A fit object for a Lynch law

Re-post
Whitehall Memorial Park Dedication Service

October 19, 1858
New York City
Address by Jefferson Davis

"You have among you politicians of a philosophical turn, who preach a higher morality; a system of which they are the discoverers...They say, it is true the Constitution dictates this, and the Bible inculcates that; but there is a higher law than those, and they call upon you to obey that higher law of which they are the inspired givers.

Men who are traitors to the compact of their fathers---men who have perjured the oaths they have themselves taken...these are the moral law-givers who proclaim a higher law than the Bible, the Constitution, and the laws of the land...These higher law preachers should be tarred and feathered, and whipped by those they have thus instigated....The man who...preaches treason to the Constitution and the dictates of all human society, is a fit object for a Lynch law that would be higher than any he could urge."

The South As A Conscious Minority, Jesse T. Carpenter, New York University, 1930, pp. 159-160)