[Footnote 41:  Harriett Martineau, Retrospect of Western Travel (London, 1838), I, 262-267; V. Debouchel, Histoire de la Louisiane (New Orleans, 1841), p. 155; Alcee Fortier, History of Louisiana, III, 223.]

The violence of city mobs is a thing peculiar to no time or place.  Rural Southern lynch law in that period, however, was in large part a special product of the sparseness of population and the resulting weakness of legal machinery, for as Olmsted justly remarked in the middle ’fifties, the whole South was virtually still in a frontier condition.[42] In post bellum decades, on the other hand, an increase of racial antipathy has offset the effect of the densification of settlement and has abnormally prolonged the liability to the lynching impulse.

[Footnote 42:  F.L.  Olmsted, Journey in the Back Country, p. 413.]

While the records have no parallel for Madame Lalaurie in her systematic and wholesale torture of slaves, there were thousands of masters and mistresses as tolerant and kindly as she was fiendish; and these were virtually without restraint of public authority in their benevolent rule.  Lawmakers and magistrates by personal status in their own plantation provinces, they ruled with a large degree of consent and cooperation by the governed, for indeed no other course was feasible in the long run by men and women of normal type.  Concessions and friendly services beyond the countenance and contemplation of the statutes were habitual with those whose name was legion.  The law, for example, conceded no property rights to the slaves, and some statutes forbade specifically their possession of horses, but the following characteristic letter of a South Carolina mistress to an influential citizen tells an opposite story:  “I hope you will pardon the liberty I take in addressing you on the subject of John, the slave of Professor Henry, Susy his wife, and the orphan children of my faithful servant Pompey, the first husband of Susy.  In the first instance, Pompey owned a horse which he exchanged for a mare, which mare I permitted Susy to use after her marriage with John, but told them both I would sell it and the young colt and give Susy a third of the money, reserving the other two thirds for her children.  Before I could do so, however, the mare and the colt were exchanged and sent out of my way by this dishonest couple.  I then hoped at least to secure forty-five dollars for which another colt was sold to Mr. Haskell, and sent my message to him to say that Susy had no claim on the colt and that the money was to be paid to me for the children of Pompey.  A few days since I sent to Mr. Haskell again who informed me that he had paid for the colt, and referred me to you.  I do assure you that whatever Susy may affirm, she has no right to the money.  It is not my intention to meddle with the law on the occasion, and I infinitely prefer relying on you to do justice to the parties.  My manager, who will deliver this to you, is perfectly acquainted with all the circumstances; and [if] after having a conversation with him you should decide in favor of the children I shall be much gratified."[43]