"Lynch Law" in the American Revolution

 

Particularly unlucky were those Loyalist who actively took up arms or plotted against the Patriot cause. They suffered all of the pent up rage that accompanies civil war. The houses of such Loyalists were burned and their property seized. 

A particularly glaring example occurred in southwest Virginia in 1780. A Patriot spy uncovered a Loyalist plot to sabotage Virginia’s all important lead and saltpeter mines in the area and then march on Charlottesville to free British prisoners of war. Governor Thomas Jefferson ordered Judge Charles Lynch to arrest the ringleaders and send the guilty to Richmond for trial. Lynch arrested seventy five suspected Loyalists and brought them to his plantation called Green Level, some twenty five miles south of present day Lynchburg. Judge Lynch decided to administer his own version of summary frontier justice. A few of the accused were acquitted but many others were imprisoned for terms ranging from one to five years. The ringleaders were tied by their thumbs to the branches of a black walnut tree and given thirty-nine lashes with a cat o’nine tails whip. If the convicted Loyalist begged for mercy with the cry “Liberty forever,” he was cut down and forcibly impressed into American military service. In 1782 the Virginia General Assembly immunized Lynch from legal action that might have arisen because of his extra-legal methods of dealing with Loyalists. The General Assembly found that the measures taken by Judge Lynch were warranted given the emergency situation.

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