The Dukes-Nutt affair morphed from a domestic dispute to a double killing that sparked violent mobs and saw President Chester Arthur side with honor-bound bloodshed.
for criminal charges for his alleged role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. But the same phenomenon took place in the 1880s, when two honor killings over alleged sexual promiscuity captivated the national imagination and highlighted just how tenuous America’s commitment to the rule of law has long been.The tale of Nicholas Lyman Dukes and Lizzie Nutt began with a stolen glance across the aisle of a western Pennsylvania church.
When the jurors emerged from their deliberations, they shocked the public by setting Dukes free. The townspeople, in turn, erupted into a ravenous riot. They mock-lynched a dummy dressed up as Dukes, singing, “We’ll hang Lyman Dukes to a sour-apple tree. The jury will join him on the way.” Dukes managed to escape that evening with the sheriff’s help.
Meanwhile, Dukes’s fellow delegates at the statehouse derided him as a scoundrel and maneuvered to expel him from office. A former U.S. attorney general told the press that he preferred the use of mob tactics to prevent Dukes from taking his seat, acknowledging candidly, “If the thing is done lawlessly, I would rather see it done outside the house than by the action of its members.”
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