However irrational these fears, the response was real—vigilante lynch law that made the John Brown scare of the previous winter look like a Sunday School picnic. “It is better for us to hang ninety-nine innocent (suspicious) men than to let one guilty one pass,” wrote a Texan, “for the guilty one endangers the peace of society.”57 This mass hysteria caused even southern unionists to warn Yankees that a Republican victory meant disunion.
