 In the South in the antebellum era, members of the abolitionist movement or other people who opposed slavery were sometimes victims of mob violence.The largest lynching during the war and perhaps the largest lynching in all of U.S. history, was the lynching of 41 men in the Great Hanging at Gainesville, Texas in October 1862.Most of the victims were hanged after an extrajudicial "trial" but at least fourteen of them did not receive that formality.