Synopses & Reviews
By any standard, the United States is the most violent nation in the industrialized world. To find comparable levels of interpersonal violence, one must look to nations in the midst of civil war.
Most observers of modern American violence do not consider the historical roots of current levels of violence, preferring to criticize American liberalism, permissive child-rearing practices, and excessive greed and individualism as the sources of the problem.
This collection of original essays examines the role of violence in America's past, exploring its history and development, from slave patrols in the Colonial South to gun ownership in the twentieth century.
Contributors examine both individual acts, such as domestic violence, murder, dueling, frontier vigilantism, and rape, and group and state-led acts such as lynchings, slave uprisings, rifle clubs, legal sanctions of heterosexual aggression, and invasive medical experiments on women's bodies.
Contributors include Jeff Adler, Bruce Baird, Robert Dykstra, Lee Chambers-Schiller, Philip J. Cook, Laura Edwards, Uche Egemonye, Nicole Etcheson, Evan Haefeli, Sally Hadden, Paula Hinton, Arthur L. Kellermann, Laura McCall, Kate Nickerson, Mary Odem, Craig Pascoe, John C. Pettegrew, Junius P. Rodriguez, and Andrea Tone, Christopher Waldrep.
Synopsis
By any standard, the United States is the most violent nation in the industrialized world. To find comparable levels of interpersonal violence, one must look to nations in the midst of civil war.
Most observers of modern American violence do not consider the historical roots of current levels of violence, preferring to criticize American liberalism, permissive child-rearing practices, and excessive greed and individualism as the sources of the problem.
This collection of original essays examines the role of violence in America's past, exploring its history and development, from slave patrols in the Colonial South to gun ownership in the twentieth century.
Contributors examine both individual acts, such as domestic violence, murder, dueling, frontier vigilantism, and rape, and group and state-led acts such as lynchings, slave uprisings, rifle clubs, legal sanctions of heterosexual aggression, and invasive medical experiments on women's bodies.
Contributors include Jeff Adler, Bruce Baird, Robert Dykstra, Lee Chambers-Schiller, Philip J. Cook, Laura Edwards, Uche Egemonye, Nicole Etcheson, Evan Haefeli, Sally Hadden, Paula Hinton, Arthur L. Kellermann, Laura McCall, Kate Nickerson, Mary Odem, Craig Pascoe, John C. Pettegrew, Junius P. Rodriguez, and Andrea Tone, Christopher Waldrep.
About the Author
Michael A. Bellesiles is the founding director of Emory University's interdisciplinary Violence Studies Program, and author of Revolutionary Outlaws.
Table of Contents
Introduction / Michael A. Bellesiles -- Kieft's War and the cultures of violence in colonial America / Evan Haefeli -- "Shee would bump his mouldy britch": authority, masculinity, and the harried husbands of New Haven Colony, 1638-1670 / Ann M. Little -- Colonial and Revolutionary era slave patrols of Virginia / Sally E. Hadden -- The social origins of dueling in Virginia / Bruce C. Baird -- Women of domestic violence in nineteenth-century North Carolina / Laura F. Edwards -- Complicity and deceit: Lewis Cheney's plot and its bloody consequences / Junius P. Rodriguez -- Good men and notorious rogues: vigilantism in Massac County, Illinois, 1846-1850 / Nicole Etcheson -- Armed and "more or less dangerous": women and violence in American frontier literature, 1820-1860 / Laura McCall -- Seduced, betrayed, and revenged: the murder trial of Mary Harris / Lee Chambers-Schiller -- To live and die in Dodge City: body counts, law and order, and the case of Kansas v. Gill / Robert R. Dykstra -- Word and deed: the language of lynching, 1820-1953 / Christopher Waldrep -- "The deftness of her sex": innocence, guilt, and gender in the trial of Lizzie Borden / Catherine Ross Nickerson -- Treat her like a lady: judicial paternalism and the justification for assaults against Black women, 1865-1910 / Uche Egemonye -- "The Negro would be more than an angel to withstand such treatment": African-American homicide in Chicago, 1875-1910 / Jeffrey S. Adler -- Homosociality and the legal sanction of male heterosexual aggression in the early twentieth century / John C. Pettegrew -- "The unspeakable Mrs. Gunness": the deviant woman in early-twentieth-century America / Paula K. Hinton -- Cultural representations and social contexts of rape in the early twentieth century / Mary E. Odem --Violence by design: contraceptive technology and the invasion of the female body / Andrea Tone -- The Monroe Rifle Club: finding justice in an "ungodly and social jungle called Dixie" / Craig S. Pascoe -- Armed and dangerous: guns in American homes / Arthur L. Kellermann and Philip J. Cook.