Camden Commercial Courier

Vicksburg again!

A New Vicksburg Scene. The Memphis Gazette gives the following account of an outbreak of popular vengeance, which happened there a short time since. Gross as was the behaviour of the criminal in this case, there was yet no proportion between the offence and the punishment: and this is almost certain to happen, wherever the mere populace thus takes the law into its own hands. The Gazette says:

For some days past, Memphis has been the scene of no inconsiderable excitement. On Sunday last, a certain Mrs. Smith, an open and abandoned prostitute, and a violent and ungovernable woman, undertook to cowhide a highly respectable widow lady of this town, for having expressed the opinion that Mrs. Smith harbored one of her negroes. This fiend, in the shape of a woman, followed the lady through the street, and had not the latter sought refuge in a store, the intended castigation would probably have, at least, been attempted. The indignation of the community was justly excited, and there can be no doubt that the guilty wretch deserved a very high and exemplary punishment. On Sunday night, a crowd of respectable gentlemen, repaired to the house of Mrs. Smith, for the purpose of executing some sort of vengeance, and of finding certain gentlemen who were known to be on rather intimate terms with Mrs. Smith, and who were suspected of having countenanced her, in the outrageous attack upon an unprotected female. During the attack upon the house, one gentleman received a heavy load of shot in his thigh, which shattered the bone, and produced a wound, of which the termination is extremely doubtful. The house was razed to the ground, without further accident.

On Monday morning, the lamentable accident of the preceding evening was freely spoken of, and being generally known, produced immense excitement. It was fearful to see the gathering elements of the storm. The people, however assembled in public meeting at Johnson's Tavern, and adopted resolutions approving the proceedings of the evening before, determining to place the obnoxious individuals in a boat without an oar and set them adrift in the middle of the Mississippi, and appointing the meeting a committee to carry the resolutions into effect. The sentence was executed, and a little more than the sentence: For an individual who was not named by the meeting, but who had been heard to express a determination to defend his employer, one of the condemned, after considerable ill treatment, was put aboard the boat, that he might do faithful service to his master. The most respectable citizens of the town were engaged in this affair. The result was mild--too mild for the offenders--but the means were dangerous, and, of questionable propriety.

We forbear to make further remarks at this time. We feel it our duty to say, however, that in cases of imminent danger, where the public is like to suffer materially by the existence of an evil which cannot be immediately removed by law, as in such case an individual might protect himself, so may and ought the community to do. But to carry the principle further than this, is going back to a state of lawless violence, in which no community can long exist.