this is the context
Explanation:
Opposition to Mob-Rule
by Abraham Lincoln (1837)
1 There is an increasing disregard for law which pervades the country—the increase in savage mobs. This disposition now exists, and it would be a violation of truth and an insult to our intelligence to deny. Accounts of outrages committed by mobs form the everyday news of the times. They have pervaded the country from New England to Louisiana; they are not the creature of climate, neither are they confined to the slave holding or the non-slave holding States. Alike they spring up among the pleasure-hunting masters of Southern slaves, and the order-loving citizens of the land of steady habits. Is this not common to the whole country, whatever the cause may be?
2 It would be tedious as well as useless to recount the horrors of all of them. Those happening in the State of Mississippi and in St. Louis are perhaps the most dangerous and revolting to humanity. In Mississippi, they first began by hanging the regular gamblers—not a very useful or very honest occupation, but one which was actually licensed by an act of the Legislature, passed but a single year before.
3 Next, slaves suspected of planning rebellion were captured and hanged in all parts of the State. Also, the people supposed to be in league with the slaves; as well as strangers on business from neighboring States, were, in many instances, subjected to the same fate. Thus went on this process of hanging, from gamblers to slaves, from slaves to citizens, and from these, to strangers, until dead men were seen literally dangling from the boughs of trees upon every roadside.
4 Turn, then, to that horror-striking scene in St. Louis. A single victim was sacrificed there. This story is very short, and is perhaps the most highly tragic of anything of its length. A mulatto man by the name of McIntosh was seized in the street, dragged to the suburbs of the city, chained and burned to death. This occurred all within a single hour from the time he had been a freeman attending to his own business and at peace with the world.
5 Such are the effects of mob law, and such are the scenes becoming more and more frequent in this land so lately famed for love of law and order. These stories, which have even now grown too familiar to attract anything more than an idle remark, are dangerously threatening the foundations of our government. It is imperative to remember the sacrifices that brought about our great government, “Freedom, all give some, some gave all” and return to respect the laws of our land.
