The third and most frequent form of race violence is lynching, a practice obscured by a mass of conventional and improbable statements. The subject has been set in its proper light in an impartial and scientific study by Professor Cutler entitled "Lynch Law," based on a compilation of statistics which come down to 1903. He sweeps away three fourths of the usual statements on the subject, first of all disproving the allegation that lynching is a comparatively recent practice brought about by negro crimes since the Civil War. The term Lynch Law has been traced back to Colonel Charles Lynch, of Virginia, who, in Revolutionary times, presided at rude assemblies which whipped Tories until they were willing to shout "Hurrah for Liberty!" Till about 1830 lynching never meant killing; it was applied only to whippings or to tarring and feathering. In the frontier conditions of the South and West, the habit grew up of killing desperadoes by mob law, as, for instance, the celebrated clearing out of five gamblers at Vicksburg, Miss., in 1835. This process was also applied to some murderers, both Whites and Negroes. Professor Cutler also disposes of the assertion that the most serious offense for which lynching is applied was unknown previous to emancipation. In 1823, a Negro in Maryland was badly beaten, though not killed, for a supposed attack upon a white woman. In 1827 one was burned at the stake in Alabama for killing a white man. From that time on, lynching of blacks continued in every Southern state--commonly for murder, in a few cases for insurrection, in at least nine ascertained cases previous to the Civil War for violence to white women. It is evident, therefore, that the extremest crime had been sometimes committed, and the extremest punishment exacted by mob violence before the slaves were set free.