Editing Posey County, Indiana (section)

==History==
After the [[American Revolutionary War]], Posey County was originally considered part of the [[Northwest Territory]], organized in 1787 by the new United States. As part of the [[Indiana Territory]], it was organized in November 1814 from [[Gibson County, Indiana|Gibson]] and [[Warrick County|Warrick]] counties. It was named for [[American Revolutionary War|Revolutionary War]] Gen. [[Thomas Posey]], who was then serving as Governor of the Territory.<ref>{{cite book|author=De Witt Clinton Goodrich & Charles Richard Tuttle|publisher=R. S. Peale & co.|year=1875|location=Indiana|title=An Illustrated History of the State of Indiana|url=https://archive.org/details/anillustratedhi02tuttgoog|page=[https://archive.org/details/anillustratedhi02tuttgoog/page/n582 570]}}</ref> [[Mount Vernon, Indiana|Mount Vernon]] was designated as the county seat in 1825. Its port on the Ohio River continues to be integral to the economy of the state and county.

Like other parts of southern Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, Posey County was first settled by people from the [[Upland South|Upper South]], many of whom arrived via the Ohio River. Farming was the primary development at first. In the mid- to late 19th century, the county received many German immigrants. The river port had rougher areas of vice, and a higher population of single men, as was typical. [[African Americans]] were among the men who worked on ships and at the port.

Posey County was the site of the largest recorded lynching of African Americans in Indiana's history. In October 1878, a [[Lynching in Posey County, Indiana|white mob lynched seven black men]] in the span of a few days. No one in the mob was prosecuted, and at each court session for the next three years, the prosecutor asked the judge to "set the case over to the next session". A grand jury was called to investigate the mob action, but with an election pending for the prosecuting attorney, no one was ever indicted. Following years of research, Posey County judge Jim Redwine wrote a novel, ''Judge Lynch!'' (2008), based on the events. Redwine sometimes lectures on the riot, inviting his audience to imagine how they would have acted and stressing the injustice done to the African Americans who were denied the right to a fair trial.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://eji.org/sites/default/files/lynching-in-america-third-edition-summary.pdf|title=''Lynching in America''; Supplement: Lynching by County, 3rd ed., 2017, Montgomery, Alabama: Equal Justice Initiative, p. 5|access-date=May 31, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171023063004/https://eji.org/sites/default/files/lynching-in-america-third-edition-summary.pdf|archive-date=October 23, 2017|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref name="lynch" />