Word: lynchers
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...raze Nauvoo. The 38-year-old prophet surrendered himself as a hostage for his people-and sealed his own fate. A mob with their faces disguised with paint invaded Carthage jail, shot him as he tried to escape from a window. As he fell to the ground, a lyncher with a bowie knife prepared to cut off his head, despite the remonstrances of a horrified bystander (see cut). But as he died, the prophet had one more triumph; the sun blazed out, illuminating the jail yard, and the man with the knife shrank away...
Inevitably through this treatment, Clark tends to overemphasize the psychological battles within the minds of each individual in the lynching mob. He seems to endow the characters with a hesitance, a doubtfulness about the righteousness of their course which would not exist in reality. The lyncher when in white heat blazes with his hate, he does not consider in rational terms. Clark's lynchers tend to think too much...