When drawing any conclusions from the instances recorded in the newspapers as to the history of lynch-law during this period, there is another fact to be kept in mind. During the later years the facilities for obtaining news were greatly increased; the means of communication between different parts of the country were very much improved and the number of newspapers published had rapidly increased. There were no doubt many cases of the administration of summary justice in the remote districts during the thirties and the early forties which never came to the notice of either the Liberator or Niles’ Register. There is, however, abundant evidence to make the conclusion a safe one that lynch-law was more and more resorted to during this period and that the punishments administered under that name by vigilance committees and mobs came to be more and more severe, death being frequently inflicted during the later years. The Parkville (Mo.) Democrat made the following statement in the year 1856: “Deeds of daring and outrages perpetrated by negroes, are constantly becoming more frequent. We hope that the proper authorities will see to it that all such cases are punished to the extent of the law.”[187] The Liberator for May 2, 1856 (p. 72) contains an item which reads in this way: “In Hancock County, La., Samuel L. Watson, a negro overseer, whipped one of the negroes under him, and a few days after, the negro caught him in a field and beat him with a club till he died. The tragedy closed in the usual way, by the summary hanging of the negro by the populace.” There are indications, therefore, that crime was on the increase among the negroes at this time and that the whites had cause for inflicting more rigorous punishment. The following editorial appeared in the Liberator, December 19, 1856 (p. 204): “A record of the cases of ‘Lynch Law’ in the Southern States reveals the startling fact, that within twenty years, over three hundred white persons have been murdered upon the accusation—in most cases unsupported by legal proof—of carrying among slave-holders arguments addressed expressly to their own intellects and consciences, as to the morality and expediency of slavery.” If this figure may be accepted as reliable for the whites, it is within the truth to say that a considerably larger number of negroes met with summary capital punishment during the various insurrection excitements which occurred.