But here we shall probably be met by the legal lore of some ’Justice Shallow,’ instructing us that the life of the slave is fully protected by law, however unprotected he may be in other respects.  This assertion we meet with a point blank denial.  The law does not, in reality, protect the life of the slave.  But even if the letter of the law would fully protect the life of the slave, ‘public opinion’ in the slave states would make it a dead letter.  The letter of the law would have been all-sufficient for the protection of the lives of the miserable gamblers in Vicksburg, and other places in Mississippi, from the rage of those whose money they had won; but ’gentlemen of property and standing ‘laughed the law to scorn, rushed to the gamblers’ house, put ropes round their necks, dragged them through the streets, hanged them in the public square, and thus saved the sum they had not yet paid.  Thousands witnessed this wholesale murder, yet of the scores of legal officers present, not a soul raised a finger to prevent it, the whole city consented to it, and thus aided and abetted it.  How many hundreds of them helped to commit the murders, with their own hands, does not appear, but not one of them has been indicted for it, and no one made the least effort to bring them to trial.  Thus, up to the present hour, the blood of those murdered men rests on that whole city, and it will continue to be a CITY OF MURDERERS, so long as its citizens, agree together to shield those felons from punishment; and they do thus agree together so long as they encourage each other in refusing to bring them to justice.  Now, the laws of Mississippi were not in fault that those men were murdered; nor are they now in fault, that their murderers are not punished; the laws demand it, but the people of Mississippi, the legal officers, the grand juries and legislature of the state, with one consent agree, that the law shall be a dead letter, and thus the whole state assumes the guilt of those murders, and in bravado, flourishes her reeking hands in the face of the world.[34]

[Footnote 34:  We have just learned from Mississippi papers, that the citizens of Vicksburg are erecting a public monument in honor of Dr. H.S.  Bodley, who was the ring-leader of the Lynchers in their attack upon the miserable victims.  To give the crime the cold encouragement of impunity alone, or such slight tokens of favor as a home and a sanctuary, is beneath the chivalry and hospitality of Mississippians; so they tender it incense, an altar, and a crown of glory.  Let the marble rise till it be seen from afar, a beacon marking the spot where law lies lifeless by the hand of felons; and murderers, with chaplets on their heads, dance and shout upon its grave, while ’all the people say, amen.’]