ORGANISED LAWLESSNESS.

Globe, Volume XXIV, Issue 2644, 28 September 1882, Page 4

ORGANISED LAWLESSNESS.

One afternoon, a young schoolteacher, named Emma Bond, at Taylorsville, Illinois, bod dismissed the solitary pupil she had been teaching, and was making ready to go home. At this momsnt she was poized, her body bent nearly double, so that she might be dragged through the scuttle leading into the aohool-bonse loft, where, after two or three hours, of indescribable horrors, she was abandoned by the brutes who had assailed her. On recovering her senses she. crawled to the nearest house, and found there, as she believed, two of her assailant*, one of whom, named Pettis, tved at the house. She begged hie mother Se take her to her home, and after per-

Sana ion tbit wet finally done. Her injurieo were frightful, end involved, if not her life, a Ssrmanent cpinal trouble. Three men, Pettis, lementi and John Montgomery, w-re arretted, charged with the crime, and ex amined. Owing to Mite Bond's condition she could not be confronted with them, and the evidence against them has been mainly oir oumttantial. In tpite of their attempts to prove an alibi it was deemed sufficient to hold them for trial. The testimony to their absence elsewhere on that terrible afternoon was very direct and positive, but, unluckily, it came solely from the relatives of the accused. The school house is the centre of a settlement occupied entirely by the Pettis and Montgomery families and families connected with them. The roads and paths are made chi. fly with a view to their convenience in communicating with each other, and the task of getting any testimony necessary to convicting the accused was well nigh impossible. Every witness was directly interested in shielding the alleged culprits. But the horror and indignation of the community outside of this cordon of interested relatives found expression in a secret vigilance committee among the farmers, who resolved to avenge the wrongs of their neighbor’s daughter. As the trial was closing and the relatives of the accused solidly and suspiciously united in testifying to the culprit* being anywhere and everywhere but near the school house that afternoon, these farmers came flocking into town. It was whispered that before morning the imprisoned men would be released from gaol—and strung from the limbs of the trees overhanging the school bouse. But this was postponed until the next night. Then the three were in succession taken from their cells and drawn up by a ropo with fierce demands for a confession of guilt. But all three protested their innocence. They were questioned by the girl's father, who assumed the leadership of the mob, yet nothing but earnest d nials of their guilt was extorted from them. They were, therefore, at his suggestion remanded to gaol until his daughter was able to identify or acquit them. The most remarkable feature of the affair, however, is the cool and deliberate supplanting of the law and legal process by the jurisdiction of the lyncher*. Their existence and purposes have for weeks been perfectly well known and understood. But no effective steps were taken to prevent what might have been as great an outrage as that which it Bought to pnnisb.