Captain Captain is a title, an appellative for the commanding officer of a military unit; the supreme leader of a navy ship, merchant ship, aeroplane, spacecraft, or other vessel; or the commander of a port, fire or police department, election precinct, e ...

William Lynch (1742 – 1820) was an American military officer from

Pittsylvania County Pittsylvania County is a county located in the Commonwealth of Virginia. As of the 2020 United States Census, the population was 60,501. Chatham is the county seat. Pittsylvania County is included in the Danville, VA Micropolitan Statistical A ...

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth ar ...

. He claimed to be the source of the terms "lynch law" and "

lynching Lynching is an extrajudicial killing by a group. It is most often used to characterize informal public executions by a mob in order to punish an alleged transgressor, punish a convicted transgressor, or intimidate people. It can also be an ex ...

Lynch's Law

The term "Lynch's Law" was used as early as 1782 by a prominent Virginian named Charles Lynch to describe his actions in suppressing a suspected Loyalist uprising in 1780 during the

American Revolutionary War The American Revolutionary War (April 19, 1775 – September 3, 1783), also known as the Revolutionary War or American War of Independence, was a major war of the American Revolution. Widely considered as the war that secured the independence of t ...

.Brent Tarter. "Lynch, Charles." '' American National Biography Online'', February 2000. The suspects were given a summary trial at an informal court; sentences handed down included whipping, property seizure, coerced pledges of allegiance, and conscription into the military. Charles Lynch's extralegal actions were legitimized by the Virginia General Assembly in 1782. In 1811, Captain William Lynch claimed that the phrase "Lynch's Law," already famous, actually came from a 1780 compact signed by him and his neighbours in

, Virginia, to uphold their own brand of law independent of legal authority. The obscurity of the Pittsylvania County compact, compared to the well-known actions of Charles Lynch, casts doubt on it being the source of the phrase. According to the ''

American National Biography The ''American National Biography'' (ANB) is a 24-volume biographical encyclopedia set that contains about 17,400 entries and 20 million words, first published in 1999 by Oxford University Press under the auspices of the American Council of Le ...

'':

What was purported to be the text of the Pittsylvania agreement was later printed in the ''
Southern Literary Messenger The ''Southern Literary Messenger'' was a periodical published in Richmond, Virginia, from August 1834 to June 1864, and from 1939 to 1945. Each issue carried a subtitle of "Devoted to Every Department of Literature and the Fine Arts" or some var ...
'' (2 ay 1836 389). However, the Pittsylvania County alliance, if it was formed at all, was so obscure compared to the well-known suppression of the uprising in southwestern Virginia that Charles Lynch's use of the phrase makes it seem most probable that it was derived from his actions, not from William Lynch's.

The compact published in the ''Southern Literary Messenger'' that proposed William Lynch as the originator of "lynch law" may have been a hoax perpetrated by

Edgar Allan Poe Edgar Allan Poe (; Edgar Poe; January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is wide ...

.Christopher Waldrep, ''The Many Faces of Judge Lynch: Extralegal Violence and Punishment in America'', Macmillan, 2002, p. 21.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lynch, William 1742 births 1820 deaths People from Pittsylvania County, Virginia