ABSTRACT
For a number of years and at the highest level of state politics, Hugh Dorsey’s career was made by the Frank trial. Dorsey’s style and victory in court made him a hero in the eyes of most white Georgians. But Frank’s lynching had to push Dorsey, who had already heard many arguments against mob justice, to even greater concern about its implications. The killers flouted the decision of Governor John Slaton to commute Frank’s sentence. The lynching was a direct attack on executive power in the state.
