Only a few days before the Vicksburg affair two white men and seven Negroes were lynched about forty miles from Vicksburg on the charge of attempting to organize an insurrection of slaves. Featherstonhaugh quotes the following account of it from a newspaper: “Twenty miles from this place [Jackson, in Madison County] a company of white men and Negroes were detected before they did any mischief. On _Sunday_ last they hung two steam doctors, one named Cotton and the other Saunders; also, seven Negroes without law or gospel, and from respectable authority we learn that there were _two preachers_ and ten Negroes to be hanged this day.” That such lynchings were exceptional in the South before about 1855, or even before the war, is shown by the fact that these cases were mentioned by several different travelers and the papers of the time as well. I examined with more or less care books of travel too numerous to mention,—scores of them,—for the period between 1830 and 1860. Those travelers, especially, who visited the South between 1838 and 1854 are eloquently silent on the subject. I examined _The Liberator_[22:7] for 1839 and 1840, but found mention of only one Negro who was put to death by a mob. No State was given so I am not sure whether it was in the North or the South. However, it gave five instances of Negroes legally executed in the South; one for rape, one for arson, one for firing on two white men and threatening two others, and two for connection with an attempt at insurrection. Two more cases may be given: that of a Negro in New Orleans suspected of rape and murder, and one sentenced in Kentucky for rape upon two white women. Again, a search of _The Liberator_ for 1848 and 1849; Niles’ _Register_, July, 1845-January, 1849; _The Vicksburg Sentinel_, and _The Augusta_ (Va.) _Democrat_, July, 1846-January, 1849, reveal but two lynchings: One a Negro “hung by a committee of citizens” at Bentonville, Arkansas; the other, a white man named Yeoman, in Florida, for robbery. The latter was given both by Niles’ _Register_ and a book of travel. However, one Negro was sentenced to death in the South for rape, and ten legally executed, the majority for murder. As one might naturally expect, _The Liberator_ for 1855 and 1856 shows several lynchings in the South. At least six Negroes were lynched in the South during these years,—two for rape (one of whom was burned) and four for murder (one of whom also was burned). Two of these criminals were lynched in Arkansas by a mob,—after being acquitted by the court,—led by the sons of their master, whom they had killed. Two white men were also lynched: one, in Texas, for stealing Negroes, and the other, in Missouri, for poisoning a spring. Moreover, eighteen Negroes were legally executed in the South: two for rape, and nearly all the others for murder. In addition, seven Negroes were mentioned as under sentence of death.