found guilty of the murder of a 9-year-old local white girl. After the verdict, though the sheriff with the governor's approval called up the Madison Home Guard to protect Washington, "only three militiamen and none of the officers" responded to the order. Washington was thus easily taken from jail by a posse of ten men organized by a "leading local businessman". Described as "among the best citizens", they promptly handed him over to a mob of 300+ waiting outside the courthouse. From there, he was taken to a telegraph pole behind a Mr. Poullain's residence, allowed a prayer, then strung up and shot, his body mutilated by more than a hundred bullets. Afterwards, in the patriarchal exhibition-style common of southern lynchings, a sign was posted on the telegraph pole: "Our women and children will be protected." His body was not taken down until noon the next day. According to Brundage's account of the lynching of Brown Washington in Lynching in the New South: Georgia and Virginia, 1880-1930: In the aftermath, though local and state authorities vowed to thoroughly investigate the lynching as well as the Madison Home Guard's dereliction of duty, just a week later a grand jury was advised by a judge of the superior court of Madison that any investigation would be a waste of time. In addition, the state body charged with investigating the home guard's non-response reported that their absence had been satisfactorily explained and no tribunal would be convened to investigate the matter." Although the local Madisonian newspaper failed to report on the 1890 extra-judicial murder of Mr. Washington, an even earlier first lynching by Madisonians of a man they similarly pulled out of the old stone county jail appears in the contemporary accounts from the Atlanta Constitution. In 1919, ten years after the erection of a Confederate memorial one block from the newly built Morgan County courthouse, a third lynching occurred in the dark of night a few days before Thanksgiving. This time, citizens skipped the show-trials altogether, opting to travel to the home of Mr. Wallace Baynes in what one paper of the day called an "arresting party", though no charges against Mr. Baynes were stipulated in the news account. Baynes shot at the party, striking Mr. Frank F. Ozburn of Madison in the head, killing him instantly. In response, the mob outside his home grew to 40-50 men. Despite the arrival of