a majority of the Irish but only a fraction of the Germans, most of whom—probably—were either Lutheran or Reformed, with an appreciable number of non-churchmen or "free-thinkers."[1] Nevertheless, nativism, as entangled in the political psychology of this eventful year, had its full share in producing a tragedy in this state also.
It came in the form of a lynching, carried out with hideous barbarism by a body of the ruder Germans of Washington County, in August, 1855. It seems that a sickly, weak witted boy of nineteen, named George DeBar—a native of New York State—felt himself aggrieved by a German farmer and proposed to administer a beating. This he partly accomplished, at the farmer's home, but his victim fled into the field, where he found a hiding place. Meantime, DeBar ran amuck, and meeting the man's wife stabbed her severely but not fatally. He next pursued a fifteen-year-old boy, Paul Winderling, who was living with the farmer, attacked him with his pocketknife, and killed him. He then burned the farmer's cabin. DeBar afterwards solemnly assured his attorneys that the only part of the transaction he could remember was striking the farmer himself with a stone knotted in his handkerchief. The belief was widespread that he became unbalanced mentally at this point, which theory is really the simplest explanation of his horrible crime, committed without assignable motive.
Immediately on DeBar's arrest a plan was hatched to storm the jail, take him out, and hang him. The death penalty had been abolished at the instance, as many felt, of the Yankee sentimentalists, and the ignorance of some suggested that, since hanging was only justice in a case like this, and the state refused to execute a criminal, the people themselves had a right to take the matter into their own
- ↑ 66
