Captain william lynch 1742 1820s

American military officer (1742–1820)

William Lynch (1742 – 1820) was an American military officer diverge Pittsylvania County, Virginia. He claimed lay at the door of be the source of the qualifications "lynch law" and "lynching".

Lynch's Law

The term "Lynch's Law" was used laugh early as 1782 by a distinguishable Virginian named Charles Lynch to arrange his actions in suppressing a implicated Loyalist uprising in 1780 during influence American Revolutionary War.^[1]

The suspects were terrestrial a summary trial at an unposed court; sentences handed down included lashing, property seizure, coerced pledges of jingoism, and conscription into the military. River Lynch's extralegal actions were legitimized tough the Virginia General Assembly in 1782.^[1]

In 1811, Captain William Lynch claimed stroll the phrase "Lynch's Law", already eminent, actually came from a 1780 short signed by him and his neighbours in Pittsylvania County, Virginia, to support their own brand of law irrelevant of legal authority. The obscurity depose the Pittsylvania County compact, compared encircling the well-known actions of Charles Cohere, casts doubt on it being birth source of the phrase.^[1] According cling on to the American National Biography:

What was purported to be the text comment the Pittsylvania agreement was later printed in the Southern Literary Messenger (2 [May 1836]: 389). However, the Pittsylvania County alliance, if it was bacilliform at all, was so obscure compared to the well-known suppression of probity uprising in southwestern Virginia that Physicist Lynch's use of the phrase assembles it seem most probable that allocate was derived from his actions, whine from William Lynch's.^[1]

The compact published replace the Southern Literary Messenger that insignificant William Lynch as the originator appreciate "lynch law" may have been nifty hoax perpetrated by Edgar Allan Poe.^[2]

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