[4][5] The reputed author, William Lynch, identifies himself as the master of a "modest plantation" in the British West Indies who has been summoned to the Virginia Colony by local slaveowners to advise them on problems they have been having in managing their slaves.
He briefly notes that their current violent method of handling unruly slaves – lynching, though the term is not used – is inefficient and counterproductive.
Instead, he suggests that they adopt his method, which consists of exploiting differences such as age and skin color in order to pit slaves against each other.
[9] The librarian later revealed that she had obtained the document from the publisher of a local annual business directory, The St. Louis Black Pages[10] in which the narrative had recently appeared.
[1][5] A man named William Lynch did indeed claim to have originated the term during the American Revolutionary War, but he was born in 1742, thirty years after the alleged delivery of the speech.