Attempts to prosecute participants in such mobs usually fail in the South as elsewhere, but occasionally a jury convicts.
The tradition that, years ago, lynching was only invoked in punishment of the unspeakable crime is more or less true.

It is not true now.

The statistics of lynching which are frequently presented are obviously exaggerated, as they include many cases which are simply the results of the sort of personal encounters which might and do occur anywhere.

There is a tendency to class every case of homicide in which a negro is the victim as a lynching, which is manifestly unfair; but even though liberal allowance be made for this error, in the total of about 3000 cases tabulated in the last thirty years, the undisputed instances of mob violence are shamefully numerous.

Rape is by no means the only crime thus punished; sometimes the charge is so trivial that one recoils in horror at the thought of taking human life as a punishment.
Yet it must not be forgotten that over certain parts of the South a nameless dread is always hovering.