The governors of several States have recently asked that they be given more power, and that more resources be placed at their command, in order that they may take the initiative both in preventing lynchings and in punishing lynchers. Something may be accomplished by granting their requests. During the fourteen years immediately preceding Governor O’Ferrall’s inauguration there were sixty-two lynchings within the bounds of the State of Virginia, but during the four years of his administration there were but three, and in neither case was the chief executive in a position either to prevent the crime or punish the offenders.[333] The most hopeful sign at the present time is the stand which the governors and minor officers in a number of States, in the South as well as in the North, have taken against lynching.[334] Governor Vardaman, of Mississippi, in his recent rather sensational rescue of a negro murderer from a mob,[335] has at least demonstrated the possibility of preventing lynchings and enforcing the law. Governor Jelks, of Alabama, and Governor Durbin, of Indiana, have not only been outspoken in their denunciation of lynchings but have taken active measures to prevent them. A number of sheriffs in various States have within the last two years prevented lynchings by courageously facing mobs and making it clear that they would defend their prisoners at the hazard of their own lives.[336] So long, however, as coroner’s juries empanelled to inquire into the death of victims of lynching continue to render the verdict that “the deceased came to his death at the hands of persons unknown to the jury,” and so long as it is true that the coroner’s verdict commonly marks the end of all legal procedure with reference to the occurrence, it is not to be expected that sheriffs and jailers will hazard their lives in the protection of prisoners.[337] Prisoners are taken from officers of the law and lynched, not because the officers are cowards, but because they are in sympathy with the sentiment in the community which demands immediate punishment. The public sentiment revealed in the following citations is not found in isolated instances, but is typical, although equal frankness of statement cannot always be secured. A verdict rendered by a coroner’s jury in Wayne County, North Carolina, in August, 1902, over the body of a negro rapist, read as follows: “We the undersigned, empanelled as a jury to inquire into the cause of the death of Tom Jones, find that he came to his death by gun shot wounds, inflicted by parties unknown to jury, obviously by an outraged public acting in defense of their homes, wives, daughters and children. In view of the enormity of the crime committed by said Tom Jones, alias Frank Hill, we think they would have been recreant to their duty as good citizens had they acted otherwise.”[338]