The Governor Condemns the Colfax Lynching Mob
Governor McGraw orders an investigation into the extrajudicial murder of two men in Whitman County, declaring that mob violence is no substitute for the courts.
Gov. McGraw, with characteristic promptness, has directed Attorney General Jones to use every effort to secure the identification and arrest of the outlaws who lynched Hill and Parker at Colfax on Friday night last, 'to the end that the perpetrators of this infamous outrage may be apprehended, brought to justice and dealt with in accordance with the laws of this state.' This is the proper kind of talk. The guilt or innocence of the parties lynched cuts no figure in the case at all; no mob is a court of highest appeal; no mob has any business to revise the judgment of a court or the verdict of a jury by violating the laws of the state. Go to the ballot box and correct your blunders if you have made any by another ballot, not by another murder.
“No mob has any business to revise the judgment of a court or the verdict of a jury by violating the laws of the state.”
This reflects the ongoing 19th-century tension between established civil authority and the frontier tradition of vigilante ‘justice.’ The state’s intervention against the Colfax mob marked a critical moment in the consolidation of rule of law in the Washington territory/state.
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