Under the date of November 29, 1819, W. Faux describes the treatment given a young Yankee, of the name of Williams, near Princeton, Indiana, two years earlier. He was suspected of having robbed a store, but only circumstantial evidence could be adduced against him and he was acquitted. “The people of the place, however, prejudiced against him, as a Yankee, deputed four persons to inform him, that unless he quitted the town and state immediately, he should receive Lynch’s law, that is, a whipping in the woods. He departed, with his wife and child, next day, on foot; but in the woods, four miles from Princeton, they were overtaken by two men, armed with guns, dogs, and a whip, who said they came to whip him, unless he would confess and discover to them the stolen money, so that they might have it. He vainly expostulated with them; but, in consideration of his wife’s entreaties and cries, they remitted his sentence to thirteen lashes. One man then bound him to a tree and lashed him with a cow-hide whip, while the other held and gagged him; the alarmed wife, all the time, shrieking murder. He was then untied, and told to depart from the state immediately, or he should receive another whipping on the morrow, as a warning and terror to all future coming Yankees. “This poor fellow was of respectable parents at Berlin, in the state of New York, and possessed a well-informed mind. He quitted the state, and returning, soon after, to prosecute his executioners, died at Evansville, before he had effected so desirable an object.”[126] In “Letters from Illinois,” the second edition of which was published in London in 1818, Morris Birkbeck writes: “There is nothing that I anticipate with so much satisfaction and security as the rapid development of society in our new country. Its elements are rude certainly, and heterogeneous. The first settlers, unprotected, and unassisted amid dangers and difficulties, have been accustomed from early youth to rely on their own powers; and they surrender with reluctance, and only by halves, their right of defence against every aggression, even to the laws which themselves have constituted. “They have been anxiously studious of mildness in the forming of these laws, and when, in practice, they seem inefficient, they too frequently proceed with Indian perseverance to acts of vengeance, inconsistent with the duty of forbearance essential to social man. Hence deeds of savage and even ferocious violence are too common to be viewed with the abhorrence due to them. “This disposition is evinced continually, and acted on without any feeling of private or personal animosity.