Early in the year 1894 a number of the citizens of Louisiana petitioned the legislature of that State to enact stringent laws against lynching, but the legislature adjourned without fulfilling the request. A number of governors at about this time, in messages to the State legislatures, called attention to the subject and recommended immediate legislation. Governor Hogg of Texas made the matter of lynching the subject of a special message, denouncing the practice and strongly urging the enactment of laws to prevent it. Governor O’Ferrall, in a message to the legislature of Virginia, recommended that the county in which a lynching occurs should be required to pay to the State treasury a sum not exceeding ten thousand dollars for the benefit of the public school fund. Recommendations of a similar character were subsequently made by the governors of Maryland and Georgia. Governor Atkinson of Georgia made the unique recommendation that if an officer in charge of a prisoner is not required to protect his charge at the hazard of his own life, he should be required to unshackle the prisoner, arm him, and give him an opportunity to defend himself. On the assumption that the law’s delay or slowness is the principal cause for lynching, the governors of a number of States offered suggestions for a more expeditious judicial procedure. Of the many measures proposed, however, and of the numerous recommendations that special legislation be enacted against lynching, comparatively few have received from the various legislatures sufficient consideration to lead to the enactment of laws on the subject.[281] The legislature of Georgia, in the year 1893, passed an act which authorized “any officer, charged with the duty of preserving the peace and executing the lawful warrants” of the State, who should have “knowledge of any violence attempted to be perpetrated upon any citizen ... by mob violence and without authority of law,” to summon a posse of citizens, who must respond or be punished for a misdemeanor, whose duty it should be to use every means in their power, even to the extent of taking human life, to prevent such violence. It was made a misdemeanor for said officer to fail to call together a posse in such an emergency, and citizens who responded were authorized to carry weapons in the performance of their duties. Any person engaged in “mobbing or lynching any citizen ... without due process of law” should be arrested and punished by imprisonment in the penitentiary for not less than one nor longer than twenty years; and if death resulted from such mob violence the person causing said death should be subject to indictment and trial for the offense of murder.[282]