Comment: Lincoln understood why mobs could not be tolerated

By Stefan Lund / Special To The Washington Post

The House committee hearings on the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection have made the dangers of mob rule clear.

Indeed, Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., last week asked Americans to recall the 19th century and remember that mob violence is a “very old problem [that] has returned with new ferocity.” Raskin even paraphrased a speech by Abraham Lincoln who in 1838 declared mob violence to be the greatest danger to the “perpetuation of our political institutions.”

Before the Civil War, Americans frequently confronted the specter of mob violence, which perpetrators justified as necessary to prevent or remove perceived threats to their communities. But then, as now, mob violence was about subverting democracy and the rule of law to violently enforce one group’s idea of justice.

During Lincoln’s young adulthood in the 1830s, mob violence in the United States was common. Historian David Grimsted identified nearly 150 recorded incidents of mob violence in the United States in 1835 alone, with most targeting individuals and groups who threatened the white, Protestant status quo. In Northern cities, these were often Catholic immigrants. In the South, white mobs targeted free and enslaved Black men who they perceived as challenging the racial caste system. Mobs also made victims of those who advocated for causes, such as abolition, that threatened swift and radical change.

Contrary to the common stereotype of mobs as a sort of peasant rabble, American mobs of the 19th century included people from all walks of life, including tradesmen, professionals and elected officials. In fact, many of the participants in mob violence enjoyed respected positions in their town or county. Lead by pillars of the local community, mobs believed they represented the popular will and that their crowd violence was justified in the name of preserving civic order.

Mobs ranged in size from a few to hundreds, and the violence they committed consisted of everything from intimidation and destruction of property to torture. Arrests were uncommon, and prosecution was rarer still. In part because mobs often included influential members of the community, outnumbered local law enforcement rarely sought punishment.

In fact, some mobs anxiously worked to portray their violence as reasonable and legally justifiable. In 1845 Lexington, Ky., a group of white men wanted to prevent an anti-slavery newspaper from being published in their town. They held multiple public meetings in which they denounced the editor of the newspaper as incendiary and demanded he cease publication. When the editor refused, they removed the printing press by force and solicited lawyer Thomas Marshall to publicly defend their actions. Marshall agreed and delivered a speech arguing that the offended citizens were no mob but a “general assembly of the people” who had gathered to remove a public nuisance. The group of Lexingtonians followed suit, defending their actions against those who might “misrepresent [their] motives and conduct,” worrying not about legal prosecution but judgment.

But despite such claims, these activities were antithetical to democratic government and the rules that undergirded it. That’s why in 1838, at age 28, Lincoln directly addressed this issue.

His speech followed the murder of Elijah Lovejoy, an abolitionist preacher and editor. It was not new, as Lincoln understood, for mobs to threaten and harass anti-slavery activists, but Lovejoy was the first to die at the hands of his attackers.

In the 1830s, Lovejoy had moved from New England to the slave state of Missouri and established an anti-slavery newspaper. His denunciations of slavery made him many enemies and Lovejoy decided to move again. He relocated to Illinois, where locals were just as hostile, confiscating and then destroying his printing press. When Lovejoy ordered a new press to continue his publishing, he and friends stood guard inside the Alton, Ill., warehouse where it was housed. When a mob arrived, shots were fired and Lovejoy was killed.

To the men of Missouri and Illinois who made up the mob, Lovejoy was an outsider who had come into their communities to bring unwanted change. These men, like many white Americans of the time, equated anti-slavery advocacy with support for rebellion by enslaved people and viewed their violence as a legitimate means for restoring order.

At the core of mob violence was the assertion that a group of citizens can know what is best for their town, their community, their country, and are justified in using violence to enforce their will and bring about their vision of a correct society.

In his speech Lincoln identified this assertion of legitimacy by mobs — that they could lawfully act without the sanction of the government — as the fatal threat of mob violence. If the government allowed mobs to go unchallenged, public confidence in the republic would collapse, he argued. Even good people “who love tranquility, who desire to abide by the laws,” would wonder why they should support a government that cannot or will not prevent violent groups from attacking their fellow citizens.

It was this erosion of trust in democratic civil authority Lincoln lamented when he predicted that “if destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author.” When mobs ran rampant and the government did nothing, Lincoln argued, Americans would wonder why they should bother with such a government at all.

His observations remain important today. Like 19th-century mobs, the attackers of Jan. 6 believed that their country was threatened and that a bout of righteous violence by upstanding citizens was necessary to restore order. In this context incidents from the riot that seem disturbing and incongruous — such as rioters chanting “USA! USA!” as they broke into the Capitol, or a rioter telling a police officer that “We’re doing this for you, buddy” — can be identified as mob behavior consistent with this longer history of violence against men like Lovejoy.

Almost two centuries ago, Lincoln declared: “There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law.” He was right. Mob violence undermines the principle that government be based on the participation of all the people; not just those that feel aggrieved. This was as true in Lincoln’s day as it is in ours.

Stefan Lund is a postdoctoral fellow at the Nau Center for Civil War History at the University of Virginia.