Pursuant to a public notice, a meeting of the citizens was held on June 17 to make arrangements for the execution of O’Conner on June 20. L. Wheeler was requested to take command of a company of volunteers to act as a guard. A committee of three was appointed to make the necessary arrangements for the execution and burial of O’Conner. Henry Adams was requested to act as sheriff on the day of the execution. A committee of three was appointed to collect sums to defray the necessary expense “for the keeping, executing, burial, &c., of said O’Conner.” It was voted that the sheriff be allowed the sum of twenty-five dollars for the keeping and execution of said O’Conner; and that if there were anything over and above that amount, after all necessary expenses were paid, the same should go to the executioner. “At 12 o’clock, on the day of the execution, the prisoner was taken from his place of confinement, under a guard of a company of volunteers, commanded by L. Wheeler, to the place of execution, where had assembled about 1,500 citizens. He was placed on a cart, the rope was made fast to the gallows, when the cart was driven away, leaving the prisoner suspended between the heavens and the earth. “The whole proceedings were carried on with the utmost regularity and good order. By mutual consent of all, every coffee house was kept closed, and not a drop of spirits was sold until after the execution.”[134] At the time of this affair no judicial or civil regulations were yet established in that region. Under these circumstances, then, was Patrick O’Conner legally executed or was he executed by lynch-law? Doubtless most men will agree that he was, to all intents and purposes, legally executed, and yet many instances of the operation of lynch-law on the frontier were scarcely less justifiable, though the trial and infliction of punishment may have been far more summary. In general, the punishments administered under lynch-law previous to 1830 were not severe, usually consisting of a whipping, or some other form of corporal punishment, and banishment after a specified time. Niles’ Register for July 17, 1824 (26: 326) contains the following: “Kentucky.—Several murders have lately been committed in this state by persons who call themselves ‘regulators’—but effectual measures have been taken to arrest and punish them.” This case was evidently an abuse of lynch-law; a band of desperadoes, presumably, adopted the name of “regulators” as a cloak for their misdeeds, and thus sought immunity from punishment. Capital punishment was very rarely inflicted by the substantial and respectable settlers who sometimes found it necessary to use lynch-law methods at this early period.