed if it must,” whispered a hoarse, brutal voice beside me.

“It was as much property to us,” he continued, warming with his glorious theme, “as much property to us as so many dollars and cents — it was our dollars and cents in fact — and so recognized by the statutes of Missouri and the Constitution of the United States. Evidence had been obtained against the prisoner,” he added, after this eloquent and learned exordium, “from negroes, which agreed with his own statement minutely enough to convince him” --the speaker--“that Atkinson was guilty, What is to be done with him, gentlemen?” he asked, “shall we merely drive him out of our city” --population 600--“and thus let him go unpunished? I'm opposed to that course, ”