Fluent Essays

PAUL CHRISTENSEN The Wild West: The Life and Death of a Myth We all know something about myths, their strange power to explain events that hardly seem rational; their flight from the literal world to a kind of dream space in which gods and nature play roles in an intricate drama of vengeance, conquest, and the creation of identity. In some myths, girls turn into trees; in others, an ordinary mortal flnds himself gifted with superhuman powers to lie, escape from giants, seduce goddesses, and find his way home through a sea that hates him. Odysseus is at the center of Greek mythology hut, as is often pointed out, he may not he one person hut rather the whole of Greek experience from the moment some Persians decided to migrate south down the Peloponnesian peninsula to found a new country, a trek that lasted eight or ten centuries that Homer summarizes in the life of the Wests first hero. Myth has now taken on the connotation of lying or pretending, an ahsurd story spun out of ones fantasies. The Greek root of the word is muthos, meaning mouth, or word of mouth, in other words a folklore, some sort of informal tale of the trihe passed down the generations. Why some narratives get elevated to the role of myth over others remains something of a mystery in their dispersion, their great ap- peal to people who demand some core of helief in which to identify themselves, and find their coherence as a trihe or nation. I want to hazard a very wild guess ahout myth and say that the very nature of myth is that it tells the story of how a people hecome a na- tion. Myth is ahout the formation of a national I pitted against a wilderness that is the national not-I, and the indigenous people rooted there hefore invasion and usurpation also form the not-I to he over- come, ahsorhed, used as a kind of fuel in the making of the nations selfhood. Virgil is eloquent on the nature of the half-human cannihals and nomads Aeneas found upon entering the uncivilized Italian peninsula after leaving Troy. This demonized Other was justifiably Christensen / 311 destroyed to make way for the Roman state, a bringer of culture and literacy for the good of all. It is little wonder that Virgils epic poem The Aeneid became a best seller in sixteenth-century Venice, a must- read for kings wishing to colonize the New World and to crush the cannibal hordes thought to he living there. Every nations principal myths are about starting out, meeting the wilderness head-on and taming it, breaking the spirit of indigenous enemies and declaring the land and the inhabitants the food of this new collective self. Myth is a sort of family history, an account of the migration to a new world, and who the heroes were in the great struggle to make a home on someone elses property. Myths dont look for justification; the great thrust of each is the boldness and aggression needed to turn strange, unknown territory into a collective self. The making of Englands national self lies in Geoffrey of Monmouths Historia Regnum Britanniae and Malorys Le Morte dArthur and is the narrative of Celtic migration and conquest. Every myth has to have its Caliban, some monster in the way of the peoples progress, some resistant force that lives deep inside nature and draws strength from its primal energy. Antaeus leaps to mind as the quintessential monster here, who when thrown to the ground after losing his breath in the arms of Heracles, suddenly springs back full of life, until Heracles is told that Earth is Antaeuss mother, who nurtures him each time he touches ground. Myth is history turned into a powerful archetypal dream about the ego tearing itself from a mother (or mother country) and facing a series of terrihle ordeals to prove its courage but also to devour the not-I that will expand its powers and command of the new world. Its almost as if myth as narrative recapitulates the stages of human life from infancy to manhood, but only if that passage to manhood is successful and brings rewards and honors to it. Myth is good news writ large to include what a whole people does to feather its nest and crow over its victories. Even with the mythic founding of England authors eagerly associated the principals with the battle of Troy, that ultimate source of heroism in which Europe defeats Asia in a war of continental cultures. It should also be noted that the body of myth as national histories includes the caveat that once the not-I of national selfhood is exhausted, so is the fuel of expansion. Camelot dies when the enemies no Ion- 312 I Southwest Review ger inspire the knights of the Round Table to action; the court is a shambles of intrigues and adulterous affairs, a corrupt state that also ends King Lears reign. Without an adversarial Other, a nation begins to atrophy from lack of food. A healthy nation must constantly recall its myth and invent new forms of adversary—foreign wars, wars on poverty, drugs, illness, terrorism, or any other avatar of the not-I in order to provoke courage and willingness to risk all—the stakes are high, but so are the rewards of further expansion, perhaps even to the creation of an empire. Richard Slotkin calls this mythological process regeneration through violence, and in locating the frontier as the source of the American myth, he also identifies Daniel Boone as our Odysseus in the struggle for nationhood. Boone is a refined version of Fenimore Coopers Natty Bumppo, the half-European half-Indian (though of European parentage) scout and explorer. Boone has all of Bumppos skills but he is the pure European afoot in a strange new world west of the colonies, Shawnee territory that later became Kentucky, which he conquers with a drawknife and the occasional musket ball. He hunts, he knows his enemy like his own mind, he is sympathetic to the nature that feeds his adversary and also feeds him, and he possesses a selfiess devotion to breaking the spirit of wilderness to found a nation. He established the Wilderness Road through the Cumberland Gap, through which 200,000 settlers poured, and his spirit was the model for succeeding generations to emulate. Boone is the collective embodi- ment of Europeans in the New World, a combination of experience boiled down into one man whose face could be that of Paul Bunyan, Ahab, the victorious Union soldiers, a cowboy of the Plains, the dog soldiers of the world wars, Luke Skywalker, and Rocky Balboa. Boone is the template of the hero in the American myth, and each generation projected a new one onto the retreating boundary of the frontier. Once we reached the Pacific shore, of course, we ran out of untamed land and human rivals, and the fuel of self-expansion ended. Frederick Jackson Turner pegged that moment at 1890, based on a Census Bureau report that found no remaining frontier in its new census, and wrote about it three years later in his ground-breaking essay, The Signifi- cance of the Frontier in American History, delivered at the Worlds Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Jackson was our own Homer, in a way, outlining the narrative by which we made a nation. He gathered Christensen / 313 up all the loose strings of two centuries of immigration, colonial or- ganization, and v êstw ârd movement and located the not-I along that demarcation between the settlements and the ground lying in someone elses possession. He thought of our history as a kind of gestation, in which violence, aggression, and sheer doggedness overwhelmed our opponents, and in the process we not only made a place for ourselves hut formed our character as winners, risk takers, opportunists, invad- ers, and conquerors. But he also clarified an important aspect of our national character— its essentially conservative hias as a glorification of European racial stock encountering primitive indigenes and an anarchic wilderness. Male traditions are idealized and the Enlightenment rationality of Paris and London are compacted into the heros self-reliance, supe- rior logic, and desire to break nature and rule over it as the apostle of reason. Turners American is composed of Emersonian self-reliance, Thoreaus loner following a different drummer, and the plucky hunter and Indian fighter. Out of such materials rose the image of the stoic, taciturn adventurer cut off from others, depending on his own instincts and his compulsion to win. This is not the hero projected out of Greek or Roman experience, through which hoth Odysseus and Aeneas de- pended upon others to aid in their common struggle, and who called upon the help of the gods when the going got really tough. Instead, the American myth refiected the unassimilated masses of immigrants living in isolated ethnic enclaves, and crafted its hero out of a lack of social honds and made him content with his own solitude. Whitmans Leaves of Grass, self-published in 1855, would have passed unnoticed had not Ralph Waldo Emerson unwittingly endorsed it in a private letter to the poet, an excerpt of which was then reprinted on the spine of the 1856 edition. The original thirteen poems fiy in the face of the still-forming American myth of the solitary hero on the frontier. Even Whitmans trapper (in Song of Myself) takes an Indian squaw for a wife, and everywhere else in these poems Whitman seems to roll into a ball the multitude of themes and ideas left out of the main myth: solidarity of workers; equal rights for women,- emancipation of blacks; concern for failures and cowards; an embrace of death as well as life; a table set for the diseased and the heroic, the unwanted and the admired; but above all a very French esteem for fraternity and for candor in all things sexual, including the young Southern housewife 314 I Southwest Review whose erotic fantasies involve twenty-eight young male bathers vis- ihle from her window. While the book never became a favorite with the common reader, its great significance lies in its opposition to the myth of origin taking hold in the American imagination. Whitman had a masterly command of the language of that myth and how to oppose it from all sides, and nearly any other discourse that opposed the heroic myth can trace itself back to ideas in these signal poems, from unionism to equal rights for women and minorities, to anti-war sentiments, and a reaching out to the marginalized and the pariahs of American society. Where the frontier myth is adamantly conservative in politics and vision, a patriarchal code of power and rewards, Whitmans egalitarian vision is the language of group esprit and cohesion, a liberal philosophy emerg- ing alongside the frontier myth like its shadow, its spiritual opponent in the pendulum swing of political life. Put another way, Whitmans vision is post-European, and unwit- tingly anticipates the emergence of an alternative narrative: the return of the exiled son to his tribe or ethnic group. After 1900, this New World narrative would come to voice almost every minority cultures desire for a return to roots, to homelands, to the embrace of the tribe and its elders. Exile meant living among whites in cities, where alien- ation, poverty, alcoholism, and dependence were the dark consequence of being cut off from tribal nurture. By contrast, the frontier myth spoke to. the desire of the European settler to break out of the group and distinguish oneself through ordeals of courage and self-initiative, a drive away from family and kinship toward wilderness, where op- portunity lay in some unbounded form. If the frontier myth, soon to evolve into the myth of the Wild West, glorified aggression and racial supremacy. Whitmans counter mythology could be boiled down to three words: reconciliation of op- posites. Driving the frontier myth toward greater militancy and the emergence of the cowboy as gunfighter, toward the absolute of vio- lence, was the Souths quest for a heroic ideal after its surrender to the North. Southern adult males inherited a taint upon their masculinity for being born on the losing side of Americas Civil War, the confiict that shattered national unity for a century and a half. The South had lost its participation in the frontier myth, which had passed it by on its way west, leaving writers and cartoonists the opportunity to malign Chiistensen /31s the white-haired colonel, the Southern belle, silver-tongued corrupt lawyers, and politicians of a fading order. Only the Souths youths could fashion a new way of participating in American mythology by new ordeals of courage played out on the unpaved Main Streets of mining camps and frontier settlements. The gunfighter replaced almost every other stereotype of the cowboy era, except for the cattleman and the local sheriff, a corrupt official who is the extension of the Southern lawyer and ex-slave holder of a generation before. Youth redeemed the South and won back its badge of courage through lawlessness and an all-male anarchic rebuke to the encroachment of civilization, signaled by the arrival of circuit-riding preachers and their congregations, followed by mail-ordered brides, and the presence of school marms and war widows, the arts matrons of the bigger ranches. The gunfighter was the fraying ends of the Daniel Boone prototype, a decadent figure marred by excess and romantic hyperbole. He was a little too fast with his gun, too reckless with the women he deserted, and too eager to down his whiskey and ride all night to the next gun fight or Indian raid. As the frontier died out, his fictional character was infiated into a desperate fantasy of the pioneer spirit, with only the towns to pester with his futile search for an edge of wilderness in which to demonstrate his skills as a killer. His glorification occurred first in the dime Westerns, which ran from the 1860s to the 1900s. The last publisher cancelled his series in 1919, at about the time Western film fastens onto his image and propels him to mass audiences on the wings of Buffalo Bill and Kit Carson, and such villain archetypes as Billy the Kid and Jesse James. Film as a medium bore its own implicit romantic prejudices against the city as a corrupting influence on human nature. Its proclivities as a visual medium were to lavish attention on the epic landscapes of Utahs Monument Valley, the Grand Canyon, the vast grasslands and deserts of the Southwest, with the towns pockmarking the otherwise pure desolation, with a graveyard full of slow draws and executed bad men. The town was the vortex of human failings while the ranches were centers of power created by kingpins of the meat industry, who ruled their outfits like medieval lords and bullied the wayward, unreli- able help that drifted into its perimeters for temporary work. By 1880, a decade before the Census Bureau declared the frontier closed, the Wild West was disappearing in the last buffalo kills, the I Southwest Review resettlement of Native Americans, and the arrival of photographers and writers exploiting its mystique as the ground where America completed its territorial conquests. Charles Lummis, the regions first travel agent and hooster, began advertising the Southwest as a place of romance and sightseeing. Lummis credited himself with heing the first to call the region the American Southwest, and sold its charms through photographs and tour books like A Tramp across the Continent (1892) and Some Strange Corners of Our Country: The Wonderland of the Southwest {1892). Buffalo Bill Codys Wild West show debuted in 1883 as a circus act that later included Sitting Bull and twenty braves, reenactments of Indian raids on pioneer wagon trains, the rifle skills of Annie Oakley and her husband Frank Butler, and a dramatization of Custers Last Stand with Cody serving as General Custer. In an ironic commentary on Turners Frontier essay, Codys Wild West show performed at the same Chicago Worlds Fair in 1893, within earshot of his lecture. As Audrey Coodman argues in Translating Southwestern Land- scapes: The Making of an Anglo Literary Tradition, the moment the Wild West disappeared, imperial aggression turned into nostalgia, a longing for a raw edge on which to reinvigorate the American soul. The West was no longer wild but a vast psychological longing. Indians were made up and posed for Edward Curtiss studio cameras, often with the wrong tribal gear, including makeup and phony bead ware. A recent biography of Curtis by Laurie Lawlor, Shadow Catcher: The Life and Work of Edward S. Curtis, explores his thirty-year obsession with capturing Native Americans at the point of what many feared was their extinction. All things to do with the buffalo were now charged with totemic powers—even Theodore Roosevelt ordered a small herd to be corralled in front of the Smithsonian Institute,- he was not alone in fearing that the demise of the buffalo had diminished American masculinity. The buffalo nickel, also called the Indian head nickel, was minted from 1913 to 1938, and served to remind those paying for a shave or a cup of coffee of Americas symbol of wilderness and male courage. It went out of circulation just as Hitler annexed Austria into Greater Germany, stirring up American war passions that no longer needed the buffalo totem for solace. The significance of the cowboy may well be the fact that the frontier myth had leapt over its own extinction by attaching itself to a new Christensen / 31J figure and a new career in the last leg of the westward iourney. If it could leap one gap, it could leap another, and by this means achieve immortality by acquiring a power to change shapes and faces, and find itself carried forward in time by presidents Theodore Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan; by inventors like Henry Ford and Thomas Edison; by oil pioneers like John Rockefeller; and football coaches like Knute Rockne and Ara Parseghian; by Audie Murphy and anyone who could be characterized as fighting a vast enemy or opposition that he overcame by pluck, self-reliance, and his zeal to spread American civilization into the unknown. And so long as the world supplied new forms of the national not-I to oppose and conquer. Behind all such heroes was the uninterrupted rise of Americas for- tunes, which sanctioned and validated the successful struggle of the lone individual out on the raw edge. But with every new permutation of the mythical hero came counter- myths of the hero as ioiner and unifier. Two legs of the three legged stool of myth-making were a constant supply of enemies to conquer and Americas juggernaut of economic and military expansion. Should one or the other leg buckle, the hero myth process stalled, or let in the opposing argument for solidarity and reconciliation. One such instance of momentary stalling occurred in the Great Depression, when the usual values of enterprise and expansion were halted by economic collapse. An anti-hero suddenly veered into focus in the form of Steinbecks Joad family, and other collective heroes like the Bundrens of Faulkners As I Lay Dying, the renewal of socialism and populism and the demonization of tycoons and bankers, as in Erskine Caldwells Gods Little Acre (1933), when mill workers laid off at the local mill riot against the owners. The film version in 1958 stresses the Marxist implications of the riot and of Ty Ty Waldens futile search for gold on his farm. Economic crises halted the progress of the hero machine; Holly- woods new matinee idols of the 1930s were singers with tenor voices, slender epicene dancers like Fred Astaire, and singing cowboys like John Wayne, whose character Singin Sandy Saunders appeared in Riders of Destiny in 1933, his one and only singing role (with voice dubbed) but nonetheless the first such film presentation of a minstrel herdsman. He was followed shortly after by Gene Autry in 1935 and Roy Rogers two years later, along with Tex Ritter. The minstrels I Southwest Review of the plains softened the predatory, solitary heros image during the Depression, hut with the advent of World War II, new heroes turned dark, driven hy enmity with Indians and eager to claim land hy open conflict. The cowhoy hero, emhodying the history of American conquest as far hack as the colonial era, could now serve as an allegorical mouthpiece for almost any event hefalling the nation. His mythical character could he plugged into any emergency and he would emerge victorious, on the march to greater things. As early as 1948, Howard Hawkss Red River, starring John Wayne, consciously sets out the terms of empire huilding for a newly victorious America after World War IL Waynes character, Tom Dunson, wants to go it alone and leave behind a long caravan of settlers coming into Indian territory. The winning of the West, he soon learns, is more important than one mans amhitions, even though he remains the hard-nosed individual as others work to sustain a communal effort at cattle ranching. Hawks was the first di- rector to seize upon the macho huhris of the returning veteran and to slip a thin skin of cowhoy costume over him and set him down in an arena where he holdly conquers the Indians who oppose him. America, Dunson declares, must now feed the world from its heef herds, and nothing can stop it from growing into a full-fledged empire. Hollywood inherited a sense of the West that was made amhiguous hy the very fact that it was not only the place where westward expan- sion ended; it was also the arena in which competing ideologies came to fight it out. One side saw itself as victorious over Catholicism and lingering resentments over the Mexican War of 1836, and over the indigenous life of the Plains. The other West appeared to plead for preservation of its ethnic diversity and customs, its languages and tribal gods. The West was not one thing hut two, and hoth versions of its meaning lay in the hedrock of myth formation in the eighteenth century and during the American literary renaissance. Conquest and the remorse and longing for wilderness arose in the same moment. One could read the West from two sides, hut not simultaneously. Their signs were mutually exclusive, and would figure prominently in the great pendulum swings of political life—a Wild West that meant victory over aliens, and a tragedy of violence and waste of Americans great native heritage. The vast majority of the films produced since the 1930s have stressed .Christensen / 319 the heroic qualities of the cowboy—his boundless energy and obsessive emotions, his resilience in the face of adversity, his loyalty to a cause greater than himself. His character is stretched thin carrying out the Anglo cause, but after 1938 the softer features of the celluloid hero disappear, to be replaced by a brasher, more war-like and intemper- ate soldier and law and order champion. The Indian and the indolent Mexican subtly alter their characters to become a new menace of yelling, screaming, ruthless mobs descending from the hills to raid innocent pioneers new to dry-land farming. Their behavior takes on the qualities of the Japanese enemy, when the winning of the West becomes an international struggle. But the counter mythology was not far behind in expressing itself on film on a broad range of issues including racism, Native Ameri- can abuses, land seizures, and lynchings, the latter condemned in the 1943 film The Oxbow Incident, considered by some as the first anti-Western filin to come out of Hollywood. Native Americans who fought in World War II returned to find their reservations in tatters and a federal government eager to pursue a policy of termination of reservation life altogether in the name of assimilation. Some 25,000 Native Americans fought in the war; another 40,000 left home to work in war-related factories. In 1950, two films tackle the plight of Native Americans, Delmer Daves Devils Doorway and Anthony Manns Broken Arrow. Both films follow the lives of decorated Civil War veterans returning home to find whites bearing homestead claims against their property, allusions to the disenfranchisment felt by Indians returning from World War II. Broken Arrow tries to imagine a dual system of assimilation and of reservation culture, but Devils Doorway rejects assimilation and explores the corruption and greed of settler society, thus reversing long-held stereotypes of the bad Indian and good settler in film tradition. Native Americans are depicted as noble warriors with superior vision and fighting skills, and whites come across as small- minded opportunists and thugs. The release of Devils Doorway was delayed because MGM feared the pro-Indian theme would put off audiences. Its financial success, however, prompted the release of Broken Arrow shortly after. The romances of both films promised interracial marriages that were foiled in the end, at which point the historic camoufiage of the Western evaporated into a direct com- 320 I Southwest Review mentary on civil rights four years before the Supreme Courts call for desegregation in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. The Searchers, with John Wayne, goes a step further in 1956 by reversing the entrenched values of the captivity narrative. Such narra- tives borrowed from myth to suggest a descent into an underworld of savage devils in order to rescue a white woman, a kind of heroic ordeal in which paradise is the white settlement to which she is returned. In this film, Ethan Edwards sets out to rescue his nine-year-old niece from Chief Scar, whose party killed his brothers family. But the search goes on so long that the niece, Debbie, eventually marries Chief Scar, a nice parallel with the real-life captivity of Cynthia Ann Parker and her marriage to Nocona. Both women assimilated into Indian society and were happy in their marriages. But in this rescue, the mission turns murderous when Edwardss hatred of miscegenation consumes him in general rage. The film is one of the darkest commentaries on racism in the era. Other films delivered left-wing assaults on the House Un-American Activities Committee and rampant McCarthyism of the early 1950s. fohnny Guitar (1954) is ahout a suspicious community that forces townspeople to testify against one another. Sterling Hayden, the films star, had earlier named names hefore HUAC, and as one critic of the film remarks it must have been cathartic for Hayden to play the role of a man running away from his sordid past only to reconcile with who he really was. High Noon from 1952, finds a community unwill- ing to aid the marshal (Gary Cooper) in stopping a returning criminal bent on vengeance for his prison time. The left, as Tom Wolfe once remarked, controlled the scripts and shooting of Westerns during the 1940s and 1950s, and got its digs in when Carl Foreman, blacklisted from Hollywood, co-wrote the screenplay for High Noon and produced it anonymously. The Cold War comes in for general condemnation in William Wylers 1958 film The Big Country. Gregory Peck plays a sea captain, James McCay, betrothed to a wealthy ranchers daughter. Patsy Terrill, played by Carroll Baker. Like her powerful, feuding father, she favors confiict over reconciliation and is ashamed when Peck refuses a fight with the ranch foreman. The feud is between the Terrills and the Hennessys, and only when both patriarchs are killed can there be peace in the region. As Peck later observed of the film, it was intended as a left-wing allegory of the Cold War. Christensen / 321 Vietnam was treated from a variety of antiwar perspectives beginning as early as 1972 with Clint Eastwoods High Plains Drifter, in which a stranger comes to the rescue of the town of Lago, only to find the citizens as corrupt as the gang who menaced it. Once he kills the gang, he fills the office of mayor and sheriff with a midget and torments the very people he saved. The Vietnam eras brutal cynicism about good and evil is writ large in a film in which the westward movement ends in hypocrisy and moral indifference. Sam Peckinpahs The Wild Bunch thinly disguises the massacre of My Lai a year before in a vengeance plot of a gang shooting up a Mexican village until outnumbered and slaughtered by Mexican regulars. There are no heroes on the Anglo side, only bloodlust and a broken moral system spreading anarchy as they move south. And on the Mexican side, the general and his soldiers are portrayed as worthless drunks and murderers. Demonizing Mexicans, especially as soldiers and roving gangs of banditos, had more to do with justifications for usurping their land than it did with reality. Pancho Villa and Zapata were more often given heroic treatment by European and Mexican films than they received in Hollywood Westerns. The Latinos were accorded less worth than Native Americans, and their association with revolu- tion and civil war made them the enemies of order in their own land. Rarely if ever has reconciliation been stressed between Anglos and Latinos in Western films. As far back as 1927, when B. Travens novel The Treasure of Sierra Madre appeared with a bloody tale of gold lust and murder, the federales aie portrayed as a lawless band of robbers; John Hustons 1948 film of that title takes pains to de- humanize them still further. Latinos were demonized and associated with the post-revolutionary chaos of the 1920s. Pancho … Arizona Historical Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of Arizona History. http://www.jstor.org BOOT HILL BURLESQUE: The Frontier Cemetery as Tourist Attraction in Tombstone, Arizona, and Dodge City, Kansas Author(s): Kevin Britz Source: The Journal of Arizona History, Vol. 44, No. 3 (autumn 2003), pp. 211-242 Published by: Arizona Historical Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41696788 Accessed: 14-08-2015 22:56 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected] This content downloaded from 150.135.135.70 on Fri, 14 Aug 2015 22:56:50 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions http://www.jstor.org http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=azhs http://www.jstor.org/stable/41696788 http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp BOOT HILL BURLESQUE The Frontier Cemetery as Tourist Attraction in Tombstone, Arizona, and Dodge City, Kansas by Kevin Britz IN The one Magnificent of the early Seven scenes two unemployed of John Sturgess Tombstone 1960 epic and Western Dodge The Magnificent Seven , two unemployed Tombstone and Dodge City gunfighters played by Steve McQueen and Yul Brynner drive a hearse containing an Indian corpse to a boothill cemetery over the objections of the towns civilized element. The puzzled trav- eling salesman who hires them to forcibly deliver the body points out that boothill is the traditional final resting place of murder- ers, cutthroats, and derelict old barflies. As such, boothill ceme- teries have become testimonials to the violent nature of the Old West. At least, thats the way it is in the movies. A close look at two of the frontiers most famous cemeteries - in Tombstone, Arizona, and Dodge City, Kansas - reveals a different story. As towns with long-established Old West reputations, Tomb- stone and Dodge City in the 1920s were prime candidates for the national spotlight. Their histories were deeply intertwined, as the former southern Arizona bonanza camp and the Kansas cattle cap- ital shared similar origins, lurid media images, and famous charac- ters. And both communities experienced the rapid growth and inherent instability that characterized nineteenth-century boom- towns. Dodge City was established in 1872 as a center for the buf- falo hide trade, then rose quickly from 1876 until the adoption of Kevin Britz holds MA. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Arizona. He teaches in the American Studies Department at Kenyon College in Cambier, Ohio. [211] This content downloaded from 150.135.135.70 on Fri, 14 Aug 2015 22:56:50 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp THE JOURNAL OF ARIZONA HISTORY quarantine laws in 1885 as a major shipping center for Texas cattle. Tombstone grew into a town overnight, following the discovery of silver in 1878, and flourished until its mines flooded in 1887. Much to the chagrin of local boosters who desperately wanted their com- munities to be seen as pious, stable, and law-abiding, journalists and dime novelists painted lurid portraits of Tombstone and its Kansas cousin as western Sodoms. Despite the sanitizing efforts of turn-of-the-century promoters, dime novels and pulp magazines, the recollections of Bat Masterson and other gunmen, and the novels of Alfred Henry Lewis kept alive Tombstone and Dodge Citys wild-and-wooly reputations. Masterson s and Lewiss accounts of famous Tombstone and Dodge City characters provided rich sources for Old West chron- iclers. The series of popular books about Tombstone and the Earp brothers began with Frederick Bechdolts When the West was Young in 1922, followed by Walter Noble Burnss bestselling Tombstone: An Iliad of the Southwest in 1927. Dodge City acquired similar promi- nence in the popular imagination with the 1931 publication of Stuart Lakes Wyatt Earp , Frontier Marshal William MacLeod Rainess Famous Sheriffs and Western Outlaws , published in 1929, featured chapters on both towns. A parade of memoirs accompa- nied these popular chronicles. Robert Wrights 1913 recollection, Dodge City , the Cowboy Capital ; retired Tombstone lawman William Breakenridges 1928 autobiography, Helldorado: Bringing Law to the Mesquite, ; and former vaudevillian Eddie Foys 1928 reminiscence, Clowning Through Life , highlighted Tombstone and Dodge Citys wild heydays. William S. Harts 1923 film Wild Bill Hickok, along with Law and Order (1932), Frontier Marshal (Fox, 1934, and Twen- tieth-Century Fox, 1939), and Dodge City (Warner Bros., 1939), paralleled the historic works. These popular books and movies provided readers and view- ers with graphic images of the Old West that included swaggering gunslingers, stalwart lawmen, gamblers, painted women, lynchings, stage robberies, ramshackle buildings, and assorted vice and may- hem. Twentieth-century tourists expecting to encounter this ver- sion of the West, however, found a much different scene. Writer James Flagg, who drove to Dodge City in 1925 hoping to experi- ence the fierce romance of the old cow days - where so many herds were driven to and where so many cowpunchers raised their [212] This content downloaded from 150.135.135.70 on Fri, 14 Aug 2015 22:56:50 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp Boot Hill Burlesque simple hell until their pay gave out, instead discovered nothing but a litde town populated by lots of cowboys walking the streets in blue overalls. A New York Sun reporter was saddened to find that Dodge City had no landmarks of the brief era which fur- nished much of the material, real or imaginary, of the dime novel period of . . . American literature.1 The same was true of Tombstone. Journalist Charles Finger arrived in southern Arizona in 1931, expecting to enjoy life in a rollicking Wild West town. He found instead a placid little com- munity where an indubitable cowboy leaned against a drugstore wall while licking an ice cream cone. The first two hours in Tomb- stone, Finger confessed, proved beyond doubt, that this town, once so boisterous, has passed from its vivid youth to an age of repose and contentment. A New York Times correspondent shared the impression. Nowadays the citizens devote only an occasional reminiscent thought to the men who were laid to rest with their boots on in Boot Hill cemetery, he observed. Real Tombstoners are now more interested in paving bonds.2 In laying the foundations for their respective tourist indus- tries, Tombstone and Dodge City promoters recognized the impor- tance of satisfying visitor expectations, even if it meant dramatically stretching the truth. Tombstone enjoyed the advantage of retain- ing a large number of vintage buildings in various states of preser- vation. F. M. Loomis, the editor of Motor World and Motor Age, and Robert Manger, the field secretary of the National Automobile Dealers Association, were impressed in 1920 by the quaint appearance of the many old landmarks of pioneer days and expressed their satisfaction of a visit to the historic mining camp of which they had heard so many stirring tales. Dodge City, with few architectural remnants of its romantic past, was scarcely dis- tinguishable from a typical Kansas farm town. One visiting news- paper editor was surprised at how much Dodge City differed from the images created by blood and thunder stories that were told of the town. Only the street that fronted the railroad - lined with cafes and billiard parlors - and the crowded business district contained relics of the past. Aging residents in both towns, how- ever, remembered the frontier period and recalled especially the first improvised cemeteries. Increasingly, pilgrims sought out these boot hill graveyards for authentic relics of the Wild West.3 [213] This content downloaded from 150.135.135.70 on Fri, 14 Aug 2015 22:56:50 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp THE JOURNAL OF ARIZONA HISTORY The name boot hill may have originated in Dodge City, where it first appeared in print in the May 6, 1877, issue of the Dodge City Times. According to local historian Robert Eagan, who conducted extensive research on Dodge Citys original cemetery, the term frequently appeared in railroad cowtowns, where it referred to improvised municipal graveyards that ultimately became pot- ters fields. One of the first national uses of boot hill appeared in an article on New Sharon - a euphemism for Dodge City - in the March 1880 issue of Scribners Monthly . Unlike their Dodge City counterparts, who actually used boot hill to describe their orig- inal cemetery, Tombstone locals simply called their first graveyard the old city cemetery. In a 1926 speech, longtime Tombstone resident and former judge John C. Hancock attributed the use of the term to tenderfoot journalists who started to write up the west. Another Tombstonian, when asked about the origin of the term boothill, answered that the name probably was imported from Dodge City, which in its heyday . . . was fully as wicked as the southern Arizona silver camp.4 Like most boomtowns, Dodge City created its first civic ceme- tery as an ad hoc response to the need in 1872 to find a final rest- ing place for a dead transient. As the town expanded around it, the improvised burial ground quickly became prime real estate. In 1878, the Dodge City Townsite Company sold it to developers who planned to subdivide the plot into residential lots. To dispel the fears of potential homeowners who might object to living atop a graveyard, the owners persuaded the city to move the bodies to a new cemetery, called Prairie Grove, northwest of town. The coro- ner who disinterred the coffins in 1879 found the corpses resting quietly with boots on. The headboards, if ever there were any, had long wasted away, however. Consequently, he was able to iden- tify only a few individuals. The city, hoping to distance itself from its unsavory past, purchased a lot on Boot Hill and built a school- house. The Hays Sentinel hailed it as the proudest evidence of enlightenment upon the one surviving relic of barbarism. The building was razed in 1890 and replaced by a larger, three-story structure popularly known as the Boot Hill School, which func- tioned effectively for thirty-five years.5 Because the name probably originated in Dodge City, it was fitting that the reinvention of Boot Hill as a historic tourist attrac- [214] This content downloaded from 150.135.135.70 on Fri, 14 Aug 2015 22:56:50 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp Boot Hill Burlesque tion was the pivotal event as the former cattle town looked for ways to commemorate its past. In large part because of a strong post-boom economy, Dodge City lagged behind other Old West towns in developing its tourist trade. By the 1890s, the town had shrugged off its boomtown trappings, and by the First World War, it had evolved into a staid Midwestern community with a growing economy. As the hub of railroad commerce, agriculture, and live- stock, it was the political and mercantile center of western Kansas. Lacking the economic imperative that drove faded mining towns like Tombstone or Deadwood, South Dakota, to market themselves as tourist attractions, Dodge City hesitated to embrace any form of civic commemoration that even hinted at its sordid past. This attitude changed in 1927, when pioneer lawman, mayor, and auto- mobile dealer Hamilton Bell joined fellow business owners in prompting the city to purchase the long-abandoned Boot Hill. The transaction ignited a public debate over how the city should remember its past. When the Dodge City Board of Education announced in 1925 that it would close the outmoded Boot Hill School and sell the property, Bell and other business leaders, who were already involved in a project to mark historic sites in order to lure tourists to the old Santa Fe Trail, saw the opportunity to create an entic- ing local attraction. Boot Hill is known coast to coast and could be converted into one of the showplaces of the city, the Dodge City Daily Globe reported, there is a sentiment here that the historical value of the tract should be capitalized [on]. Kiwanis, Rotary, American Legion, Real Estate Mens Organization, and chamber of commerce representatives petitioned the Dodge City Commis- sion to call for a special election to purchase Boot Hill. Unfortu- nately, the community did not share their enthusiasm. On August 20, 1925, voters defeated the measure by a two-to-one margin. Subsequently, the city sold the site to the Presbyterian Hospital Association, who hoped to convert the old schoolhouse into a hos- pital. Interest in commemorating the site resurfaced two years later, however, when the Presbyterians abandoned their plans for the building and expressed their willingness to sell the Boot Hill parcel at public auction.6 The Dodge City Real Estate Board quickly launched a new campaign to save the old cemetery. Within hours of the hospital [215] This content downloaded from 150.135.135.70 on Fri, 14 Aug 2015 22:56:50 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp Hamilton B. Bell. This content downloaded from 150.135.135.70 on Fri, 14 Aug 2015 22:56:50 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp Boot Hill Burlesque associations announcement, a petition circulated among business leaders urging the city to purchase Boot Hill. The realtors suc- ceeded in postponing the sale until a $12,000 bond election could be held. In a newspaper ad that ran a week before the election, they reminded voters that to preserve this historic point is an investment that will return to the taxpayers much more than it will cost. Do not hold Dodge City back. Help push forward. Vote to save Boot Hill. Their tactic paid off. Voters endorsed the res- olution, and on April 20, 1927, Boot Hill became city property.7 Although the city now held the deed to Boot Hill, it remained unclear how the site would be preserved. Opinions divided sharply over how much of the valuable real estate should be allotted to historic commemoration and how much should be set aside for other use. Following eight months of discussion, in December 1927 the city passed a resolution supporting a pro bono proposal from longtime resident Dr. Oscar H. Simpson, a retired dentist and amateur sculptor, to install a large figure of a western cowboy at a commanding position on Boot Hill. The statue would adorn the entrance to a new city hall that also would be con- structed on the site. The buildings Spanish-style architecture would serve as a tribute to Dodge Citys location on the Santa Fe Trail and the towns heritage as a former outpost of the Spanish empire.8 The selection of Simpsons plan underscored the growing influence of the Boot Hill preservation movement. Like his friend Hamilton Bell, Simpson was a prominent Dodge City resident with a new-found interest in the towns early history. Following his retirement from dentistry in 1922, Simpson took up concrete sculpture and historical research, publishing several articles in local newspapers. He believed that Dodge Citys affiliation with the Old West gave the town great historical significance. It was unquestionably the most typically western in habits and customs of any town that ever existed, Simpson once told a reporter. In his opinion, it produced more national characters and notorious gunmen than all the rest of the wild towns of the turbulent west combined, and was longer passing through the gun age. Simp- sons romantic vision of Dodge Citys wild past had an ironic twist - he was a longtime prohibitionist who, in the 1880s, had strongly supported closing down the towns saloons.9 [217] This content downloaded from 150.135.135.70 on Fri, 14 Aug 2015 22:56:50 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp THE JOURNAL OF ARIZONA HISTORY As the first step in memorializing Dodge Citys controversial past, local businessmen encouraged Simpson to commemorate the cowboy, whose activities greatly influenced and colored the early day history of Dodge City. As the model for his reinforced con- crete statue, Simpson selected Dodge City chief of police Joe Sughrue. The Dodge City Journal described the completed artwork, which Simpson presented to the city in 1928, as a long, gaunt, rangy cowboy brandishing a trusty six shooter. In the newspa- pers eyes, it truly described the real cowboy as he was known in the early days. An inscription on the base proudly proclaimed: On the ashes of my campfire, this city is built. The statue was formally dedicated on November 4, 1929, as part of a larger cele- bration that included the laying of the cornerstone for the city hall. Members of the local preservation group scattered rocks, sage, cactus, and soapweed around the site to heighten the Old West atmosphere. The city commission, however, balked at covering the entire hill with native flora.10 Simpsons statue symbolized a confident and prosperous town ready to embrace its past. Boosters like Simpson and Bell wanted to claim Dodge Citys prominent role on the American frontier - a role that an increasing number of popular historians and film- makers were glorifying. By the late 1920s, Dodge City business leaders were flush with pride over their communitys commercial and political leadership. The construction of a new Santa Fe Rail- way terminal and Fred Harvey Hotel, combined with the WWI boom in wheat and livestock production transformed Dodge City into the shipping and financial center of western Kansas. Its popu- lation of 6,039 in 1921 represented a 17 percent increase over the previous year, making Dodge City the fastest-growing city in the state. By the end of the decade, the population reached 10,000, prompting the Kansas State Board of Agriculture and Editor and Publisher magazine to proclaim Dodge City the capital of Southwest Kansas. Many local boosters saw the towns triumphs as rewards for the pioneering values of perseverance and steadfastness.11 A decade later, commemoration of the past became an eco- nomic necessity. As the twenties ended, Dodge City reeled from the effects of the national depression even as it found itself at the center of the dust bowl disaster that destabilized the regions agri- cultural economy throughout the 1930s. The impact of the great [218] This content downloaded from 150.135.135.70 on Fri, 14 Aug 2015 22:56:50 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp The Simpson cowboy statue. dust-out was reflected in population figures - by 1940, the city had lost nearly one fifth of its residents, with only 8,222 remain- ing behind.12 Community remembrance took on a new meaning. The line between commemoration as a means of establishing historic iden- tity and as a commercial venture became indistinguishable as Dodge Citys economy eroded. How history would be memorial- ized in Dodge City was the subject of a decade-long public debate centered on Boot Hill. Spurred by a sense of economic urgency, the local preservation group formally incorporated as the South- west Historical Society in 1931. Hamilton Bell was the first presi- dent and Oscar Simpson served as a charter officer. Aware that Dodge City had been slow to capitalize on its history, Society members put atop their agenda the creation of a Boot Hill museum that they hoped would someday be known throughout the nation. The group was confident that the museum would appeal to a new generation of Americans who had succeeded the actual participants in episodes of those history making days. As evidence of this interest, they pointed out that the question most frequently asked by visitors was: Where is Boot Hill?13 [219] This content downloaded from 150.135.135.70 on Fri, 14 Aug 2015 22:56:50 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp THE JOURNAL OF ARIZONA HISTORY Even local businessmen who did not necessarily believe that a museum was the best approach to luring tourists agreed that it was time for the city to set aside any lingering reservations about its wild-and-wooly reputation and capitalize on Boot Hills notori- ety. Why should Dodge City be ashamed of Boot Hill, the Dodge City Globe asked. Have we become so goody goody that the days of the primitive, elemental west offends our fine sense of right and wrong? In a long letter to the Globe, prominent local banker C. C. Sales wondered why have newspaper men written story after story about Dodge City? Why do magazine writers continue to fea- ture Dodge City in stories which always go over big? In Saless eyes, the answer was obvious: It is because of historic Old Boot Hill. Unless the site was preserved, the inevitable march of progress would make old Dodge City a thing of the past. Sales recommended erecting a simple granite monument, so that a stranger visiting Dodge City may know he is standing on the site of the Old Boot Hill cemetery; and so future generations may not forget Boot Hill was a very important part of the stage on which was enacted that great melodrama, the Early Life of Dodge City.14 Furniture owner Joe Hulpieu, also a member of the preser- vation committee, set off a storm of controversy when he proposed installing metal sculptures of wagon trains, buffalo, Indians, and Wyatt Earp to line walkways replicating the Santa Fe Trail and the old-time cattle trails. The project addressed two of Dodge Citys pressing problems: providing work for the unemployed and attract- ing tourists.15 Hulpieu introduced his plan to the city commission in Feb- ruary of 1931, only to discover that another local organization felt that the Boot Hill site would better serve the community as tennis courts. The commission members tabled both proposals. When landscaping commenced on Boot Hill a few weeks later, however, rumors spread that the city was in fact levelling the hill in order to install the tennis courts. A rash of telephone calls to newspa- pers and a new Save Boot Hill campaign culminated in a large rally at the Lions Club. Forty club members volunteered to attend the next city commission meeting and protest any attempt to level the site they now referred to as the center of historical interest in the southwest. Mayor Harry Hart reacted quickly to squelch the rumors, reassuring the Lions Club and the historical society that [220] This content downloaded from 150.135.135.70 on Fri, 14 Aug 2015 22:56:50 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp Boot Hill Burlesque the city was only tidying up the hill. To avoid future misunder- standing, Hart created a special committee of Lions Club, Kiwanis, and Southwest Historical Society members to consult with the city park board and draft an official plan for the old cemetery.16 With the promise of attracting tourism revenue to the dust- choked town, the new committee enjoyed a surprising level of pub- lic support for a formal Boot Hill commemoration. A random telephone poll conducted by the Dodge City Globe in March of 1932 found that local sentiment strongly favored preserving the grave- yard site as a historic park. Although one respondent proclaimed Boot Hill the greatest asset Dodge City has as a tourist attraction, no one ventured a specific plan for the proposed park. A few weeks after the poll, the Southwest Historical Society offered a recom- mendation that set the tone for future discussion. The society envi- sioned erecting on Boot Hill a six-foot replica of a cowboy boot, including spurs.17 Although the historical societys proposal was never adopted, the shape of Boot Hills first commemoration took on the exag- gerated Old West symbolism that the giant boot represented. Paraphrasing the local Rotary Club motto with their slogan he profits most who shoots first, Oscar Simpson and Dodge City Rotarians - including Dodge City Globe publisher Jess C. Denious - constructed a parody of the Boot Hill graveyard, on the actual site, to entertain attendees at the state Rotary convention in May of 1932. Their whimsical recreation included fifteen concrete-cast faces and boots sticking out of mounds formed to resemble graves. Clever hand-painted epitaphs, some of them referring to actual persons, topped each burial plot. Among the more memorable epitaphs were: Shoot-em up Jake Run for sheriff in 1872 Ran from Sheriff 1876 Buried 1876 * * * * One Eyed Joe was Slow on the Draw He played five aces and now he plays the harp * * * * The Bones of Hiram Burr, who mistook a he-cow for a her. [221] This content downloaded from 150.135.135.70 on Fri, 14 Aug 2015 22:56:50 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp THE JOURNAL OF ARIZONA HISTORY The graves were haphazardly arranged to recreate the impro- vised nature of the original cemetery. Some were open to expose fake backbones, ribs, skulls, and other skeletal remains. As proof of Boot Hills authenticity, one grave featured an actual skeleton. A large dead tree, with a rope dangling from an overhanging branch, towered over the scene. A sign nailed to the trunk announced: Horse Thief Pete was hung on this tree in 1873. Although a Globe reporter found the scene all very sad, Simp- sons creation was so popular with visitors that the city allowed it to remain in place after the Rotary convention adjourned. It quickly became Dodge Citys main tourist attraction.18 For a Lions convention in June, Simpson dedicated at Boot Hill an officially sanctioned sculpture of a set of longhorn steer heads. Unlike his earlier graveyard parody, the concrete busts were the center of public fanfare that included a mounted parade of Dodge City Lions Club members dressed in cowboy costumes, a drum-and-bugle corps, and marching bands. The event indicated the communitys new willingness to officially embrace its wild- and-wooly past. To add authenticity, the base of the monument Dodge City Boot Hill . This content downloaded from 150.135.135.70 on Fri, 14 Aug 2015 22:56:50 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp Oscar H. Simpson and steer-head sculpture. This content downloaded from 150.135.135.70 on Fri, 14 Aug 2015 22:56:50 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp THE JOURNAL OF ARIZONA HISTORY was constructed of rock from the old county jail and bore the inscription: My trails become your highways. In his dedication speech, Southwest Historical Society spokesman C. C. Isley placed the monument within the context of national interest in the Old West. Dozens of magazines for sale in New York and Philadel- phia, Isley reminded his audience, reaffirmed the need to pre- serve a fragment of the Old West for our children.19 For the next decade and a half, Simpsons Boot Hill statues - sanctioned and satirical - were Dodge Citys only monuments to its past. Lack of money and failure to agree on a specific plan were to blame. Ideas for a Boot Hill memorial ranged from Joe Hulpieus miniature reproduction of the Santa Fe Trail to a two- room sodhouse, a diorama of old Front Street, and a brass buffalo. Most serious discussions involved Hamilton Bells museum idea, which city … Ida B. Wells, “Lynch Law in All its Phases,” Address at Tremont Temple in the Boston Monday Lectureship. Feb. 13, 1893. From Our Day (Boston: Our Day Publishing Co., 1893), 333-347. [page 333] I am before the American people today through no inclination of my own, but because of a deep seated conviction that the country at large does not know the extent to which lynch law prevails in parts of the Republic nor the conditions which force into exile those who speak the truth. I cannot believe that the apathy and indifference which so largely obtains regarding mob rule is other than the result of ignorance of the true situation. And yet, the observing and thoughtful must know that in one section, at least, of our common country, a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, means a government by the mob; where the land of the free and home of the brave means a land of lawlessness, murder and outrage; and where liberty of speech means the license of might to destroy the business and drive from home those who exercise this privilege contrary to the will of the mob. Repeated attacks on the life, liberty and happiness of any citizen or class of citizens are attacks on distinctive American institutions; such attacks imperiling as they do the foundation of government, law and order, merit the thoughtful consideration of far sighted Americans; not from a standpoint of sentiment, not even so much from a standpoint of justice to a weak race, as from a desire to preserve our institutions. The race problem or negro question, as it has been called, has been omnipresent and all pervading since long before the Afro American was raised from the degradation of the slave to the dignity of the citizen. It has never been settled because the right methods have not been employed in the solution. It is the Banquos ghost of politics, religion, and sociology which will not down at the bidding of those who are tormented with its ubiquitous appearance on every occasion. Times without number, since invested with citizenship, the race has been indicted for ignorance, immorality and general worthlessness declared guilty and executed by its self constituted judges. The operations of law do not dispose of negroes fast enough, and lynching bees have become the favorite pastime of the South. As excuse for the same, a new cry, as false as it is foul, is raised in an effort to blast race character, a cry which has proclaimed to the world that virtue and innocence are violated by Afro-Americans who must be killed like wild beasts to protect womanhood and childhood. [page 334] Born and reared in the South, I had never expected to live elsewhere. Until this past year I was one among those who believed the condition of masses gave large excuse for the humiliations and proscriptions under which we labored; that when wealth, education and character became more feral among us, the cause being removed the effect would cease, and justice being accorded to all alike. I shared the general belief that good newspapers entering regularly the homes of our people in every state could do more to bring about this result than any agency. Preaching the doctrine of self help, thrift and economy every week, they would be the teachers to those who had been deprived of school advantages, yet were making history every day and train to think for themselves our mental children of a larger growth. And so, three years ago last June, I became editor and part owner of the Memphis Free Speech. As editor, I had occasion to criticize the city School Boards employment of inefficient teachers and poor school buildings for Afro- American children. I was in the employ of that board at the time, and at the close of that school term one year ago, was not re elected to a position I had held in the city schools for seven years. Accepting the decision of the Board of Education, I set out to make a race newspaper pay a thing which older and wiser heads said could not be done. But there were enough of our people in Memphis and surrounding territory to support a paper, and I believed they would do so. With nine months hard work the circulation increased from 1,500 to 3,500; in twelve months it was on a good paying basis. Throughout the Mississippi Valley in Arkansas, Tennessee and Mississippi on plantations and in towns, the demand for and interest in the paper increased among the masses. The newsboys who would not sell it on the trains, voluntarily testified that they had never known colored people to demand a paper so eagerly. To make the paper a paying business I became advertising agent, solicitor, as well as editor, and was continually on the go. Wherever I went among the people, I gave them in church, school, public gatherings, and home, the benefit of my honest conviction that maintenance of character, money getting and education would finally solve our problem and that it depended us to say how soon this would be brought about. This sentiment bore good fruit in Memphis. We had nice homes, representatives in almost every branch of business and profession, and refined society. We had learned helping each other helped all, and every well conducted business by Afro- Americans prospered. With all our proscription in theatres, hotels and railroads, we had never had a lynching and did not believe we could have one. There had been lynchings and brutal outrages of all sorts in our state and those adjoining us, but we had confidence and pride in our city and the majesty of its laws. So far in advance of other Southern cities was ours, we were content to endure the evils we had, to labor and to wait. [page 335] But there was a rude awakening. On the morning of March 9, the bodies of three of our best young men were found in an old field horribly shot to pieces. These young men had owned and operated the Peoples Grocery, situated at what was known as the Curve a suburb made up almost entirely of colored people about a mile from city limits. Thomas Moss, one of the oldest letter carriers in the city, was president of the company, Cal McDowell was manager and Will Stewart was a clerk. There were about ten other stockholders, all colored men. The young men were well known and popular and their business flourished, and that of Barrett, a white grocer who kept store there before the Peoples Grocery was established, went down. One day an officer came to the Peoples Grocery and inquired for a colored man who lived in the neighborhood, and for whom the officer had a warrant. Barrett was with him and when McDowell said he knew nothing as to the whereabouts of the man for whom they were searching, Barrett, not the officer, then accused McDowell of harboring the man, and McDowell gave the lie. Barrett drew his pistol and struck McDowell with it; thereupon McDowell who was a tall, fine looking six footer, took Barretts pistol from him, knocked him down and gave him a good thrashing, while Will Stewart, the clerk, kept the special officer at bay. Barrett went to town, swore out a warrant for their arrest on a charge of assault and battery. McDowell went before the Criminal Court, immediately gave bond and returned to his store. Barrett then threatened (to use his own words) that he was going to clean out the whole store. Knowing how anxious he was to destroy their business, these young men consulted a lawyer who told them they were justified in defending themselves if attacked, as they were a mile beyond city limits and police protection. They accordingly armed several of their friends not to assail, but to resist the threatened Saturday night attack. When they saw Barrett enter the front door and a half dozen men at the rear door at 11 oclock that night, they supposed the attack was on and immediately fired into the crowd, wounding three men. These men, dressed in citizens clothes, turned out to be deputies who claimed to be hunting for another man for whom they had a warrant, and whom any one of them could have arrested without trouble. When these men found they had fired upon officer of the law, they threw away their firearms and submitted to arrest, confident they should establish their innocence of intent to fire upon officers of the law. The daily papers in flaming headlines roused the evil passions of whites, denounced these poor boys in unmeasured terms, nor permitted a word in their own defense. The neighborhood of the Curve was searched next day, and about thirty persons were thrown into jail, charged with conspiracy. No communication was to be had with friends any of the three days these men [page 336] were in jail; bail was refused and Thomas Moss was not allowed to eat the food his wife prepared for him. The judge is reported to have said, Any one can see them after three days. They were seen after three days, but they were no longer able to respond to the greetings of friends. On Tuesday following the shootings at the grocery, the papers which had made much of the sufferings of the wounded deputies, and promised it would go hard with those who did the shooting, if they died, announced that the officers were all out of danger, and would recover. The friends of the prisoners breathed more easily and relaxed their vigilance. They felt that as the officers would not die, there was no danger that in the heat of passion the prisoners would meet violent death at hands of the mob. Besides, we had such confidence in the law. But the law did not provide capital punishment for shooting which did not kill. So the mob did what the law could not be made to do, as a lesson to the Afro-American that he must not shoot a white man, no matter what the provocation. The same night after the announcement was made in the papers that thee officers would get well, the mob, in obedience to a plan known to every eminent white man in the city, went to the jail between two and three in the morning, dragged out these young men, hatless and shoeless, put them on the yard engine of the railroad which was in waiting just behind the jail, carried them a mile north of the city limits and horribly shot them to death while the locomotive at a given signal let off steam and blew the whistle to deaden the sound of the firing. It was done by unknown men, said the jury, yet the Appeal Avalanche which goes to press at 3 a.m., had a two column account of the lynching. The papers also told how McDowell got hold of the guns of the mob and as his grasp could not be loosened, his hand was shattered with a pistol ball and all the lower part of his face was torn away. There were four pools of blood found and only three bodies. It was whispered that he, McDowell killed one of the lynchers with his gun, and it is well known that a police man who was seen on the street a few days previous to the lynching, died very suddenly the next day after. It was done by unknown parties, said the jury, yet the papers told how Tom Moss begged for his life, for the sake of his wife, his little daughter and his unborn infant. They also told us that his last words were, If you will kill us, turn our faces to the West. All this we learn too late to save these men, even if the law had not be in the hands of their murderers. When the colored people realized that the flower of our young manhood had been stolen away at night and murdered there was a rush for firearms to avenge the wrong, but no house would sell a colored man a gun; the armory of the Tennessee Rifles, our only colored military company, and of which McDowell was a member, was broken into by order of the Criminal Court judge, and its guns taken. One hundred men and irresponsible boys from fifteen years [page 337] and up were armed by order of authorities and rushed out to the Curve, where it was reported that the colored people were massing, and at point of the bayonet dispersed these men who could do nothing but talk. The cigars, wines, etc., of the grocery stock were freely used by the mob, who possessed the place on pretence of dispersing the conspiracy. The money drawer was broken into and contents taken. The trunk of Calvin McDowell, who had a room in the store, was broken open, and his clothing, which was not good enough to take away, was throw out and trampled on the floor. These men were murdered, their stock was attached by creditors and sold for less than one eighth of its cost to that same man Barrett, who is to day running his grocery in the same place. He had indeed kept his word, and by aid of the authorities destroyed the Peoples Grocery Company root and branch. The relatives of Will Stewart and Calvin McDowell are bereft of their protectors. The baby daughter of Tom Moss, too young to express how she misses her father, toddles to the wardrobe, seizes the legs of the trousers of his letter carrier uniform, hugs and kisses them with evident delight and stretches up her little hands to be taken up into the arms which will nevermore clasp his daughters form. His wife holds Thomas Moss, Jr., in her arms, upon whose unconscious baby face the tears fall thick and fast when she is thinking of the sad fate of the father he will never see, and of the two helpless children who cling to her for the support she cannot give. Although these men were peaceable, law abiding citizens of this country, we are told there can be no punishment for their murderers nor indemnity for relatives. I have no power to describe the feeling of horror that possessed every member of the race in Memphis when the truth dawned upon us that the protection of the law which we had so long enjoyed was no longer ours; all had been destroyed in a night, and the barriers of the law had been down, and the guardians of the public peace and confidence scoffed into the shadows, and all authority given into the hands of the mob, and innocent men cut down as if they were brutes the first feeling was one dismay, then intense indignation. Vengeance was whispered from ear to ear, but sober reflection brought the conviction that it would be extreme folly to seek vengeance when such action meant certain death for the men, and horrible slaughter for the women and children, as one of the evening papers took care to remind us. The power of the State, country and city, and civil authorities and the strong arm of the military power were all on the side of the mob and of lawlessness. Few of our men possessed firearms, our only companys guns were confiscated, and the only white man who sell a colored man a gun, was himself jailed, and his store closed. We were helpless in our great strength. It was our first object lesson in the doctrine of white supremacy; an illustration of the Souths cardinal [page 338] principle no matter what the attainments, character or standing of an Afro-American, the laws of the South will not protect him against a white man. There was only one thing we could do, and a great determination seized the people to follow the advice of the martyred Moss, and turn our faces to the West, whose laws protect all alike. The Free Speech supported ministers and leading business men advised the people to leave a community whose laws did not protect them. Hundreds left on foot to walk four hundred miles between Memphis and Oklahoma. A Baptist minister went to the territory, built a church, and took his entire congregation out in less than a month. Another minister sold his church and took his flock to California, and still another has settled in Kansas. In two months, six thousand persons had left the city and every branch of business began to feel this silent resentment of the outrage, and failure of the authorities to punish lynchers. There were a number of business failures and blocks of houses for rent. The superintendent and treasurer of the street railway company called at the office of the Free Speech, to have us urge the colored people again on the street cars. A real estate dealer said to a colored man who returned some property he had been buying on the installment plan: I see what you niggers are cutting up about. You got off light. We first intend to kill every one of those thirty one niggers in jail, but concluded to let all go but the leaders. They did let all go to the penitentiary. These so-called rioters have since been tried in the Criminal Court for the conspiracy of defending their property, and are now serving terms of three, eight, and fifteen years each in the Tennessee State prison. To restore the equilibrium and put a stop to the great financial loss, the next move was to get rid of the Free Speech, the disturbing element which kept the waters troubled; which would not let the people forget, and in obedience to whose advice nearly six thousand persons had left the city. In casting about for an excuse, the mob found it in the following editorial which appeared in the Memphis Free Speech, May 21, 1892: Eight negroes lynched at Little Rock, Ark., where the citizens broke into the penitentiary and got their man; three near Anniston, Ala., and one in New Orleans, all on the same charge, the new alarm of assaulting white women and near Clarksville, Ga., for killing a white man. The same program of hanging then shooting bullets into the lifeless bodies was carried out to the letter. Nobody in this section of the country believes the old threadbare lie that negro men rape white women. If Southern white men are not careful they will overreach themselves, and public sentiment will have a reaction. A conclusion will then be reached which will be very damaging to the moral reputation of their women. Commenting on this, The Daily Commercial of [page 339] Wednesday following said: Those negroes who are attempting to make lynching of individuals of their race a means for arousing the worst passions of their kind, are playing with a dangerous sentiment. The negroes well understand that there is no mercy for the negro rapist, and little patience with his defenders. A negro organ printed in this city in a recent issue published the following atrocious paragraph: Nobody in this section believes the old threadbare lie that negro men rape white women. If Southern men are not careful they will overreach themselves and public will have a reaction. A conclusion will be reached which will be very damaging to the moral reputation of their women. The fact that a black scoundrel is allowed to live and utter such loathsome and repulsive calumnies is a volume of evidence as to the wonderful patience of Southern whites. There are some things the Southern white man will not tolerate, and the intimidation of the foregoing has brought the writer to the very uttermost limit of public patience. We hope we have said enough. The Evening Scimitar of the same day copied this leading editorial and added this comment: Patience under such circumstances is not a virtue. If the negroes themselves do not apply the remedy without delay, it will be the duty of those he has attacked, to tie the wretch who utters these calumnies to a stake at the intersection of Main and Madison streets, brand him in the forehead with a hot iron and- Such open suggestions by the leading daily papers of the progressive city of Memphis were acted upon by the leading citizens and a meeting was held at the Cotton Exchange that evening. The Commercial two days later had the following account of it: ATROCIOUS BLACKGUARDISM. There will be no Lynching and no Repetition of the Offense. In its issue of Wednesday The Commercial reproduced and commented upon an editorial which appeared a day or two before a negro organ known as the Free Speech. The article was so insufferably and indecently slanderous that the whole city awoke to a feeling of intense resentment which came within an ace of culminating in one of those occurrences whose details are so eagerly seized and so prominently published by Northern newspapers. Conservative counsels, however, prevailed, and no extreme measures were resorted to. On Wednesday afternoon a meeting of citizens was held. It was not an assemblage of hoodlums or irresponsible fire eaters, but solid, substantial business men who knew exactly what they were doing and who were far more indignant at the villainous insult to the women of the south than they would have been at any injury done themselves. This meeting appointed a committee to seek the author of the infamous editorial and warn him quietly that upon repetition of the offense, he would find some other part of the country a good deal safer and pleasanter place of residence than this. [page 340] The committee called a negro named Nightingale, but he disclaimed responsibility and convinced the gentlemen that he had really sold out his paper to a woman named Wells. This woman is not in Memphis at present. It was finally learned that one Fleming, a negro who was driven out of Crittenden Co. during the trouble there a few years ago, wrote the paragraph. He had, however, heard of the meeting, and fled from a fate he feared was in store for him, and which he knew he deserved. His whereabouts could not be ascertained, and the committee so reported. Later on, a communication from Fleming to a prominent Republican politician, and that politicians reply were shown to one or two gentlemen. The former was an inquiry as to whether the writer might safely return to Memphis, the latter was an emphatic answer in negative, and Fleming is still in hiding. Nothing further will be done in the matter. There will be no lynching, and it is very certain that there will be no repetition of the outrage. If there should be----Friday, May 25. The only reason there was no lynching of Mr. Fleming who was business manager and half owner of the Free Speech, and who did not write the editorials himself because this same white Republican told him the committee was coming and warned him not to trust them, but get out of the way. The committee scoured the city hunting him, and had to be content with Mr. Nightingale who was dragged to the meeting, shamefully abused (although it was known he had sold out his interest in the paper six months before.) He was in the face and forced at the pistols point to sign a letter which was written by them, in which he denied all knowledge of the editorial, denounced it and condemned it as slander on white women. I do not censure Mr. Nightingale for his action because, having never been at the pistols point myself, I do not feel that I am competent to sit in judgment on him, or say what I would do under such circumstances. I had written that editorial with other matter for the weeks paper before leaving home the Friday previous for the General Conference of the A.M.E. Church in Philadelphia. The conference adjourned Tuesday, and Thursday, May 25, at 3 p.m., I landed in New York City for a few days stay before returning home, and there learned from the papers that my business manager had been driven away and the paper suspended. Telegraphing for news, I received telegrams and letters in return informing me that the trains were being watched, that I was to be dumped into the river and beaten, if not killed; it had been learned that I wrote the editorial and I was to be hanged in front of the court house and my face bled if I returned, and I was implored by my friends to remain away. The creditors attached the office in the meantime and the outfit was sold without more ado, thus destroying effectually that which it had taken years to build. One prominent insurance agent publicly declares he will make it his business to shoot me down on sight if I return to [page 341] Memphis in twenty years, while a leading white lady had remarked she was opposed to the lynching of those three men in March, but she wished there was some way by which I could be gotten back and lynched. I have been censured for writing that editorial, but when I think of five men who were lynched that week for assault on white women and that not a week passes but some poor soul is violently ushered into eternity on this trumped up charge, knowing the many things I do, and part of which tried to tell in the New York Age of June 25, (and in the pamphlets I have with me) seeing that the whole race in the South was injured in the estimation of the world because of these false reports, I could no longer hold my peace, and I feel, yes, I am sure, that if it had to be done over again (provided no one else was the loser save myself) I would do and say the very same again. The lawlessness here described is not confined to one locality. In the past ten years over a thousand colored men, women and children have been butchered, murdered and burnt in all parts of the South. The details of these terrible outrages seldom reach beyond the narrow world where they occur. Those who commit the murders write the reports, and hence these blots upon the honor of a nation cause but a faint ripple on the outside world. They arouse no great indignation and call forth no adequate demand for justice. The victims were black, and the reports are so written as to make it appear that the helpless creatures deserved the fate which overtook them. Not so with the Italian lynching of 1891. They were not black men, and three of them were not citizens of the Republic, but subjects of the King of Italy. The chief of police of New Orleans was shot and eleven Italians arrested and charged with the murder; they were tried and the jury disagreed; the good, law abiding citizens of New Orleans thereupon took them from the jail and lynched them at high noon. A feeling of horror ran through the nation at this outrage. All Europe was amazed. The Italian government demanded thorough investigation and redress, and the Federal Government promised to give the matter the consideration which was its due. The diplomatic relations between the two countries became very much strained and for a while war talk was freely indulged. Here was a case where the power of the Federal Government to protect its own citizens and redeem its pledges to a friendly power was put to the test. When our State Department called upon the authorities of Louisiana for investigation of the crime and punishment of the criminals, the United States government was told that the crime was strictly within the authority of the State of Louisiana, and Louisiana would attend to it. After a farcical investigation, the usual verdict in such cases was rendered: Death at the hand of parties unknown to the jury, the same verdict which had been pronounced over the bodies of over 1,000 colored persons! Our federal [page 342] government has thus admitted that it has no jurisdiction over the crimes committed at New Orleans upon citizens of the country, nor upon those citizens of a friendly power to whom the general government and not the State government has pledged protection. Not only has our general government made the confession that one of the states is greater than the Union, but the general government has paid $25,000 of the peoples money to the King of Italy for the lynching of those three subjects, the evil doing of one State, over which it has no control, but for whose lawlessness the whole country must pay. The principle involved in the treaty power of the government has not yet been settled to the satisfaction of foreign powers; but the principle involved in the right of State jurisdiction in such matters, was settled long ago by the decision of the United States Supreme Court. I beg your patience while we look at another phase of the lynching mania. We have turned heretofore to the pages of ancient and medieval history, roman tyranny, the Jesuitical Inquisition of Spain for the spectacle of a human being burnt to death. In the past ten years three instances, at least, have been furnished where men have literally been roasted to death to appease the fury of Southern mobs. The Texarkana instance of last year and Paris, Texas, case of this month are the most recent as they are the most shocking and repulsive. Both were charged with crimes from which the laws provide adequate punishment. The Texarkana man, Ed Coy, was charged with assaulting a white woman. A mob pronounced him guilty, strapped him to a tree, chipped the flesh from his body, poured coal oil over him and the woman in the case set fire to him. The country looked on and in many cases applauded, because it was published that this man had violated the honor of the white woman, although he protested his innocence to the last. Judge Tourjee in the Chicago Inter Ocean of recent date says investigation has shown that Ed Coy had supported this woman (who was known to be a bad character) and her drunken husband for over a year previous to the burning. The Paris, Texas, burning of Henry Smith, February 1st, has exceeded the others in its horrible details. The man was drawn through the streets on a float, as the Roman generals used to parade their trophies of war, while scaffold ten feet high, was being built, and irons were heated in the fire. He was bound on it, and red-hot irons began at his feet and slowly branded his body while the mob howled with delight at his shrieks. Red hot irons were run down his throat and cooked his tongue; his eyes were burned out, when he was at last … Southern Historical Association Deference and Violence in the Postbellum Urban South: Manners and Massacres in Danville, Virginia Author(s): Jane Dailey Source: The Journal of Southern History, Vol. 63, No. 3 (Aug., 1997), pp. 553-590 Published by: Southern Historical Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2211650 Accessed: 10-08-2017 02:17 UTC REFERENCES Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2211650?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected] Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms Southern Historical Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of Southern History This content downloaded from 150.135.135.70 on Thu, 10 Aug 2017 02:17:18 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Deference and Violence in the Postbellum Urban South: Manners and Massacres in Danville, Virginia By JANE DAILEY WVILLIAM ALEXANDER PERCY-PLANTER, WRITER, AND (AS HE SUP- posed) racial liberal and friend of the Negro-was concerned. As he finished his autobiographical Lanterns on the Levee: Recollections of a Planters Son, Percy fretted over the increasingly acrimonious state of race relations in the South. Published in 1941, just before the south- ern legal and cultural edifice of racial segregation and official white supremacy began to dissolve under the ideological strain of the Second World War, Lanterns on the Levee included A Note on Racial Relations in which Percy worried about the erosion of black manners. Referring to white violence, Percy noted that the Negro is losing his most valuable weapon of defense-his good manners. He continued: When a Negro now speaks of a man he means a Negro; when he speaks of a lady he means a Negress; when he speaks of a woman he means a white woman. Such manners are not only bad, they are not safe, and the frame of mind that breeds them is not safe. Covert inso- lence is not safe for anybody, anywhere, at any time.1 Identifying and interpreting covert insolence among the subjugat- ed has become something of a cottage industry in the academy since 1 William Alexander Percy, Lanterns on the Levee: Recollections of a Planters Son (New York, 1941; Baton Rouge, 1990), 307. In The Negro: The Southerners Problem (New York, 1904), Thomas Nelson Page made similar veiled threats regarding (the lack of) black deference and the potential for white violence. See especially pp. 203-4. For their stimulating and insightful comments I thank the five anonymous readers and the edi- tor and associate editor of the Journal of Southern History. I am in addition indebted to the Virginia Historical Society, whose Mellon Grant supported my research; to Richard Hamm, who fed me documents at the VHS; and to David Nirenberg, Edward Ayers, Fitz Brundage, Carl Caldwell, Glenda Gilmore, James McPherson, Nell Painter, Christine Stansell, Peter Wallenstein, Sean Wilentz, and Richard Wolin, all of whose sharp commentary helped me to see what was at stake on the streets of Danville. Ms. DAILEY is an assistant professor of history at Rice University. THE JOURNAL OF SOUTHERN HISTORY Volume LXIII, No. 3, August 1997 This content downloaded from 150.135.135.70 on Thu, 10 Aug 2017 02:17:18 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 554 THE JOURNAL OF SOUTHERN HISTORY Percy condemned its deployment by black southerners. Inspired by the work of social historians such as Eric J. Hobsbawm and E. P. Thompson, the search for what the anthropologist James C. Scott called the hidden transcript of resistance has become a central pursuit of scholars interested in questions of domination and resistance. The uncovering of what Scott dubbed infrapolitics and what the Czech philosopher Vaclav Benda called the parallel polis has focused scholarly attention on the political subtext of acts of resistance that stop short of open rebellion. The definition of politics has been broadened to include the breach of manners so vexing to Will Percy.2 Historians of the American South have profited in particular from the insights gained by uncovering and deciphering the hidden tran- script. Several scholars whose work preceded Scotts formulations- Herbert Aptheker, Eugene D. Genovese, Lawrence W. Levine, Albert J. Raboteau, and Gilbert Osofsky-applied the concept of underground resistance to relations between masters and slaves in the antebellum South.3 More recently historians have explicitly used Scotts approach to analyze black-white relations under Jim Crow. Robin D. G. Kelley, for example, has employed Scotts notion of infrapolitics to draw atten- tion to African Americans broad repertoire of acts of everyday resis- tance in the segregated twentieth-century South in order to show how seemingly innocuous, individualistic acts of survival and opposition shaped southern urban politics, workplace struggles, and the social 2 E[ric] J. Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movement in the 19th and 20th Centuries (New York, 1963; originally published as Social Bandits and Primitive Rebels [Glencoe, Ill., 1959]); Edward P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (New York, 1963); Thompson, The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century, Past and Present, No. 50 (February 1971), 76-136; James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven and London, 1985); Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven and London, 1990); Vdclav Benda, The Parallel Polis, in Palach Press Bulletin (London, 1979). Without referring to a hidden transcript, VWclav Havel makes a similar point in The Power of the Powerless in John Keane, ed., The Power of the Powerless: Citizens Against the State in Central-Eastern Europe (London and other cities, 1985). There Havel refers to the attempts of the oppressed to live within the truth as subversive of the official version of life and defines attempts to live with- in the truth as any means by which a person or a group revolts against manipulation .... Havel also notes that the regime prosecutes, almost as a reflex action preventively, even the most mod- est attempts to live within the truth (pp. 42-43). 3 Herbert Aptheker, American Negro Slave Revolts (New York, 1943); Eugene D. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York, 1974); Lawrence W. Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom (New York, 1977); Albert J. Raboteau, Slave Religion: The Invisible Institution in the Antebellum South (New York, 1978); and Gilbert Osofsky, ed., Puttin on Ole Massa: The Slave Narratives of Henry Bibb, William Wells Brown, and Solomon Northup (New York, 1969). See also Raymond A. Bauer and Alice H. Bauer, Day to Day Resistance to Slavery, Journal of Negro History, XXVII (October 1942), 388-419; and Sterling Stuckey, Through the Prism of Folklore: The Black Ethos in Slavery, Massachusetts Review, IX (Summer 1968), 417-37. This content downloaded from 150.135.135.70 on Thu, 10 Aug 2017 02:17:18 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms MANNERS AND MASSACRES IN DANVILLE, VIRGINIA 555 order generally.4 While documenting and fully appreciating the importance of urban black working-class opposition at home, in the community, and in the workplace, Kelley urges historians to focus on black resistance to white domination in public space and to rethink the meaning of public space as a terrain of class, race, and gender con- flict. It was, Kelley argues, urban public space-a citys parks, its streets, and particularly its public transportation system-that provid- ed most of the opportunities for acts of resistance and simultaneously embodied the most repressive, violent aspects of race and gender oppression ....5 What had been the hidden weapons of the weak in urban public spaces of the antebellum South-the accidental jostling of whites on the sidewalk or on a city trolley, the profanities and depredations mut- tered under ones breath-would later become acts of covert resistance during the rigid days of the Jim Crow era. But during the crucial transi- tion between slavery and Jim Crow, these same acts emerged as the open and public acts of an enfranchised, and to a limited degree, empowered people. In the years after emancipation and before the cod- ification of the white supremacist South (completed in 1908 with the passage of Georgias referendum on black disfranchisement), African Americans devised a series of strategies for resisting white definitions of black rights, opportunities, and sociability. Not unexpectedly, con- flicts arose between black and white southerners over what was proper, acceptable, or demeaning mutual behavior in public arenas. The forms of black behavior now recognized as covert resistance in the antebellum and Jim Crow eras-such as a refusal to yield to whites on the sidewalk and the reservation of appellations of gentility for themselves-were precisely those through which black men and women asserted in public their claims to citizenship and equal civil and political rights with whites. Such assertion by blacks risked violence by whites, either indi- vidually or in groups, and urban spaces during the New South era fre- quently became battlegrounds over public behavior. Eventually, segre- gation regulated both public space and civil behavior by dividing each according to race, along phantasmagoric separate but equal lines. As Howard N. Rabinowitz demonstrated twenty years ago, the postwar Souths urban spaces were the first settings for the rationalized system I Robin D. G. Kelley, We Are Not What We Seem: Rethinking Black Working-Class Opposition in the Jim Crow South, Journal of American History, LXXX (June 1993), 75-112 (quotation on p. 78). Eugene Genovese makes a similar point in Roll, Jordan, Roll, where he writes (p. 598) that Such apparently innocuous and apolitical measures as a preachers sermon on love and dignity or the mutual support offered by husbands and wives played . . . an indis- pensable part in providing the groundwork for the most obviously political action [insurrection and running away], for they contributed to the cohesion and strength of a social class threatened by disintegration and demoralization. 5 Kelley, We Are Not What We Seem, 109-10. This content downloaded from 150.135.135.70 on Thu, 10 Aug 2017 02:17:18 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 556 THE JOURNAL OF SOUTHERN HISTORY of racial segregation that by World War I characterized the region as a whole.6 But even segregation could not solve fully-to the satisfaction of whites-the issue of black behavior in public space. As the work of historians of the twentieth century shows, African Americans continued to assert their claim to civility, and to dignity, in public.7 The story of what historians know as the Danville Riot illuminates the ways that disagreements over civil behavior between white and black urban southerners intersected with other social and political developments. In 1883 a dispute over street etiquette in the burgeoning industrial town of Danville, Virginia, escalated into a massacre when a white mob shot into a crowd of unarmed black men, women, and chil- dren. White Democrats then took control of the city and spread rumors of black insurrection throughout the state. Coming three days before an important Virginia state election, the violence in Danville and Democratic stories about it contributed to the downfall of the Readjuster party, a biracial third party that had governed Virginia since 1879. As occurred more notoriously in Wilmington, North Carolina, in 6 Howard N. Rabinowitz, Race Relations in the Urban South, 1865-1890 (New York, 1978); and Rabinowitz, From Exclusion to Segregation: Southern Race Relations, 1865-1890, Journal of American History, LXIII (September 1976), 325-50. On segregation see C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow (New York, 1955); Richard C. Wade, Slavery in the Cities: The South, 1820-1860 (New York, 1964); John W. Cell, The Highest Stage of White Supremacy: The Origins of Segregation in South Africa and the American South (Cambridge, Eng., and other cities, 1982); and LaWanda Cox, From Emancipation to Segregation: National Policy and Southern Blacks, in John B. Boles and Evelyn Thomas Nolen, eds., Interpreting Southern History: Historiographical Essays in Honor of Sanford W Higginbotham (Baton Rouge and London, 1987), 199-253. On the Woodward thesis and its critics see C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of a Historical Controversy, in American Counterpoint: Slavery and Racism in the North-South Dialogue (Boston and Toronto, 1964), 234-60; Howard N. Rabinowitz, More Than the Woodward Thesis: Assessing The Strange Career of Jim Crow, and C. Vann Woodward, Strange Career Critics: Long May They Persevere, Journal of American History, LXXV (December 1988), 842-56 and 857-68, respectively. On patterns of urban residential seg- regation in the South see John W. Blassingame, Before the Ghetto: The Making of the Black Community in Savannah, Georgia, 1865-1880, Journal of Social History, VI (Summer 1973), 463-88; Blassingame, Black New Orleans, 1860-1880 (Chicago and London, 1973); John Kellogg, Negro Urban Clusters in the Postbellum South, Geographical Review, LXVII (July 1977), 310-21; Kellogg, The Formation of Black Residential Areas in Lexington, Kentucky, 1865-1887, Journal of Southern History, XLVIII (February 1982), 21-52; Paul A. Groves and Edward K. Muller, The Evolution of Black Residential Areas in Late Nineteenth-Century Cities, Journal of Historical Geography, I (April 1975), 169-91; and Michael B. Chesson, Richmond After the War, 1865-1890 (Richmond, 1981), Chap. 5. As a rule, the newer the city, the greater the residential segregation. 7 Kelley, We Are Not What We Seem, 101-2. As Kelley points out, many of these day-to- day struggles for black dignity under Jim Crow were fought out in public spaces, especially on public transportation. In the nineteenth century, African Americans protested civic attempts to segregate streetcars. See Roger A. Fischer, A Pioneer Protest: The New Orleans Street-Car Controversy of 1867, Journal of Negro History, LIII (July 1968), 219-33; August Meier and Elliott Rudwick, The Boycott Movement against Jim Crow Streetcars in the South, 1900-1906, in Meier and Rudwick, eds., Along the Color Line: Explorations in the Black Experience (Urbana, Chicago, and London, 1976), 267-89; Neil R. McMillen, Dark Journey: Black Mississippians in the Age of Jim Crow (Urbana and Chicago, 1989), 291-95; and John Dittmer, Black Georgia in the Progressive Era, 1900-1920 (Urbana, Chicago, and London, 1977), 16-19. This content downloaded from 150.135.135.70 on Thu, 10 Aug 2017 02:17:18 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms MANNERS AND MASSACRES IN DANVILLE, VIRGINIA 557 1898, white men in Danville usurped the power of the state through violence and overthrew a democratically elected biracial government.8 While this article will explore the whys and hows of the violence in Danville, its broader aim is to reveal the links between civility and civil rights and between manners and massacres. It will examine both how black men and women in the New South enunciated their claim to civic equality through their behavior in urban public spaces and how whites, determined to maintain their social, political, and economic control, responded to such black behavior. The sequence of events that led to gunfire in Danville began with a confrontation over sidewalk space between a white man and a black man. Central to this analysis is the idea that, particularly for people (such as women and racial and religious minorities) whose identities have traditionally been defined spatially, as place, the act of appropriating public space-whether on a New South city sidewalk or on a Jim Crow streetcar-is a political and subversive A number of scholars stress the quest for dignity in blacks attempts to undermine the Jim Crow system, e.g., William H. Chafe, Civilities and Civil Rights: Greensboro, North Carolina, and the Black Struggle for Freedom (New York and Oxford, 1980); Earl Lewis, In Their Own Interests: Race, Class, and Power in Twentieth-Century Norfolk, Virginia (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and Oxford, 1991); George Lipsitz, A Life in the Struggle: Ivory Perry and the Culture of Opposition (Philadelphia, 1988); Robin D. G. Kelley, Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression (Chapel Hill and London, 1990); Michael K. Honey, Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights: Organizing Memphis Workers (Urbana and Chicago, 1993); and Adam Fairclough, Race and Democracy: The Civil Rights Struggle in Louisiana, 1915-1972 (Athens, Ga., and London, 1995). 8 On the Readjuster movement and black political power and participation in postbellum Virginia see Charles Chilton Pearson, The Readjuster Movement in Virginia (New Haven, London, and Oxford, 1917); Richard L. Morton, The Negro in Virginia Politics, 1865-1902 (Charlottesville, 1919); Alrutheus Ambush Taylor, The Negro in the Reconstruction of Virginia (New York, 1926; rpt., 1969); James Hugo Johnston, The Participation of Negroes in the Government of Virginia from 1877 to 1888, Journal of Negro History, XIV (July 1929), 251-71; Nelson Morehouse Blake, William Mahone of Virginia: Soldier and Political Insurgent (Richmond, 1935); Luther Porter Jackson, Negro Office-Holders in Virginia, 1865-1895 (Norfolk, Virginia, 1945); Charles E. Wynes, Race Relations in Virginia, 1870-1902 (Charlottesville, 1961); Raymond H. Pulley, Old Virginia Restored: An Interpretation of the Progressive Impulse, 1870-1930 (Charlottesville, 1968); Allen W. Moger, Virginia: Bourbonism to Byrd, 1870-1925 (Charlottesville, 1968); Jack P. Maddex Jr., The Virginia Conservatives, 1867-1879: A Study in Reconstruction Politics (Chapel Hill, 1970); Carl N. Degler, Black and White Together: Bi-Racial Politics in the South, Virginia Quarterly Review, XLVII (Summer 1971), 421-44; Degler, The Other South: Southern Dissenters in the Nineteenth Century (New York, 1974); James Tice Moore, Two Paths to the New South: The Virginia Debt Controversy, 1870-1883 (Lexington, 1974); Moore, Black Militancy in Readjuster Virginia, 1879-1883, Journal of Southern History, XLI (May 1975), 167-86; Brooks Miles Barnes, Triumph of the New South: Independent Movements in Post-Reconstruction Politics (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Virginia, 1991); Lawrence L. Hartzell, The Exploration of Freedom in Black Petersburg, Virginia, 1865-1902, in Edward L. Ayers and John C. Willis, eds., The Edge of the South: Life in Nineteenth-Century Virginia (Charlottesville and London, 1991); and Jane E. Dailey, Race, Sex, and Citizenship: Biracial Democracy in Readjuster Virginia, 1879-1883 (Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 1995). Harold S. Forsythe is currently completing a dis- sertation at the University of California, San Diego, on African American politics in Southside Virginia, 1863-1902, including the Readjusters. This content downloaded from 150.135.135.70 on Thu, 10 Aug 2017 02:17:18 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 558 THE JOURNAL OF SOUTHERN HISTORY act. The appropriation of public space was an important way for African Americans in this period to assert their humanity, demonstrate their political rights, and stake their claim to equal citizenship. When black men and women stood their ground on the streets of Danville insisting on the impartial rule of law, white men responded violently and reclaimed the streets, and ultimately the political arena, for themselves. The struggle for black equality in the New South was fought on many fronts. Exercising the right to vote and to make contracts were two of the most obvious means by which African Americans pro- claimed their new civil status. Appropriating public space was another. Although the racial politics of Congress and the state legislatures is better documented, the streets of the urban South had a politics of their own. It was here, in the everyday pushing and shoving of white and black southerners, that broader questions of political, economic, and sexual competition were enacted and represented daily. By the time of the automobile, black place was so firmly defined by the racial code of Jim Crow that southern cities found nothing odd in bar- ring black motorists from the public streets.9 By the 1930s the inner side of the sidewalk was designated in custom if not in law as the white mans right of way .10 But this was not yet the case in the 1880s or even on the eve of the twentieth century in areas of the South where black political influence survived or was resurrected. In such places, in the absence of either a rigid system of racial hierarchy or mutually agreed upon conventions for public conduct between the races, questions of honor, hierarchy, and deference arose in every encounter in public. Broad questions of racial domination and subordination were frequently 9 McMillen, Dark Journey, 11. In 1930 Robert Russa Moton, the president of Tuskegee Institute, recalled that in the early days of the automobile ... Negroes driving their own cars were dragged out and whipped, and their cars wrecked, for their imputed arrogance and imperti- nence in presuming to enjoy privileges to which whites alone were entitled. Moton, What the Negro Thinks (Garden City, N.Y, 1930), 213. On race-based rules of the road in Mississippi in the 1930s see also Hortense Powdermaker, After Freedom: A Cultural Study in the Deep South (New York, 1939), 49-50. 10 Bertram Wilbur Doyle, The Etiquette of Race Relations in the South: A Study in Social Control (Chicago, 1937), 168. On racial etiquette in the South see Ray Stannard Baker, Following the Color Line: An Account of Negro Citizenship in the American Democracy (New York, 1908); John Dollard, Caste and Class in a Southern Town (New York, 1937), Chaps. 5, 7, 8, and 12; and J. William Harris, Etiquette, Lynching, and Racial Boundaries in Southern History: A Mississippi Example, American Historical Review, C (April 1995), 387-410. 11 As J. Morgan Kousser and others have argued, post-Reconstruction southern politics was extremely volatile, largely because of the tenacity of black political power. See Kousser, The Shaping of Southern Politics: Suffrage Restriction and the Establishment of the One-Party South, 1880-1910 (New Haven and London, 1974). See also C. Vann Woodward, Origins of the New South, 1877-1913 (Baton Rouge, 1951); Joseph H. Cartwright, The Triumph of Jim Crow: Tennessee Race Relations in the 1880s (Knoxville, 1976); Gordon B. McKinney, Southern Mountain Republicans, 1865-1900: Politics and the Appalachian Community (Chapel Hill, 1978); and George C. Wright, Life Behind a Veil: Blacks in Louisville, Kentucky, 1865-1930 (Baton Rouge, 1985), Chap. 7. This content downloaded from 150.135.135.70 on Thu, 10 Aug 2017 02:17:18 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms MANNERS AND MASSACRES IN DANVILLE, VIRGINIA 559 distilled in public interactions on the streets of the urban South, and negotiation over the rules of common courtesy became a principal venue for the ongoing contest between blacks determined to assert their identi- ty as civic actors and whites intent on denying blacks that power. In a column published in January 1884 entitled Manners, Orra Langhorne, a white woman who regularly contributed to the Hampton Institutes monthly news publication, the Southern Workman, decried the public behavior of the new generation of black southerners, those born in freedom. It is a common thing in the towns of Virginia, she charged, for several Negro boys to lock their arms together and parade the streets, rudely jostling passers by, for whom they refuse to make way, and terrifying ladies and children. Langhorne herself had recently been knocked off the sidewalk in this way by a group of young black men that included the son of one of her tenants, good old Uncle Ben. She report- ed to him his sons behavior, and the son was sent to apologize. He was not, he explained, drunk (as Langhorne supposed) but was only pro- jeckin. Langhorne did not favor such projecting. Rather, she urged Virginia blacks to recall the amiable and gentle manners which once distinguished the southern slaves and recommended the advice old aunt Hester gave to a young African American man excited about the passage of the Civil Rights Bill: Dont you mine so much bout Civil Rights-Civil Rights is very good in dere place, but you try civil man- ners an behavior an youll git along wid white folks.12 It was a commonplace among postwar white southerners that black civil rights had eroded black civility, especially on the public streets. Countless white diarists and political commentators left behind stories of black rudeness in public. Planter Henry W. Ravenels impression of post- war Charleston is typical of contemporary accounts: It is impossible to describe the condition of the city-It is so unlike anything we could imagine-Negroes shoving white persons off the walk-Negro women drest in the most outr6 style, all with veils and parasols for which they have an especial fancy-riding on horseback with negro soldiers and in carriages ....13 Georgia Bryan Conrad, a young white woman, first 12 Southern Workman, XIII (January 1884), 2. Orra Langhorne was a white southern liberal who could, in the same breath, denounce the Bourbons, defend black civil rights, and promote educational qualifications for the suffrage, as in her October 1883 column published in volume XII of the Southern Workman. For a cross-section of Langhornes writings see Charles E. Wynes, ed., Southern Sketches from Virginia, 1881-1901 (Charlottesville, 1964). In October 1883 the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which sought to give all persons equal access to restaurants, theaters, etc. under the Fourteenth Amendments denial of dis- crimination along lines of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. The court ruled that the federal government could not apply the Fourteenth Amendments prohibitions to protect individ- uals from the discriminatory acts of other individuals, but only from state governments. 13 Henry W. Ravenel (1865), quoted in Leon F. Litwack, Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery (New York, 1979), 259. Myrta Lockett Avary concurred with Ravenel: The new manners of the blacks were painful, revolting, absurd.... Southerners had taken great pains This content downloaded from 150.135.135.70 on Thu, 10 Aug 2017 02:17:18 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 560 THE JOURNAL OF SOUTHERN HISTORY realized the magnitude of the postwar transformation of southern social life when a huge Negro soldier compelled her to take to the gutter, to escape coming in contact with him, and her father did nothing. Complaining of similar behavior in postwar Memphis, Elizabeth Avery Meriwether remarked that Any stranger, seeing those negroes, would have supposed the Blacks not the Whites, were masters in the South.14 These images are familiar because twentieth-century authors and filmmakers used them to represent the social and political inversions of Reconstruction. Margaret Mitchell made niggers pushin white folks off the sidewalks a defining feature of Republican-ruled Atlanta.15 In his 1915 film The Birth of a Nation, D. W. Griffith used disputes between whites and blacks over sidewalk space as a synecdoche for the decline of black deference toward whites and the corresponding loss of white power and prestige. As Griffith has the mulatto carpetbagger Silas Lynch explain to one white protagonist, The side walk belongs to us as much as it does to you, Colonel Cameron.16 And in his 1941 magnum opus The Mind of the … U.S. Copyright Law (title 17 of U.S. code) governs the reproduction and redistribution of copyrighted material. Downloading this document for the purpose of redistribution is prohibited. Police headquarters — lost children waiting for parents Police in urban America 1 8 6 0 - 1 9 2 0 E R I C H. M O N K K O N E N Department of History University of California, Los Angeles C A M B R I D G E U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S Cambridge London New York New Rochelle Melbourne Sydney P u b l i s h e d by the P r e s s S y n d i c a t e of the U n i v e r s i t y o f C a m b r i d g e T h e Pitt B u i l d i n g , T r u m p i n g t o n Street, C a m b r i d g e C B 2 1RP 32 East 57th Street, N e w York, N Y 10022, U S A 296 B e a c o n s f i e l d Parade, M i d d l e P a r k , M e l b o u r n e 3206, Australia © C a m b r i d g e U n i v e r s i t y Press 1981 First p u b l i s h e d 1981 Printed in the U n i t e d S t a t e s of A m e r i c a T y p e s e t by D a v i d E. S e h a m A s s o c . , Inc. Printed and b o u n d by V a i l - B a l l o u Press Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data M o n k k o n e n , Eric H 1 9 4 2 - P o l i c e in u r b a n A m e r i c a , 1 8 6 0 - 1920. (Interdisciplinary perspectives on modern h istory) Includes b i b l i o g r a p h i c a l r e f e r e n c e s and index. I. P o l i c e - U n i t e d S t a t e s - H i s t o r y . I. T i t l e . II. S e r i e s . H V 8 1 3 8 . M 6 5 3 6 3 . 2 0 9 7 3 8 0 - 1 6 7 6 2 I S B N 0 5 2 1 23454 9 1 The historical development of the police To prevent the c o m m i s s i o n of crime is a paramount o b j e c t , and if the appearance of the police, in a dress d i s t i n g u i s h i n g them from other citizens, will tend to this result, it is well worth the experi- m e n t . . . B o s t o n , Annual Report of the Chief of Police (1857) The urban locus of policing Because the details of t h e d e v e l o p m e n t of the criminal j u s t i c e sys- t e m , and especially of t h e p o l i c e , in the n i n e t e e n t h a n d early t w e n - tieth centuries h a v e i n h e r e n t i n t e r e s t , it h a s b e e n relatively easy for h i s t o r i a n s to a v o i d a d e e p e r , m o r e analytic v i e w o t h e r than that w h i c h c o m e s from narration a n d d e s c r i p t i o n . 1 T h i s is n o t to d e n y the value of such d e s c r i p t i o n and c h r o n i c l i n g , for it is v a l u a b l e , b u t to d e m o n s t r a t e t h e difficulty of u n d e r s t a n d i n g u n d e r l y i n g relation- s h i p s in the u r b a n p o l i c e across the U n i t e d States in t h e n i n e t e e n t h century. W e k n o w that, w i t h only slight v a r i a t i o n s , police forces h a v e evolved i n t o m u c h t h e s a m e m o d e l across the n a t i o n today, b u t w e n e e d to k n o w if each police system followed the s a m e devel- o p m e n t a l path a n d if each evolved from the s a m e s t a r t i n g p o i n t . 2 If the p o l i c e in different c i t i e s b e g a n f r o m completely d i f f e r e n t p o i n t s , c o n v e r g i n g only w i t h t h e c o m p l e t i o n of the m o v e s i n t o u n i f o r m , the police m u s t h a v e b e e n s h a p e d b y s i m i l a r external forces. If, h o w e v e r , all c i t i e s h a d t h e s a m e k i n d of p r e - u n i f o r m e d police that followed the s a m e e v o l u t i o n a r y p a t h to the u n i f o r m , then it is un- clear w h a t k i n d s of p r e s s u r e s h a p e d the c h a n g e - i n t e r n a l , external, or b o t h . I argue that t h e first s i t u a t i o n o b t a i n e d : S t a r t i n g f r o m di- verse i n s t i t u t i o n a l a r r a n g e m e n t s a n d following d i v e r s e p a t t e r n s , external forces and c o n s t r a i n t s created m o d e r n u r b a n police forces in virtually the s a m e m o l d . T h e d e s c i p t i o n and a n a l y s i s that follows is b a s e d on the w o r k of v a r i o u s scholars w h o in t h e past ten years h a v e each a d d e d a p i e c e to a puzzle that h a s b e g u n to s h o w its o u t l i n e s , even t h o u g h m u c h m o r e work r e m a i n s . It h a s taken a decade for a c o m p r e h e n s i v e pic- ture to b e f a s h i o n e d b e c a u s e the details t h e m s e l v e s h a v e e i t h e r 30 The historical development of the police 31 b e e n i g n o r e d b y h i s t o r i a n s i n t e r e s t e d in t h e b r o a d e r aspects of so- cial a n d u r b a n h i s t o r y , or b e c a u s e t h e p o l i c e , from t h e p o i n t of v i e w of m a n y scholars, h a v e b e e n and r e m a i n an u n a n a l y z e d part of t h e historical social structure. In the late n i n e t e e n t h a n d early t w e n t i e t h c e n t u r i e s , p o l i c e h i s t o r i e s f u n c t i o n e d as a f o r m of c o m p a n y h i s t o r y , a s s e m b l e d to s h o w a g l o r i o u s o r i g i n , often w i t h c o n s c i o u s i n t e n t of instilling c o n t e m p o r a r y p o l i c e p r i d e : E v e n the title of A u g u s t i n e C o s t e l l o s Our Police Protectors (1885) s h o w s t h i s a s p e c t of t h e b o o k s p u r p o s e . R e c e n t historical s t u d i e s , h o w e v e r , s h o w a m o r e critical attitude toward p o l i c i n g in the p a s t , b u t t e n d to c o n v e y t h e i m p r e s s i o n that t h e h i s t o r y of p o l i c i n g h a s b e e n t h e story of p r o g - ress a w a y from the b a r b a r i s m of t h e n i n e t e e n t h a n d early t w e n t i e t h c e n t u r i e s . A s p e c i f i c political c h a n g e u n d e r l i e s t h e m o r e v i s i b l e c h a n g e i n p o l i c i n g b e t w e e n 1800 and 1920: t h e shift of p o l i c i n g f u n c t i o n s f r o m a traditional, if v a g u e , a t t a c h m e n t to the j u d i c i a l b r a n c h of g o v e r n - m e n t to a f i r m l o d g i n g in m u n i c i p a l a d m i n i s t r a t i o n . T h e c h a n g e in the n a t u r e of the p o l i c e f r o m an i n f o r m a l , e v e n casual, b u r e a u c r a c y to a f o r m a l , r u l e - g o v e r n e d , militaristic o r g a n i z a t i o n m i r r o r e d t h i s d e e p e r p o l i t i c a l s h i f t . A s t h e n a t u r e of t h e p o l i c e o r g a n i z a t i o n c h a n g e d , so d i d its s p e c i f i c d u t i e s , w h i c h m o v e d first f r o m a g e n - eral c o n c e r n w i t h t h e orderly f u n c t i o n i n g of c i t i e s , a small part of w h i c h w a s c a t c h i n g c r i m i n a l s ; to t h e f u n c t i o n in t h e m i d a n d late n i n e t e e n t h c e n t u r y of controlling t h e d a n g e r o u s class, w i t h a g r o w - i n g e m p h a s i s on c r i m e control; a n d finally to the f o r m of social c o n - trol that w e r e c o g n i z e today, e m p h a s i z i n g c r i m e a n d traffic control. T h e criminal arrest p o w e r h a s always b e e n the u l t i m a t e p o w e r u n - derlying t h e p o l i c e , b u t w e m u s t k e e p in m i n d that this in n o w a y expresses the totality of p o l i c e b e h a v i o r , e i t h e r in the p a s t o r today. I n d e e d , o n e of the m i n o r p o i n t s of this c h a p t e r will b e to s h o w t h e diversity of t h i n g s the p o l i c e h a v e d o n e , a n d the m a i n task of t h e c h a p t e r will b e to d e s c r i b e h o w t h i s diversity h a s c h a n g e d . T h u s , although the m o s t v i s i b l e f u n c t i o n of the p o s t - World W a r I police is c r i m e control, w e m u s t r e m e m b e r that t o d a y t h e average officer s p e n d s a g o o d deal of t i m e in n o n - c r i m e - r e l a t e d a c t i v i t i e s , a situa- tion that, incidentally, creates a frustrating i n c o n s i s t e n c y b e t w e e n the i m a g e a n d actuality of police w o r k . English origins In the p r e - u n i f o r m era, the c o n s t a b l e a n d w a t c h , a s y s t e m w i t h ori- g i n s r e a c h i n g b a c k i n t o t h i r t e e n t h - c e n t u r y E n g l a n d , p o l i c e d c i t i e s Police in urban America, 1860 — 1920 and villages. T h e s p e c i f i c office of c o n s t a b l e as a p a r t - t i m e p e a c e k e e p e r h a d evolved b y t h e late fifteenth century, b u t formal codifi- cation h a d occurred m u c h earlier w i t h the Statute of W i n c h e s t e r (1285), w h i c h h a d also c o d i f i e d the watch a n d the h u e a n d cry. T h e c o n s t a b l e , s u b s e r v i e n t to the j u s t i c e of the p e a c e , arrested t h o s e w h o b r o k e the k i n g s p e a c e , raised the h u e and cry, a n d arrested p e r s o n s r e s p o n s i b l e f o r t h e c o m m o n n u i s a n c e s of the w a r d , w h i c h could range f r o m b a k e r s c h e a t i n g on the w e i g h t of b r e a d to the w h o l e c o m m u n i t y n e g l e c t i n g to p r o v i s i o n the p o o r . 3 Although the p o s i t i o n of c o n s t a b l e , an elected o n e in t h e A m e r i c a n c o l o n i e s , w a s c o m p e n s a t e d b y f e e s a s s i g n e d b y the court or j u s t i c e of the p e a c e , the n i g h t w a t c h b e g a n as an u n c o m p e n s a t e d , v o l u n t a r y p o - s i t i o n . In its t h i r t e e n t h - c e n t u r y o r i g i n s , the u n c o m p e n s a t e d n i g h t watch w a s a m e t h o d of c o m m u n i t y s e l f - p r o t e c t i o n , a r e s p o n s i b i l i t y of all adult m a l e s . By S h a k e s p e a r e s t i m e in E n g l a n d , the develop- m e n t of a m o n e y e c o n o m y a n d g r e a t e r u r b a n c o m p l e x i t y h a d r e d u c e d the watch to a decrepit force of u n e m p l o y a b l e s , paid a m i n i m a l w a g e that h a d b e g u n as a f e e - b a s e d s c h e m e of b u y i n g s u b s t i t u t e s for w a t c h duty. O n c e the w a t c h h a d c h a n g e d from a voluntary p o s i t i o n to o n e d e p e n d e n t on p a i d s u b s t i t u t e s , it b e c a m e the constant b u t t of j o k e s b o t h in E n g l a n d a n d A m e r i c a , and w h a t - ever the effectiveness it h a d p o s s e s s e d d i s a p p e a r e d . In 1808, for e x a m p l e , the Louisiana Gazette c o m m e n t e d on the N e w O r l e a n s watch: S i n c e substitutes have b e e n allowed, the patrol is com- p o s e d principally of the m o s t w o r t h l e s s p a r t of the c o m m u n i t y , n o t to u s e a m o r e appropriate t e r m . It is like setting w o l v e s to guard s h e e p . 4 T h e reason for the w a t c h s f e e b l e n e s s , although usually b l a m e d on the p o o r p a y and i n e f f e c t i v e , defective or a n c i e n t p e r s o n n e l , in fact derived from its earliest E n g l i s h conceptual b a s i s , w h i c h w a s shared b y the c o n s t a b l e and b e s t e x e m p l i f i e d in the h u e a n d cry and posse comitatus. T h e t w o legal o b l i g a t i o n s of the p o s s e c o m i t a t u s , theoretically c o m p o s e d of all m a l e s over the age of fifteen in the county as called up b y the sheriff, a n d of the h u e and cry, the s h o u t of the v i c t i m of a c r i m e o r a c o n s t a b l e , w h i c h legally b o u n d all males h e a r i n g it to p u r s u e the o f f e n d e r until c a u g h t , formalized c o m m u - nity law e n f o r c e m e n t . 5 A s the b r o a d e s t level of c o m m u n i t y enforce- m e n t , t h e s e legal o b l i g a t i o n s concretely s p e c i f i e d the u l t i m a t e inter- est of all community m e m b e r s in the preservation of order and law e n f o r c e m e n t . H o w e v e r , that the v o l u n t a r y aspects of c o m m u n i t y law e n f o r c e m e n t h a d b e e n d e f i n e d as a legal o b l i g a t i o n b y the Stat- 44 The historical development of the police 45 ute of W i n c h e s t e r should m a k e us s u s p e c t t h e i r truly v o l u n t a r y and organic n a t u r e . I n d e e d , if w e step b a c k to the era p r i o r to the Statute of W i n c h e s - ter, b e f o r e the codification of c o m m u n i t y law e n f o r c e m e n t , w e dis- cover that from the t i m e of the N o r m a n c o n q u e s t until the thir- teenth c e n t u r y the A n g l o - S a x o n i n h a b i t a n t s of B r i t a i n , ruled b y the N o r m a n s , h a d b e e n u n d e r the c o m p u l s o r y social control s y s t e m of frankpledge. Frankpledge, described b y its historian as a system of compulsory collective bail fixed for i n d i v i d u a l s , n o t after their ar- rest for a c r i m e , b u t as a safeguard in a n t i c i p a t i o n of i t , forced the c o m m u n i t y to accept r e s p o n s i b i l i t y for the b e h a v i o r of its i n d i v i d - ual m e m b e r s , to p r o d u c e o f f e n d e r s f o r trial, or, if u n a b l e to d i s c o v e r the offender, to p a y the f i n e s . 6 T h u s , frankpledge d e m a n d e d that the c o n q u e r e d A n g l o - S a x o n s p r e s e r v e N o r m a n - d e f i n e d law and or- der w i t h i n the c o m m u n i t y . E x e m p l i f y i n g c o m m u n i t y law enforce- m e n t at its m o s t b a s i c level, f r a n k p l e d g e p r o v i d e d the conceptual b a s i s for the law e n f o r c e m e n t s c h e m e in the Statute of W i n c h e s t e r . H o w e v e r , it is clear that t h e n a t u r e of frankpledge w a s n o t volun- tary c o m m u n i t y s e l f - d e f e n s e , b u t rather a s i m p l e w a y of c o n q u e r o r s controlling the c o n q u e r e d . C o m m u n i t y p o l i c i n g , t h e r e f o r e , devel- o p e d n o t out of a n y organically evolved s y s t e m of social self-con- trol, b u t from an e x p e d i e n t m e a n s of social control b y alien con- q u e r o r s . It is n o w o n d e r that this m e a n s of l a w e n f o r c e m e n t n e v e r developed i n t o an effective or j u s t s y s t e m , w h e t h e r in E n g l a n d or A m e r i c a , for it w a s b a s e d on a faulty c o n c e p t . In translation from B r i t a i n to A m e r i c a , certain c h a n g e s in the of- fice of t h e s h e r i f f c a m e a b o u t . O r i g i n a l l y an e x e c u t i v e of great p o w e r in E n g l a n d , the sheriff h a d b e c o m e the officer in charge of the courts b u s i n e s s in the U n i t e d States b y the b e g i n n i n g of the n i n e t e e n t h century. A l t h o u g h s o m e t i m e s r e s p o n s i b l e for the e n - f o r c e m e n t of c r i m i n a l law, the sheriff and h i s d e p u t i e s or m a r s h a l s n e v e r h a d a patrol r e s p o n s i b i l i t y like that of the w a t c h . T h e term marshal in the n i n e t e e n t h c e n t u r y did not always refer to an officer of the court. In the territorial W e s t , especially in the m i d n i n e t e e n t h century, local police officers a n d t h e i r u n d e r l i n g s w e r e called mar- shals and d e p u t i e s , t h e m a r s h a l s c o r r e s p o n d i n g to h e a d c o n s t a b l e s and the d e p u t i e s to c o n s t a b l e s . For i n s t a n c e , in D e n v e r the citys first charter u n d e r a territorial g o v e r n m e n t d e f i n e d a m a r s h a l as an official who could do all the acts that a Constable may lawfully d o . 7 U n l i k e h i s c o n s t a b u l a r y c o u n t e r p a r t , h o w e v e r , the m a r s h a l had n o n i g h t w a t c h formally e s t a b l i s h e d ; c o n c e i v a b l y , the m a r s h a l s Police in urban America, 1860 — 1920 d e p u t i e s could f u n c t i o n as a w a t c h w h e n n e c e s s a r y . T h e lack of a watch system in the West suggests that its well-known reputation for ineffectiveness had created no reasonable substitute short of a uniformed police, and the n e w g o v e r n m e n t s simply dropped the watch provision. Although the specific duties of the watch and constable (or mar- shal) varied from place to place a n d t i m e to t i m e in the U n i t e d States, the general duties covered a b r o a d range of police functions. T h e n i g h t watch p r e s e r v e d order, b r o a d l y d e f i n e d to i n c l u d e re- p o r t i n g fires, r a i s i n g the h u e and cry if t h e y d i s c o v e r e d criminal o f f e n s e s , and arresting or d e t a i n i n g for arrest s u s p i c i o u s and disor- derly p e r s o n s . In B o s t o n , for e x a m p l e , the watch h a d a statutory o b l i g a t i o n to e x a m i n e all p e r s o n s , w h o m t h e y h a v e r e a s o n to sus- p e c t of unlawful d e s i g n ; to walk the r o u n d s in and a b o u t the s t r e e t s ; to report fires and suppress riots and disturbances; and to light a n d m a i n t a i n t h e s t r e e t l a m p s . 8 A l t h o u g h such d u t i e s s o u n d straightforward e n o u g h , the i m p l e m e n t a t i o n often p r o v e d u n s a t i s - factory. In C i n c i n n a t i , for i n s t a n c e , in the 1850s each w a r d elected its w a t c h m e m b e r s . T h e w a t c h , b e c a u s e of its w a r d - b a s e d loyalties, reported only t h o s e fires w i t h i n the ward. Even w o r s e , w h e n var- ious v o l u n t e e r fire d e p a r t m e n t s clashed, the v a r i o u s w a r d w a t c h e s , w h i c h h a d p o w e r s of arrest e q u a l to t h o s e of the c o n s t a b l e s , ar- rested m a i n l y f i r e m e n from o t h e r w a r d s , t h u s c o m i n g to the battle aid of t h e i r n e i g h b o r h o o d fire d e p a r t m e n t . 9 R e s p o n s i b i l i t y f o r o r d e r m o r e broadly d e f i n e d to i n c l u d e e l i m i - n a t i n g health h a z a r d s a n d road o b s t r u c t i o n s , as well as e x e c u t i n g court orders a n d c a t c h i n g c r i m i n a l s , fell u p o n c o n s t a b l e s . C o m - p a r e d to the w a t c h , the c o n s t a b l e s or m a r s h a l s d u t i e s w e r e even m o r e v a r i e d . N o t only did t h e y w o r k for the c o u r t s , arresting of- f e n d e r s , b r i n g i n g in w i t n e s s e s , and serving p a p e r s ; t h e y also h a d to keep an eye on s u s p i c i o u s p e r s o n s and places in the city, plus act as health officers. In D e n v e r , f o r i n s t a n c e , in 1860 the city m a r s h a l u s e d h i s authority to o r d e r t h e removal of a s l a u g h t e r h o u s e a n d a tannery, b o t h located in the c e n t e r of t o w n . 1 0 Further, a n d m o r e distastefully, the D e n v e r m a r s h a l h a d a c o n s t a n t b a t t l e w i t h stray dogs, p i g s , a n d o t h e r livestock; b u t w h i l e the h o g a n d livestock p r o b l e m h a d b e g u n to a b a t e b y t h e 1870s, t h e stray d o g s c o n t i n u e d to b e c o n s i d e r e d a p r o b l e m . M a r s h a l s dealt w i t h dogs b y s h o o t i n g t h e m , and during the 1880s, w o u n d e d , m a i m e d , a n d d y i n g dogs, their entrails trailing, h o w l e d t h r o u g h t h e streets of D e n v e r . N o t until 1883 did t h i s attract a n y n e g a t i v e c o m m e n t s , a n e w s p a p e r edi- tor finally proclaiming that There is something essentially cruel in 44 The historical development of the police 45 filling the h i n d q u a r t e r s of even a d u m b b r u t e w i t h b u c k s h o t a n d s e n d i n g h i m m o u r n i n g n o i s e l y u p the streets, w i t h h i s liver a n d l u n g s a n d o t h e r a b s o l u t e n e c e s s i t i e s i n t a c t a n d q u i v e r i n g w i t h p a i n . 1 1 It m u s t b e e m p h a s i z e d that all t h e s e duties d i d n o t result from a c o n c e p t i o n of t h e v a r i o u s officers of t h e p o l i c e as p r e v e n t i n g c r i m e , d i s c o v e r i n g c r i m i n a l o f f e n s e s , or regularly i n t e r v e n i n g in t h e crimi- nal p r o c e s s b e f o r e a c o m p l a i n i n g v i c t i m o r a w i t n e s s a p p e a r e d . 1 2 T h o s e o f f e n s e s that officers w e r e o b l i g e d to discover on t h e i r o w n initiative w e r e only the o n e s that affected the p u b l i c health a n d welfare as a w h o l e : All o t h e r activities resulted f r o m s o m e k i n d of formal r e q u e s t , w h e t h e r to arrest a n o f f e n d e r or to care for an i n - sane p e r s o n . 1 3 T h u s , w h e r e a s the duties of t h e c o n s t a b l e a n d w a t c h were v a r i e d , they w e r e p r e c i s e in t h e i r general c o n c e p t i o n . T h e y took i n i t i a t i v e in p r e s e r v i n g health a n d order rules that affected the c o m m u n i t y as a w h o l e , a n d t h e y r e s p o n d e d to r e q u e s t s from i n d i - vidual v i c t i m s of c r i m i n a l o f f e n s e s . It is difficult to j u d g e t h e overall e f f e c t i v e n e s s of the c o n s t a b l e - watch s y s t e m , o t h e r t h a n to o b s e r v e its a b i l i t y to p e r s i s t for 600 y e a r s . 1 4 Its m a i n failure s e e m s to h a v e b e e n its i n a b i l i t y to protect property a n d control riots, for alternative m e a n s of social control developed for b o t h t h e s e - t h e thief catchers and the m i l i t i a o r mili- tary. T h i e f catchers existed in E n g l a n d at least as early as 1534, a n d the s y s t e m d i d not e n d u n t i l the u n i f o r m i n g of t h e police a n d t h e d e v e l o p m e n t of i n s u r a n c e in the m i d n i n e t e e n t h century. T h i e f catchers did n o t actually catch t h i e v e s , b u t rather recovered stolen property; functionally, t h e y r e s e m b l e d f e n c e s in that t h e y acted as m a r k e t i n g agents for t h i e v e s . T h e m o s t f a m o u s thief catcher i n E n - gland, Jonathan Wild, managed to act as a broker between thieves and t h e o w n e r s of stolen p r o p e r t y ; t h e o w n e r s p a i d a r a n s o m f e e for the p r o p e r t y w h i l e W i l d carefully a v o i d e d actually c o m i n g i n t o p o s - s e s s i o n of the property. A l t h o u g h n o i n d i v i d u a l s in the U n i t e d States operated on such a large scale as W i l d , A m e r i c a n c i t i e s d i d h a v e p r o m i n e n t t h i e f catchers. R o g e r L a n e cites t h e e x a m p l e of G e o r g e R e e d , b o t h a con- stable a n d a t h i e f catcher in B o s t o n in the 1820s: A c c o r d i n g to a c o n t e m p o r a r y , T h e secret of h i s [ R e e d s ] w o n d e r f u l s u c c e s s , so it w a s s a i d , w a s in h i s h a v i n g in h i s e m p l o y p a r t i e s w h o w e r e in h i s p o w e r , w h o s e l i b e r t y a n d in s o m e cases, it w a s i n t i m a t e d , t h e i r p e r m i s s i o n to p l y t h e i r v o c a t i o n , d e p e n d e d on the v a l u e of the i n - f o r m a t i o n t h e y w e r e a b l e to f u r n i s h h i m . 1 5 T h e constable/thief catcher, like R e e d , a n d t h e c o m m e r c i a l t h i e f catcher like W i l d , dif- 36 Police in urban America, 1860 — 1920 fered m a i n l y in the g r e a t e r b a r g a i n i n g p o w e r of the c o n s t a b l e w i t h h i s legitimate p o w e r of arrest; the p a s s a g e cited b y L a n e s u g g e s t s that t h e c o n s t a b l e s , like police detectives today, b a r g a i n e d w i t h t h i e v e s , trading f r e e d o m for i n f o r m a t i o n . B u t u n l i k e m o d e r n detec- tives, the constable/thief catcher then traded the information with the victim of the theft for a reward. In t h e t h i e f - c a t c h i n g s y s t e m of r e t u r n i n g stolen p r o p e r t y , the i n - dividual p r o p e r t y o w n e r took the risk, as o p p o s e d to the m o r e re- cent i n s u r a n c e system w h e r e a large group of p r o p e r t y o w n e r s dis- tributes the risk. F u r t h e r m o r e , in the t h i e f - c a t c h i n g s y s t e m , the thief catcher r e t u r n e d t h e actual stolen property, b u t t o d a y the in- surance c o m p a n y r e t u r n s a p r o p o r t i o n of the m o n e y v a l u e . 1 6 A third s y s t e m a t i c difference n o w allows s o m e w h a t neutral third p a r - ties, the p o l i c e , rather t h a n s o m e k i n d of criminal receiver, to b e involved in the t r a n s a c t i o n : T h u s t h e i n s u r a n c e s y s t e m b r e a k s t h e material c o n n e c t i o n b e t w e e n t h i e v e s and p r o p e r t y o w n e r s . T h e t h i e v e s and c r i m i n a l receivers m a r k e t the stolen g o o d s a n d the i n - surance c o m p a n i e s b e a r the c o m p e n s a t o r y cost. T h e police do n o t h a v e to n e g o t i a t e w i t h t h i e v e s as d i d thief catchers, a n d therefore n e e d only to d e f i n e the g o o d s as stolen. B e c a u s e t h e c h a n g e f r o m thief c a t c h i n g to i n s u r a n c e lagged b e h i n d t h e u n i f i c a t i o n of the po- lice, for a p e r i o d in t h e m i d to late n i n e t e e n t h c e n t u r y police detec- tives f u n c t i o n e d as t h i e f catchers, n e g o t i a t i n g b e t w e e n thieves a n d p r o p e r t y o w n e r s for p e r s o n a l profit. In N e w York, for i n s t a n c e , dur- ing the 1850s, the return of a stolen watch could cost a p a y m e n t of s e v e n t y - f i v e dollars to the p o l i c e . 1 7 T h e second w e a k n e s s of the c o n s t a b l e - w a t c h s y s t e m , its i n a b i l - ity to control m o b s a n d riots, also resulted in the u s e of alternate control s y s t e m s . T h i s s h o u l d not b e interpreted as the s y s t e m a t i c failure of the c o n s t a b l e - w a t c h s y s t e m , b u t rather as s h o w i n g the i n h e r e n t i n a b i l i t y of a n y civil p o l i c e force to deal w i t h m a s s actions. A l t h o u g h civil a u t h o r i t i e s still m a k e the a t t e m p t , the control of m o b s h a s n e v e r b e e n successfully or totally transferred from the military to the p o l i c e . F o r i n s t a n c e , in 1842 in C i n c i n n a t i the consta- b l e - w a t c h type police failed to s u p p r e s s a riot, and the militia h a d to b e called i n . A s a result, the city council created the P o l i c e G u a r d , a militia/police reserve u n i t specifically for riot c o n t r o l . 1 8 In the late 1850s, P h i l a d e l p h i a also created a reserve corps for riot control, w e a r i n g t h e first police u n i f o r m s in the c i t y . 1 9 In b o t h cases, the reserve corps d e m o n s t r a t e d the failure of traditional p o - lice s y s t e m s a n d the n e e d for s o m e k i n d of militia. T h e u n i f i c a t i o n a n d u n i f o r m i n g of the police did little to i n c r e a s e their riot control 44 The historical development of the police 45 ability. For example, a decade after the N e w York police had b e e n u n i f i e d a n d u n i f o r m e d , t h e draft riot of 1863 erupted. T h i s riot, often cited as an e x a m p l e of successful p o l i c e protection of blacks from h o s t i l e Irish rioters, in fact d e m o n s t r a t e d the i n a b i l i t y of t h e N e w York M e t r o p o l i t a n Police to control d e t e r m i n e d rioters. T h e riot c o n t i n u e d until t h e a r m y successfully quelled it. T h e p o l i c e , although relatively well o r g a n i z e d and c o o r d i n a t e d , and d e m o n - strating r e m a r k a b l e d i s c i p l i n e , s i m p l y lacked the p o w e r and tactics n e c e s s a r y to w i n . 2 0 O n e can u n d e r s t a n d the m e a n i n g and details of t h e c h a n g e from t h e t r a d i t i o n a l c o n s t a b l e - w a t c h m e a n s of p o l i c i n g to t h e u n i - f o r m e d police b y looking b r i e f l y at the o r i g i n s of t h e M e t r o p o l i t a n Police of L o n d o n . C r e a t e d b y H o m e Secretary R o b e r t Peel in 1829, the M e t r o p o l i t a n Police p r o v i d e d a m o d e l f o r the earliest u n i f o r m e d police forces in the U n i t e d States. Peels p r i o r e x p e r i e n c e in polic- ing h a d b e e n the creation a n d a d m i n i s t r a t i o n of t h e police of Ire- land. In s u b d u i n g the continually r e b e l l i o u s Irish, h e h a d l e a r n e d h o w to o v e r c o m e the political and p h i l o s o p h i c a l r e s i s t a n c e to a u n i - f o r m e d p o l i c e as well as h o w to structure t h i s n e w k i n d of p o l i c e . Ireland, a nation of unwilling subjects ruled b y a loyal English lord l i e u t e n a n t a n d h i s secretaries, h a d p a r l i a m e n t a r y r e p r e s e n t a t i o n only t h r o u g h Irish Protestants loyal to E n g l a n d . Peel b e c a m e chief secretary to t h e lord l i e u t e n a n t of Ireland at t h e age of t w e n t y - f o u r , just three years after h i s father h a d p u r c h a s e d h i m a seat in t h e H o u s e of C o m m o n s . A r i s i n g t a l e n t a m o n g c o n s e r v a t i v e s , P e e l f o u n d h i s n e w p o s i t i o n in Ireland b o t h difficult and c h a l l e n g i n g , as it a m o u n t e d to a d m i n i s t e r i n g a h o s t i l e c o u n t r y and r e p r e s e n … U.S. Copyright Law (title 17 of U.S. code) governs the reproduction and redistribution of copyrighted material. Downloading this document for the purpose of redistribution is prohibited. The Confessions of A Poor White Life of the Old South Edited by Charles C. Bolton and Scott P. Culclasure Introduction by J. William Harris The University of Georgia Press Athens & London EDWARB ISIÀM © 1998 by the University of Georgia Press Athens, Georgia 3 0 6 0 2 All rights reserved Designed by E r i n Kirk New Set in 11 on 14 Bulmer by G 8c S Typesetters Printed and b o u n d by E d w a r d s Brothers, Inc. T h e p a p e r in this b o o k meets the guidelines for p e r m a n e n c e and durability of the C o m m i t t e e on P r o d u c t i o n Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. P r i n t e d in the United States of America 02 0 1 00 9 9 9 8 C 5 4 3 2 1 L i b r a r y of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data I s h a m , E d w a r d , d. 1860. T h e confessions of E d w a r d Isham : a p o o r W h i t e life of the O l d South / edited by Charles C . Bolton and Scott P. Culclasure ; i n t r o d u c t i o n by J . William H a r r i s , p . cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0 - 8 2 0 3 - 2 0 2 1 - 8 (alk. p a p e r ) . ISBN 0 - 8 2 0 3 - 2 0 7 3 - 0 ( p b k . : alk. paper) 1. Isham, E d w a r d , d. 1860. 2. W h i t e s — S o u t h e r n States—Biography. 3. P o o r — S o u t h e r n States—Biography. 4. Murderers — S o u t h e r n States—Biography. 5. W h i t e s — S o u t h e r n States — Social conditions. 6. S o u t h e r n States — Social conditions. I. Bolton, Charles C. II. Culclasure, Scott P. III. Title. F 2 1 3 . I 8 5 1998 9 7 5 . 0 3 0 9 2 — d c 2 1 [b] 9 8 - 4 3 5 9 British Library Cataloging in Publication Data available Frontispiece b y J o h n M c L e n a n (1859) I Autobiography of Edward Isham, Alias Hardaway Bone Was born in Jackson County Georgia1 was 5 years old at the time of the cold Friday and Saturday. My father2 was dissi- pated and spent what property he had and moved first to Biles Mills, then to Carroll County Georgia and went to digging gold. Every one dug where he liked and could get a location. I lived with my father in the suburbs of a little town called Pine Mountain town.3 I went to school five days to a man named Scroggins and never went again. I recollect when 10 years old fighting a boy named Jake Blakenship, and hurting him with a rock. I went home scared and told my father and he told me I was a fool for being scared. I then fought a boy called W m Garthard 4 and bit him severely and then hit him with a rock. I also fought with William Compton. I had long hair and he held me by it, and beat me severely. I went home to my father and he cut off my hair so I could have a fair chance and I went back and whipped him. T h e next difficulty I had was at Hickstown town with two boys named McQuister and I whipped them both. I was then growing up and began to work for myself in the mines and made money. Tom Godfrey and I quarreled about water for washing gold and he came to cut down a dam I had made and we fought. H e struck me with his shovel and I threw rocks. His friends came and I ran off to my fathers and got his rifle and fired on Godfrey but some one knocked up the gun and I missed him. H e then struck me with a shovel and we were parted. McCurdy one of his friends went to town for a warrant to Squire Ruffin and I pursued him. I found him at the Squires and fell on him with a hickory stick but was arrested by the Squire and sent to Car- rollton to jail—was put in at midnight. On the next day, I broke out 12 | Edward I sham by prying up the floor and creeping out under the house. I went home by dusk, ate my supper and fled. I went to DeKalb County to my uncle Charles Icems,5 a farmer and remained there some time. I went up to Nances creek6 andjoined the Methodist Church at Cen- trals meeting house. John M. Smith was the preacher. I got into a difficulty with a negro about a fishing pole and tried to cut him but was prevented, for this they turned me out of the church. I went with my Uncle and a party swimming in Nances creek. We all got drunk and I had a fight with Wash Smith, a free negro, who choked me very severely. We went on towards home and stopped at Henry Islys Grocery. There the free negro got drunk, and I drank no more and got sober and watching rfty chance I fell on him with a rock and beat him very severely but we afterwards made friends. I left next morning and went to Forsythe County Georgia to my Uncle Hardin Millers7 and dug gold. There while working on the road,8 a man accused me of stealing milk from his spring house and I tried to kill him with my axe but was prevented. I went then to a little cross road town called Shake rag town and got to gambling with one Rogers, who tried to cheat me and we had a fight but nei- ther was hurt. I then went back to John Millers and then started for Carroll. On the way I stopped at a muster at Howells Mills 9 in Cocke County.10 There two men were quarreling and one refused to fight because he was sick, the other pressed on him and I volunteered to be his second, so they went to fighting and during the fight one Gus. Wood, a great bully, attempted foul play and I struck him with a heavy hickory stick and hurt him badly. T h e men were then parted and the other party gathered in force to mob us and we fled. I was not yet grown at that time. I went back to the mines in Carroll County and in a short time I was at a Grocery in Pinetown and got into a difficulty with Thomas Wallace and hit him with a glass tumbler. I then took a stick from my bro in law and beat him severely. I was not arrested. About this time I used to visit a girl named Jane Mobley and we were intimate. A young man named T h o m p s o n was court- ing her and one night he eavesdropped me and next day told Jane what I had said to her. I was half drunk and went down to the Gro- cery and T h o m p s o n and I fought about it and were parted but got Autobiography \ 3 at it again and fought til he hollered. I then made him go with me to Jane and acknowledge he told her a lie. While fighting Thompson one of my friends struck at Thompson a rock and hit me and hurt me badly. I continued to dig for gold and made money. I went up to Cross Ankles to a horse race and heard my brother had a difficulty with one Maxdale and there was a warrant out for him. My brother lived in Macon county Alabama, so I went back with him. A fellow named Jim Cordry went along and got into trouble and we started back. On the way at Silver Hill Tallapoosa11 a county I got into a difficulty with one Bratch Ward and we fought desperately, his sons and nephews joined him, and Jeff Chambers1 2 a friend of mine joined me. We fought at a grocery, and we finally whipped them and they shut themselves up in the grocery. In the fight I acci- dently struck Chambers, with a heavy stick and nearly killed him. I helped him home. T h e other party gathered a crowd to kill us and we fled to the woods. I then came back to Carroll County and com- menced mining. I got into a difficulty about water again and had a fight with rocks with a party who tried to brake my dam and I whipped them off. T h e y went for a warrant for me and while they were gone I broke up their rockers and shovels and fled to DeKalb county again to my Uncle James Icems. I stayed a month or so and returned. Everybody was afraid of me and no officer would attempt to take me. I con- tinued to visit Jane Mobley in Pinetown, and at a frolic there Jim Fletcher and I fell out about her but Jim was afraid of me but Jims fa- ther 13 who had just got out of the penitentiary for killing a man sent me word, he intended to kill me at sight. I replied I was tired fight- ing and did not wish any difficulty. I was afraid of old Fletcher and thought he would kill me. In the meantime while mining a man named Porterfield and I fell out about a spike and in a fight he stabbed me on the shoulder. I fol- lowed him to Hargroves1 4 store to kill him but was prevented. In a few days I went to Hickstown town to sell my gold and on my return near home I met old Fletcher in his wagon. He stopped and said now was the time to settle our fuss. I told him I did not want to fight, but he commenced to get down and seeing a pistol in his 12 | Edward I sham bosom I ran up and struck him over the head with a 4-lb bowie knife and then ran. He rose and snapped his pistol. I then turned and threw my knife at him but missed. I went then to my brothers and got a double barreled gun and went up to see Jane Mobley. While there my brother came running and told me that Fletcher and a crowd were after me, so I escaped to the woods. I then went to Cocke county1 5 and from there to DeKalb, stayed 3 months and re- turned to the mines and went to work. Everybody was afraid of me. They took out warrants for me and I fled to Walker county on the Tennessee line but returned shortly again. I went with my Brother to whip one Adams intending to kill him with a rifle if he resisted but he was not at home. We then went to Macon county Alabama to one Hutchinsons1 6 and remained a short time. While in Alabama be- fore, I was engaged to [a] girl who married Peter Windley after I went away. I saw her and she and I agreed to run off and we did so. Her name was Mary,17 she was 20 yrs old and very pretty. We came to Carroll county, to my mothers in Pinetown. My father had taken up with another woman and left my mother alone. I went up to Walker county to hunt a house, and split rails for James Fulcher1 8 at 25 cts pr hundred, til I got money enough to bring my mother and Mary up there. Here I raised one crop but getting into several fights, at a logrolling and at Gordons Grocery, I sold out and went up to Chattanooga to work on the Rail Road. While working there I got into a difficulty with some Irishmen boat hands about some lewd women and left the Road and went aboard the Sam Markin19 on the Tennessee river as fireman. I worked there sometime, and was on the boat when the volun- teers from Mexico returned.2 0 We were anxious to get to Chat- tanooga soon and I made a bet with Charlie Harris engineer about when we would get there. I won. Next day we quarreled about it and he struck me with a board and I stabbed him under the collar bone with my pocket knife. T h e boat hands took Harris part and I fled. They swore vengeance on me and whenever the boat came to town I would leave to avoid them. I took to gambling for a living and lost all I had even to my pistol and knife. I then took up with a man named Napper, a wild fellow who lived Autobiography \ 4 over the line in Walker county, who had a farm and some negroes. He gave me a pistol and knife to fight Harris. Harris never attacked me. While riding one of Nappers horse [s] to water one day I saw him and one Jake Floor2 1 fighting and I ran up and hit Floor with a brick bat and ended the fight. I then took Nappers horse and fled to Georgia but in a short time returned and found there was something wrong with Mary, she did not treat me kindly and I became jealous. I pretended to leave home one day, but rode up to Bald Hill where I could see my cabin and watched. I saw my wife start for water but stopped in a cabin on the way—so I slipped up there, it was about dusk, and I saw a fellow named Noah Vineyard sitting on a bed with her and his arms around her. I went round to the door and spoke and Mary ran out and went off. Vineyard denied anything wrong but I told him he must fight. He said he would fight me in town, so we started for town and while riding along, he threw suddenly two rocks at me and struck my hat. I drew my revolver and fired three times at him but never hit him. I then j u m p e d off and pursued him with my bowie knife. In the race he fell and commenced begging and said he was badly shot so I left him and went over to Nappers and sent a man to see about it and found out he was not shot at all. I stayed at Nappers til Christmas and we were all invited to a Treat at Gordons Mills22 in Walker County. We played Chuck Luck2 3 all day and all got drunk. I fought one Scott Victory and got soundly beaten. Napper and Tracy fought and I interfered. Tracy struck me and I struck at him with my bowie knife and scabbard, forgetting in the excitement to unsheathe it. This saved his life and all made friends. I stayed with Napper a few months drinking, hunting and gambling. I then went to Chattanooga and stayed with my mother. She sold cakes and whiskey and boarded work hands for a living. I had but little to do with Mary. There were warrants out for me and I fled to Ringgold Georgia 24 stayed 3 or 4 months drinking & gam- bling, then returned. On Sunday while drunk I went to a [ ] 2 5 House and got into a difficulty and a fellow named Bernice slipped up behind me and knocked me down with a rock. It knocked me senseless and next morning I came to at my mothers, not knowing who did it. I was hurt badly and it scared me very much. I reflected 12 | Edward I sham on my course and for awhile was disposed to do better, but warrants issued for me and I fled to Ringgold and became very intimate with a gambler named Riese [?]. We went to a House and got into a fuss and a warrant issued and I was tied and carried to jail but Napper sent over in five or six days and bailed me. I stood my trial and had to pay the cash. I then moved my mother down to Ringgold.26 She sold cakes for a living and I gambled. Mary (Windley wife) had mar- ried Hiram Brown2 7 and they had moved to Ringgold too. We never had anything to do with one another. I went up on the first train of cars to Tunnel hill.28 Got drunk at a grocery. A friend of mine named James got into a difficulty with a man named Parrigan and being too drunk to fight, I took his place and fought Parrigan. I then went back to Carroll Co. to Pinetown. At Cross Ankles I was play- ing marbles for money and a fellow from North Carolina was drunk and kicked out the marbles. I was going to fight him but he drew a bowie knife and I left him and went back to Pinetown and came back to the grocery where he was. He was dancing and swearing he could whip any one. Jef. Chambers my old friend was there and told me to watch him knock that fellow down but I told him to hold on, he had imposed on me and I intended to whip him. Just then he danced on my toes and said are you the man that was playing marbles. I said Yes, and immediately struck him with a rock I had in my pocket and knocked him down; but he was too much for me. I couldnt hurt him any more; but Chambers and my friends kicked him and hurt him badly and he hollered. I then left him and went back to the mountain to work. I worked four or five months and made a con- siderable amount of gold. I gambled every night and fought chick- ens on Sundays. We had a regular cockpit made for the purpose. One day two men named Morgan and Gray came from Hicks- town town to Pinetown and swore they could whip any Democrat in Pinetown and they intended to whip the Icems before they left. I was eating supper and some one told me the news. I got a piece of a shovel handle which I had sawed off for a bludgeon and went up to the grocery—Warner Lyons — and asked Morgan if he had said what I heard. He said he did and I knocked him down with the shovel handle. Gray then j u m p e d on me, and a friend of mine named Autobiography \ 7 Murphreyjoined in the fight. T h e candles were knocked down and we fought for a long time in the dark. Grays eye was knocked out by a weight thrown by some of us, and he ran and we pursued him with rocks and he left town very badly hurt. Morgan ran out the back door in the meantime and es- caped. I was then boarding with a man named Price and was keep- ing his daughter. A warrant was issued for me but the officer was afraid to take me. I concluded to leave and a brother in law of mine named Wm Bivings29 and I started to Cobb Co to dig gold. Near to Powder Springs3 0 while traveling in the wagon we met Gray and being afraid he would get a crowd and kill me, I j u m p e d on my bro in laws horse and ran. I went to Marietta and from there to my Uncle John Everetts31 in Cobb Co Georgia. I got there early in the morning. Soon after eating I discovered 8 or 10 men with guns com- ing after me and I slipped out and ran. I came to Vickerys creek32 and swam it, which chilled me and stiffened me. I went on til I came to Chattahooche3 3 and tried to swim it but couldnt and came out, and went down to Covins ferry and crossed over to an Aunt of mine and waited til Bivings came. He went to work in the mines but I con- cluded to leave and went up to Lumpkin Co 34 and stayed four or five months. While there I took up with a woman named Thirs. Mur- phy 3 5 and had a severe fight with a man who had been keeping her. I became intimate with two men named Ball Gilbert and Jim Gilbert. T h e y had a feud with a grocery keeper named Thomas Ball. We went up to his grocery one day and broke up everything he had decanters, glasses and barrels and his fiddle. H e went down to De- loneger3 6 and got a warrant for us. T h e y caught Ball Gilbert and put him in jail. I was going down next day to hear about it and overheard some officers who were after us and hurried back and told Jim Gilbert and we went off to the woods. Ball Gilbert broke jail but he and T h o m . Ball compromised, and Gilbert worked, to pay the dam- age, for Ball. I was there a few days after and while Ball was away from home, made his wife sell me a pair of shoes and paid her a bill on a broken bank. I never counterfeited any and knew nothing about it. I then left went to my Uncles in DeKalb and he bought me tools and I went to Cobb Co to dig gold. We had to cook for ourselves 12 | Edward I sham and, while at my Aunts one day, I met a pretty girl named Mary Dagget and hired her to cook for me, and we took up together. I made very little gold and concluded to leave. I took this girl with me to DeKalb to Isleys old grocery and there left her and went back to Pinetown in Carroll and went to work. My Bro in law bought up a drove of beeves and hired me and Bill Clemmens to drive them to Montgomery Alabama. We drove them there but found them due sale (I had three brothers John lived in Macon Co Ala, James and William, my name is Edward). From Montgomery Bill Clemmens and I went down to Macon to my Brothers, built a little shantie on the river and rafted lightwood to Montgomery. While there I took up with Mandy Hatch, (a sister to Mary Wind- ley, whom I took from her husband Peter Windley and a sister in law of my brother John). We used to meet at a spring of nights. Bill Clemmens and Bivings watched me one night and we came near fighting about it. Shortly after this, I shot a mans hog that used to eat our things at the shantie and he took out a warrant for me and I left and went over to my brothers; but John was very angry because I had taken up with his sister in law and we got into a quarrel. He struck me with a chair and cut my head badly. I went over to Frank- lin37 and got Dr. Wilburn to sew it up. H e put seven stitches in it. I then went down to the shantie and Bivings gave me some money and I took the cars 38 and made my way back to DeKalb Georgia. I then took my sister, Bivings wife, and we went back to Pinetown. My fa- ther was living there with another woman. Shortly after that I had a difficulty at Hickstown town with a circus company but had no fight. Also with Allen Fletcher who had the bowie knife I struck his father with [ ] 3 9 but we did not fight, friends interfered. I was then in my prime, about 24 years old, was a great wrestler and could not be thrown down. My thumb was then off. It was blowed off one Christmas morning, before breakfast by the busting of a gun when I was only 10 years old.40 I next got into a difficulty with Dick Fen- ley,41 a great bully and we agreed to have a set fight. My old friend Jef. Chambers was my second. Fenley bit my finger very badly, the prints are there now and tore Autobiography \ 9 my flesh off my bosom with his long nails. I bit him too and gouched one eye nearly out; but they parted us before either hollered, though Dick got the best of the fight. When we were done I j u m p e d on Fen- leys son, who had shown some foul play, and beat him til he hollered but he gouched one of my eyes very badly. T h e bite on the finger got very bad and I could not work for a long time. After some months I went to my mothers at Ringgold, and con- tinued to gamble and drink. I was at Browns grocery one day and an Irishman wanted to bet five dollars he could whip any man in town. His name was Clark. I took him up and we fought. He was too drunk and I whipped him and got the money. I then helped a friend named James Gordon in a fight at the same grocery and was arrested and Gordon paid the fine and got me off. I took up with Caroline Brown a sister of Hirams (Marys husband) and she became preg- nant. I then quit her and married Rachel Webb,42 the daughter of a widow in Ringgold. I drank very hard and got completely out of money and concluded to go back to the mines in Carroll. I worked made some money and sent for my wife, and we went to house- keeping in Pinetown. A man named New4 3 claimed the place I was working but I made him leave and we became mortal enemies, but nothing passed between us for some months. I could hear of his threatening to kill me. One Saturday evening I went up to Bivings grocery, and when Biving was shutting up, I was closing the shut- ters and heard New say stand aside. I looked round and saw him coming with his gun and cocked it but just then my father ran up and caught the gun and the crowd interfered. I then made at New. I had a rock in my pocket and I took it out and struck him a severe blow. We then parted but afterwards stripped off and took a fair fight and I whipped him. We were both arrested next morning but compromised and New paid all costs, and we made friends. I then went to work, and continued sober and civil for some months and made a good deal of money in the diggings but I then got too intimate with a free girl and took her to Warner Lyons gro- cery one night and there got into a difficulty with Betsy Wedding a girl Lyons was keeping. This made a feud between us, and I went back one night to get some liquor and they wouldnt let me in. I saw 12 | Edward I sham her on one side of the door with a double barreled gun and Lyons on the other and heard Lyons tell her not to be afraid but to shoot as he passes back up town. This enraged me and I went to Bill Williams and borrowed his rifle and watched for three hours by moonlight to shoot Lyons but couldnt get a chance. I then went to his door and told him I would see him in the morning. In the morn- ing, I took an axe helve and went up street to Lyons grocery and pushed off his hat and cussed him but he wouldnt fight and I left him. (No preacher could ever live or preach in Pinetown, one lived there once and they tore down his fences and run him off. There never was any school there.) I then went to work, kept sober and made some money and was peaceable for six months. While sitting in my house one Saturday evening I heard a noise up at the grocery and went up. I found two Smiths and a hired hand of mine named Hendricks4 4 quarreling. I started to take Hendricks off and Smith threw a rock at me. I returned another and hit on the burr of the ear and every body thought he was dead. I ran down home got my money and left but came back and found out about midnight that he had come to. A warrant was issued for me and I went off to DeKalb Co. I then concluded, I would slip back and get my wife but New my old enemy discovered me at my bro in laws and told it. While asleep that night, the house was surrounded by about 30 men and the bailiff one Slaughter took me prisoner. They took me that night to Hickstown. I tried to get an opportunity to escape but failed. Next morning, I told the guard I wished to step aside and I watched my opportunity and fled. T h e y fired three pistol shots at me without effect. I went to Marietta, took the cars and came to Ringgold and sent down for my wife. My mother had moved back to Chattanooga and we went over there.45 I gambled and drank very hard and spent all my gold. I there took up with one Ann Baldwin and finding out she had some money, I concluded I would get it. I won a little money rolling ten pins and sent my wife to her mothers, who was then living in Walker County Georgia. I went with this girl to walk one day and met a man who had been her old beau. He tried to take her away and I struck him with a rock and hurt him severely. Anne and I then went on to her fathers and as we came up he came Autobiography \ 11 to the door and cursed me for being with his gal and fired a horse pistol at me but missed. I then threw a rock at him but struck the door, then put at him with a knife but he shut the door on me. In a few days Anne and I ran off and went down to Pinetown—and from there to Atlanta Georgia. I had a quarrel with her in a few days, and with some money I got from her, I took the cars and went to [my] wife on Hiwassie Rail Road.46 I found her sick, but when she recovered we moved 5 miles above Chattanooga on the Nashville Rail Road 47 and went to work. I was civil and worked hard for about six months, until one day I met an old enemy named McAustin at a grocery and we had a fight. I was very drunk and he got my head between two bars of iron and would have killed me but I hollered and they took him off. I then borrowed Joe Dobbins rifle and watched on the RRoad for three or four days to shoot him. He found it out and one of his friends came to me and begged me off from it as McAustin had a wife and three children. I got into a fight with a Runnels about that time and hit him over the head with the rifle and hurt him very badly but did not kill him. About this time my wife had a child, which was born dead. She was an easy good tempered woman and never quarreled with me. I quit work on the Rail Road and went to gambling. I met a fellow named Jim Waters and he beat me and we then made a bargain to go halves in cards and in our fighting. So we followed up and down the Rail Road between the river and Chattanooga, playing cards with the hands or any one we met. I dressed well, had plenty of money, and supplied my wife with all necessaries; but took up with a woman named Beck Caldwell with whom I stayed more than my wife, but she never complained. I got into a fight one night about her with a fellow named Moore, he had a revolver and rock and I had a little pocket pistol. He hit me with a rock, and I snapped the pistol. We then fought on. I snapped the pistol three times on his side but it would not fire. I then took the muzzle in my hand and beat him severely. It was a desperate fight and we were both hurt. T h e Mar- shall while trying to arrest us had his arm broken by a rock from the crowd but the police finally took us. Moore was fined twenty dollars but I got off. 12 | Edward I sham Waters and I continued to play cards on the Rail Road and won a great deal of money. We once had a big game with a gambler named Smith and won $100 and came near getting into a big row. Waters and Smith played with a bowie knife beside them. I finally became tired of this and went down to Pinetown to see Jane Mob- ley but she had moved. I followed her to Campbell county and we agreed to run off; but she found out I had a wife and we parted. I came back to Chattanooga and Tate Miller a grocery keeper and Waters and I cheated a fellow named Napper out of $250 by pack- ing cards, and we fell out about dividing the money. Waters and I finally concluded to move to Arkansas. I bought a gun and went off without paying for it but the fellow pursued me and took it back. We then went on with our wives to Johnston County Arkansas.4 81 worked here splitting rails, hunting deer and bees and enjoyed my- self better than ever before in my life. I stayed there six months and got along very well. Waters had a set fight with a fellow named Steve Thompson the greatest bully in the county and I was his second. Waters whipped him and it created a feud between their friends. T h e Blacks were on Thompsons side and hated me very badly. I moved down on the river and followed the business of getting lightwood for the boats, so did the Blacks and it made us worse enemies. One day while sitting in my cabin Pete Daily and another fellow of Blacks crowd came by and my dog barked at them and Daily said he could whip the dog and me both and we had a fight. T h e other fellow hit me with a stick while we were fighting and my wife ran him off with the axe. I then went down to Jim Iverys and while there old Black and three others … U.S. Copyright Law (title 17 of U.S. code) governs the reproduction and redistribution of copyrighted material. Downloading this document for the purpose of redistribution is prohibited. A M E R I C A N N O T E S FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. E V C H A R L E S D I C K E N S . -o-S^Ol^-o- L E I P Z I G B E II N H. Ï A li C li N ITZ 1 V «. 1 8 4 2 . CHAPTER VII. P h i l a d e l p h i a , and its Solitary Prison. T H E journey f r o m N e w York to P h i l a d e l p h i a , i s m a d e by railroad, and two f e r r i e s ; and u s u a l l y o c c u p i e s b e t w e e n five and six h o u r s . It w a s a fine evening w h e n w e were p a s s e n g e r s i n the train: a n d , watching the bright s u n s e t from a little w i n d o w near the door b y which we s a t , m y attention w a s attracted to a r e m a r k - able appearance i s s u i n g f r o m the w i n d o w s of the g e n t l e m e n s car i m m e d i a t e l y in front of u s , w h i c h I s u p p o s e d for s o m e time w a s occasioned by a n u m b e r of i n d u s t r i o u s p e r s o n s i n s i d e , ripping o p e n f e a t h e r - b e d s , and giving the feathers to the w i n d . A t length i t occurred to m e that they were only s p i t t i n g , which w a s i n d e e d the c a s e ; though how any n u m b e r of p a s s e n g e r s which it w a s p o s - s i b l e for that car to c o n t a i n , c o u l d have m a i n t a i n e d s u c h a playful a n d i n c e s s a n t s h o w e r of expectoration, I a m still at a l o s s to u n d e r - s t a n d : notwithstanding the experience i n all salivatory p h e n o - m e n a which I afterwards acquired. I m a d e acquaintance, o n this j o u r n e y , with a m i l d and m o d e s t y o u n g q u a k e r , w h o o p e n e d the d i s c o u r s e by i n f o r m i n g m e , in a grave w h i s p e r , that h i s grandfather w a s the inventor of c o l d - drawn castor o i l . I m e n t i o n the circumstance h e r e , t h i n k i n g il p r o b a b l e that this is the first o c c a s i o n on which the valuable m e - dicine in q u e s t i o n w a s ever u s e d as a conversational aperient. W e reached the c i t y , late that night. L o o k i n g out of my c h a m b e r w i n d o w , b e f o r e going to b e d , I s a w , on the opposite side of the w a y , a h a n d s o m e b u i l d i n g of white m a r b l e , which had a m o u r n f u l g h o s t - l i k e a s p e c t , dreary to b e h o l d . I attributed t h i s to the s o m b r e influence of the night, and on rising i n the m o r n i n g looked out a g a i n , expecting to s e e its s t e p s and portico t h r o n g e d with g r o u p s of people p a s s i n g in and o u t . The d o o r w a s still tight s h u t , h o w e v e r ; the s a m e cold c h e e r l e s s air p r e v a i l e d ; and the b u i l d i n g l o o k e d a s if the marble statue of D o n G u z m a n c o u l d a l o n e have any b u s i n e s s to transact w i t h i n its 118 gloomy walls. I hastened to enquire its name and p u r p o s e , and then my surprise vanished. It was the Tomb of many f o r t u n e s ; the Great Catacomb of investment; the memorable United States B a n k . The stoppage of this b a n k , with all its ruinous c o n s e q u e n c e s , had cast f a s I was told on every side) a gloom on Philadelphia, under the depressing effect of which, it yet laboured. It certainly did seem rather dull and out of spirits. It is a handsome city, but distractinglv regular. After walking about it for an hour or t w o , I felt that I would have given the world for a crooked street. The collar of my coat appeared to stiffen, and the brim of my hat to expand, beneath its quakerly influence. My hair shrunk into a sleek short c r o p , my hands folded them - selves upon my breast of their own calm accord, and thoughts of taking lodgings in Mark Lane over against the Market P l a c e , and of making a large fortune by speculations in corn, came over me involuntarily. Philadelphia is most bountifully provided with lresh water, which is showered and jerked a b o u t , and turned o n , and poured •iff, everywhere. The W a t e r w o r k s , which are on a height near the city, are no l e s s ornamental than u s e f u l , being tastefully laid out as a public garden, and kept in the best and neatest order. The river i s dammed at this point, and forced by its own power into certain high tanks or reservoirs, whence the whole city, to the top stories of the h o u s e s , is supplied at a very trifling expense. There are various public institutions. Among them a most ex- cellent Hospital — a quaker establishment, but not sectarian in the great benefits it confers; a q u i e t , quaint old Library, named after Franklin; a handsome Exchange and Post Office; and so forth. In connexion with the quaker H o s p i t a l , there is a picture b y W e s t , which is exhibited for the benefit of the funds of the i n - stitution. The s u b j e c t , i s , our Saviour healing the s i c k , and it i s , perhaps, as favourable a specimen of the master as can be seen anywhere. Whether this be high or low p r a i s e , depends upon the readers taste. In the same r o o m , there i s a very characteristic and life-like portrait by Mr. S u l l y , a distinguished American artist. 119 My stay in Philadelphia was very short, but what I saw of its society, I greatly liked. Treating of its general characteristics, I should b e disposed to say that it is more provincial than Boston or New York, and that there i s , afloat in the fair city, an a s s u m p - tion of taste and criticism, savouring rather of those genteel dî < eussions unon the same t h e m e s , in connexion with Shakspeare and the Mulical G l a s s e s , of which we read in the Yicar of W a k e - iield. Near the city, i s a most splendid unfinished marble struc- ture for the Girard College, founded by a deceased gentleman of that name and of enormous wealth, w hich, if completed accord- ing to the original d e s i g n , will be perhaps the richest edifice of modern times. But the bequest is involved in legal disputes, and pending them the work has stopped; so that like many other great undertakings in A m e r i c a , even this is rather going to be done one of these days, than doing n o w . In the outskirts, stands a great prisou, called the Eastern Penitentiary: conducted on a plan peculiar to the state of P e n n - sylvania. The system h e r e , is rigid, strict, and hopeless solitary confinement. I believe it, in its effects, to be cruel and wrong. In its intention, I am well convinced that it is k i n d , humane, and meant for reformation; but I am persuaded that those who d e - vised this system of Prison Discipline, and those benevolent g e n - tlemen who carry it into execution, do not know what it is that they are doing. I believe that very few men are capable of estimating the i m m e n s e amount of torture and agony which this dreadful p u n i s h m e n t , prolonged for years, inflicts u p o n the sufferers; and in guessing at it m y s e l f , and in reasoning from what I have seen written upon their faces, and what to my certain knowledge they feel within, I am only the more convinced that there is a depth of terrible endurance in it which none but the sufferers themselves can fathom, and which no man has a right to inflict upon his fellow creature. I hold this slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the brain, to be immeasurably worse than any torture of the body: and because its ghastly signs and tokens are not so palpable to the eye and sense of touch as scars upon the flesh; because its wounds are not upon the surface, and it extorts few cries that h u - man ears can hear; therefore I the more denounce it, as a sccret 120 punishment which slumbering humanity is not roused up to stay. I hesitated o n c e , debating with m y s e l f , whether, if I had the power of saying Y e s or N o , I would allow it to be tried in certain c a s e s , where the terms of imprisonment were short; but n o w , I solemnly declare, that with no rewards or honours could I walk a happy man beneath the open sky by day or lie m e dowD u p o n my bed at night, with the consciousness that one human creature, for any length of t i m e , no matter what, lay suffering this unknown punishment in his silent c e l l , and I the c a u s e , or I consenting to it in the least degree. I was accompanied to this prison by two gentlemen officially connected with its management, and passed the day in going from cell to c e l l , and talking with the inmates. Every facility was a f - forded m e , that the utmost courtesy could suggest. Nothing was concealed or hidden from my v i e w , and every piece of information that I s o u g h t , was openly and frankly given. The perfect order of the building cannot be praised too highly, and of the excellent motives of all who are immediately concerned in the administration of the s y s t e m , there can be no kind of question. Between the body of the prison and the outer w a l l , there is a spacious garden. Entering i t , by a wicket in the massive gate, •we pursued the path before u s to its other termination, and passed into a large chamber, from which seven long passages radiate. On either side of each, is a l o n g , long row of low cell d o o r s , with a certain number over every one. A b o v e , a gallery of cells like those b e l o w , except that they have no narrow yard attached ( a s those in the ground tier h a v e ) , and are somewhat smaller. The p o s s e s s i o n of two of t h e s e , is supposed to compensate for the a b - sence of so much air and exercise as can be had in the dull strip at- tached to each of the others, in an hours time every day; and therefore every prisoner in this upper story has two c e l l s , adjoin- i n g and communicating w i t h , each other. Standing at the central p o i n t , and looking down these dreary p a s s a g e s , the dull repose and quiet that prevails, is awful. O c - casionally, there is a drowsy sound from some lone weavers s h u t t l e , or shoemakers l a s t , but it i s stifled by the thick walls and heavy d u n g e o n - d o o r , and only serves to make the general 118 120 stillness more profound. Over the head and face of every prisoner who comes into this melancholy h o u s e , a black hood is drawn; and in this dark shroud, an emblem of the curtain dropped b e - tween him and the living world, he is led to the cell from which he never again comes forth, until his whole term of imprisonment has expired. H e never hears of wife or children; home or friends; the life or death of any single creature. He sees the prison-officers, but with that exception he never looks upon a human countenance, or hears a human voice. H e i s a man buried alive; to be dug out iu the slow round of years; and in the mean time dead to every- thing but torturing anxieties and horrible despair. H i s n a m e , and crime, and term of suffering, are unknown, even to the officer who delivers him his daily food. There i s a number over his cell-door, and in a book of which the governor of the prison has one copy, and the moral instructor another: this i s the index to his history. Beyond these pages the prison has no re- cord of his existence: and though he live to be in the same cell ten weary years, he has no means of knowing, down to the very last h o u r , in what part of the building it is situated; what kind of men there are about h i m ; whether in the long winter nights there are living people n e a r , or he is in some lonely corner of the great jail, with walls, and p a s s a g e s , and iron doors between him and the nearest sharer in its solitary horrors. Every cell has doable doors: the outer one of sturdy oak, the, other of grated iron, wherein there is a trap through which his food i s handed. He has a Bible, and a slate and pencil, a n d , under certain restrictions, has sometimes other b o o k s , provided for the p u r p o s e , and pen and ink and paper. H i s razor, plate, and c a n , and basin, hang upon the wall, or shine upon the little shelf. Fresh water is laid on in every c e l l , and he can draw it at his pleasure. During the day, his b e d - s t e a d turns up against the w a l l , and leaves more space for him to work in. H i s l o o m , or b e n c h , or w h e e l , is there; and there he labours, sleeps and wakes, and counts the seasons as they change, and grows old. The first man I s a w , was seated at his l o o m , at work. H e had been there, six y e a r s , and was to remain, I think, three more. He had been convicted as a receiver of stolen g o o d s , but even after 118 122 this long imprisonment, denied his guilt, and said he had been hardly dealt by. It was his second offence. He stopped his work when we went i n , took off his spectacles, and answered freely to everything that was said to h i m , but always with a strange kind of pause first, and in a l o w , thoughtful voice. H e wore a paper hat of his own m a k i n g , and was pleased to have it noticed and commended. H e had very ingeniously manufactured a sort of Dutch clock from some disregarded odds and e n d s ; and his vinegar-bottle served for the pendulum. Seeing me interested in this contrivance, he looked up at it with a great deal of pride, and said that he had been thinking of improving i t , and that he hoped the hammer and a little piece of broken glass beside it w o u l d play music before long. He had extracted some colours from the yarn with which he worked, and painted a few poor figures on the wall. O n e , of a f e m a l e , over the door, he called T h e Lady of the Lake. H e smiled as I looked at these contrivances to wile away the t i m e : but when I looked from them to h i m , I saw that his lip trembled, and could have counted the beating of his heart. I forget how it came a b o u t , but some allusion was made to his having a wife. H e shook his head at the word, turned a s i d e , and covered his face with his hands. B u t you are resigned n o w ! said one of the gentlemen after a short p a u s e , during which he had resumed his former manner. H e answered with a sigh that seemed quite reckless in its h o p e l e s s - n e s s , Oh y e s , oh y e s ! I am resigned to it. And are a better m a n , you think? W e l l , I hope s o : I m sure I hope I may b e . A n d time goes pretty quickly? T i m e is very long, gentlemen, within these four w a l l s ! He gazed about him — Heaven only knows how wearily! — as he said these words; and in the act of doing s o , fell into a strange stare as if he had forgotten something. A moment afterwards he sighed heavily, put on his spectacles, and wcilt about his work again. In another cell, there was a German, sentenced to five years imprisonment for larceny, two of which had just expired. W i t h colours procured in the same manner, he had painted every inch of the walls and ceiling quite beautifully. H e had laid out the few feet of g r o u n d , b e h i n d , with exquisite n e a t n e s s , and had made a little bed in the centre, that looked by the bye like a grave. Thr taste and ingenuity he had displayed in everything were most extra- ordinary; and yet a more dejected, heart-broken, wretched creature, it would be difficult to imagine. I never saw such a picture of forlorn affliction and distress of mind. My heart bled for h i m ; and when the tears ran down his c h e e k s , and he took one of the visitors a s i d e , to a s k , with his trembling hands nervously clutching at his coat to detain h i m , whether there was no hope of his dismal sentence being c o m m u t e d , the spectacle was really too painful to witness. I never saw or heard of any kind of misery that impressed me more than the wretchedness of this man. In a third cell, was a tall strong b l a c k , a burglar, working at his proper trade of making screws and the like. H i s time was nearly out. H e was not only a very dexterous t h i e f , but was notorious for his boldness and hardihood, and for the number of his previous convictions. He entertained us w ith a long account of his achievements, which he narrated with such infinite relish, that he actually seemed to lick his lips as he told u s racy anecdote- of stolen plate, and of old ladies whom he had watched as they sai at windows in silver spectacles (he had plainly had an eye to theii metal even from the other side of the s t r e e t ) , and had afterwards robbed. This fellow, upon the slightest encouragement, would have mingled with his professional recollections the most detestable caut; but I am very much mistaken if he could have surpassed the unmitigated hypocrisy with which he declared that he blessed the day on which b e c a m e into that prison, and that he never would commit another robbery as long as he lived. There was one man who was a l l o w e d , as an i n d u l g e n c e , so keep rabbits. H i s room having rather a close smell in. c o n s e q u e n c e , they called to him at the door to come out into the p a s s a g e , H e complied of c o u r s e , and stood shading his haggard face in the. unwonted sunlight of the great w i n d o w , looking as wan and un- earthly as if he had been s u m m o n e d from the grave. He had a white rabbit in his breast; and when the little creature, getting down upon the ground, stole back into the c e l l , and h e , being d i s m i s s e d , crept timidly after i t , I t h o u g h t it would have been very 118 124 hard to say in what respect the man was the nobler animal of the two. There was an English thief, who had been there but a few days out of seven years: a v i l l a n o u s , low-browed, thin-lipped fellow, with a white face; who had as yet no relish for visitors, and who, but for the additional penalty, would have gladly stabbed me with his shoemakers knife. There was another German who had entered the jail but yesterday, and who started from his bed when we looked i n , and pleaded, in his broken English, very hard for work. There was a poet, who a f t e r doing two dayswork in every four-and-twentv hours, one for himself and one for the prison, wrote verses about ships (he was by trade,a mariner), and t h e maddening w i n e - c u p , and his friends at home. There were very many of them. Some reddened at the sight of visitors, and some turned very pale. Some two or three had prisoner nurses with t h e m , for they were very sick; and one, a fat old negro whose k g had been taken off within the jail, had for his attendant a classical scholar and an accomplished surgeon, himself a prisoner likewise. Sitting upon the stairs, engaged in some slight work, was a pretty coloured boy. I s there no refuge for young criminals in Phila- delphia, then? said I. Y e s , but only for white children. Noble aristocracy in crime! There was a sailor who had been there upwards of eleven years, and who in a few months time would be free. Eleven years of solitary confinement! I am very glad to hear your time is nearly out. What does he say? Nothing. Why does he stare at his h a n d s , and pick the ilesh upon his lingers, and raise his eyes for an instant, every now and then, to those bare walls which have seen his head turn grey? It is a way he has sometimes. Does he never look men in the face, and does he always pluck at those hands of his, as though he were bent on parting skin and bone? It is his humour: nothing more. It is his humour too, to say that he does not look forward to going out; that he is not glad the time is drawing near; that he did look forward to it once, but that was very long ago ; that he has lost all care for everything. It is his humour to be a helpless, crushed. and broken man. A n d , Heaven be his witness that he has his humour thoroughly gratified! There were three young women in adjoining cells, all convicted at the same time of a conspiracy to rob their prosecutor. In the silence and solitude of their lives, they had grown to be quite beautiful. Their looks were very sad, and might have moved the sternest visitor to tears, but not to that kind of sorrow which the contemplation of the m e n , awakens. One was a young girl; not twenty, as I recollect; whose snow-white room was hung with the work of some former prisoner, and upon whose downcast face the sun in all its splendour shone down through the high chink iu the wall, where one narrow strip of bright blue sky was visible. She was very penitent and quiet; had come to be resigned, she said (and I believe her); and had a mind at peace. I n a word, you are happy here? said one of my companions. She struggled — she did struggle very hard — to answer, Y e s : but raising her e y e s , and meeting that glimpse of freedom over-head, she burst into tears, and said, She tried to be; she uttered no complaint; but it was natural that she should sometimes long to go out of that one cell: she could not help that, she sobbed, poor thing! I went from cell to cell that day; and every face I s a w , or word I heard, or incident I noted, is present to my mind in all its pain- fulness. But let me pass them b y , for o n e , more pleasant, glance of a prison on the same plan which I afterwards saw at Pittsburgh. When I had gone over that, in the same manner, I asked the governor if he had any person in his charge who was shortly going out. He had o n e , he s a i d , whose time was up next day; but he had only been a prisoner two years. Two years! I looked back through two years in my own life — out of j a i l , prosperous, happy, surrounded by b l e s s i n g s , c o m - forts, and good fortune —• and thought how wide a gap it was, and how long those two years passed in solitary captivity would have been. I have the face of this m a n , who was going to be re- leased next day, before me now. It is almost more memorable in its happiness than the other faces in their misery. How easy and how natural it was for him to say that the system was a good 118 126 o n e ; and that the time went p r e t t y quick — c o n s i d e r i n g ; and that when a man once felt h e had offended the l a w , and must s a t i s f y i t , h e g o t a l o n g , s o m e h o w : a n d s o f o r t h ! W h a t did he call you back to say to y o u , in that strange flutter? I asked of my conductor, when he had locked the door and joined m e in the passage. O h ! That he was afraid the soles of h i s boots were not fit for w a l k i n g , as they were a good deal worn when he came i n ; a n d that h e would thank m e very much to have them m e n d e d , ready. Those boots had been taken off his f e e t , and put away with the rest of his c l o t h e s , two years b e f o r e ! I took that opportunity of inquiring how they conducted t h e m - selves immediately before going out; adding that I presumed they trembled very m u c h . W e l l , i t s not so m u c h a t r e m b l i n g , w a s the answer — t h o u g h they do quiver — as a complete derangement of the nervous s y s t e m . They cant sign their names to the b o o k ; s o m e - t i m e s cant even hold the p e n ; look about em without appearing to know w h y , or where they are; and sometimes get up and s i t d o w n again, twenty t i m e s in a minute. This i s when they re in the office, where they are taken with the hood o n , as they were brought in. W h e n they get outside the gate, they s t o p , and look first one way and then the other: not knowing which to take. Sometimes they stagger as if they were drunk, and sometimes are forced to lean against the f e n c e , they re so b a d : — but they clear off in course of time. A s I walked among these solitary c e l l s , and looked at the faces of the men within t h e m , I tried to picture to myself the thoughts and feelings natural to their condition. I imagined the hood j u s t taken o f f , and the scene of tfceir captivity disclosed to them in all i t s dismal monotony. A t first, the man i s stunned. H i s confinement i s a h i d e o u s v i s i o n ; and his old life a reality. H e throws himself upon his bed, and lies there abandoned to despair. By degrees the insupportable solitude and barrenness of the place rouses him from this stupor, a n d when the trap in his grated door i s o p e n e d , he humbly b e g s and prays for work. ! t Give me some work to d o , or I shall go raving m a d ! H e has i t ; and by fits and starts applies himself to labour; but every now and then there comes upon him a burning sense of the years that m u s t be wasted in that stone coffin, and an agony s o piercing in the recollection of those who are hidden from his view and knowledge, that he starts from his s e a t , and striding u p and down the narrow room with both hands clasped on his uplifted h e a d , hears spirits tempting him to beat his brains out on the wall. Again he falls upon his b e d , and lies there, moaning. S u d - denly he starts u p , wondering whether any other man i s near; whether there is another cell like that on either s i d e of h i m : and listens keenly. There i s no s o u n d , but other prisoners may b e near for alt that. H e remembers to have heard o n c e , when he little thought of coming here h i m s e l f , that the cells were so constructed that the prisoners could not hear each other, though the offi- cers coulJ hear them. Where is the nearest m a n — u p o u the r i g h t , or on the l e f t ? or i s there one in both directions? W h e r e i s he sitting now — with his face to the light? or i s h e walking to and fro? H o w i s he dressed? Has he been here l o n g ? Is he much worn away? Is he very white and s p e c t r e - l i k e ? D o e s he think of his neighbour t o o ? Scarcely venturing to breathe, and listening while h e thinks, h e conjures up a figure with its back towards h i m , and imagines it moving about in this next celL H e has no idea of the f a c e , b u t be is certain of the dark form of a stooping m a n . In the cell upon the other s i d e , he puts another figure, whose face i s hidden from h i m also. Day after d a y , and often when h e wakes up i n the middle of the night, be thinks of these two m e n , until he i s almost distracted. H e never changes them. There they are always as he first imagined them — an old man on the right; a younger man upon the left — whose hidden features torture h i m to death, and have a mystery that makes him tremble. The weary days pass op with solemn p a c e , like mourners at a funeral; and slowly he begins .to feel that the white walls of the cell 118 have something dreadful in t h e m : that their colour i s horrible: that their smooth surface chills his b l o o d : that there i s one hateful corner which torments h i m . Every morning when be w a k e s , he hides his head beneath the coverlet, and shudders to see the ghastly ceiling looking dowu upon him. The b l e s s e d light of day itself peeps i n , an ugly phantom f a c e , through the unchangeable crevice which is his prison window. By slow but sure degrees, the terrors of that hateful corner swell until they b e s e t him at all t i m e s ; invade his rest, make h i s dreams h i d e o u s , and his nights dreadful. A t first, h e took a strange dislike to i t : feeling as though it gave birth in his brain to something of corresponding s h a p e , which ought not to b e there, a n d racked his head with p a i n s . T h e n he began to fear i t , then to dream of i t , and of men whispering its name and pointing to i t . T h e n he could not bear to look at i t , nor yet to turn his back upon it. N o w , it is every night the lurking-place of a g h o s t : a s h a d o w : — a silent s o m e t h i n g , horrible to s e e , b u t whether b i r d , or b e a s t , or muffled h u m a n s h a p e , h e cannot tell. W h e n he is in his cell by d a y , h e fears the little yard, without. W h e n h e i s in the y a r d , he dreads to re-enter the cell. W h e n night c o m e s , there stands the phantom in the corner. If he have the courage to stand in its p l a c e , and drive it out ( h e had o n c e : being d e s p e r a t e ) , it broods upon his b e d . In the twilight, and always at the s a m e hour, a voice calls to him by n a m e ; as the darkness thickens, h i s L o o m begins to l i r e ; and even that, his comfort, i s a hideous figure, watching h i m till daybreak. A g a i n , b y slow degrees, these horrible fancies depart from him one by o n e : returning s o m e t i m e s , unexpectedly, b u t at longer intervals, and in l e s s alarming sh a p es. H e has talked upon r e - l i g i o u s matters with the gentleman who visits h i m , and h a s read h i s B i b l e , and h a s written a prayer u p o n h i s s l a t e , and hung it u p , as a kind of protection, and an assurance of Heavenly c o m - panionship. H e dreams n o w , s o m e t i m e s , of his children or h i s w i f e , but is … U.S. Copyright Law (title 17 of U.S. code) governs the reproduction and redistribution of copyrighted material. Downloading this document for the purpose of redistribution is prohibited. Punishment, Prisons, and Patriarchy Liberty and Power in the Early American Republic Mark E. Kann n N E W Y O R K U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S New York and London N E W Y O R K U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S N e w York and London www.nyupress.org © 2 0 0 5 by N e w York University All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kann, M a r k E. Punishment, prisons, and patriarchy : liberty and power in the early American republic / M a r k E. Kann, p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-10: 0 - 8 1 4 7 ^ 7 8 3 - 3 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-13: 9 7 8 - 0 - 8 1 4 7 - 4 7 8 3 ^ (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Punishment—United States—History. 2. Prisons—United States—History. I. Title. H V 9 4 6 6 . K 3 6 2 0 0 5 3 6 4 . 6 0 9 7 3 0 9 0 3 3 — d c 2 2 2 0 0 5 0 0 7 2 7 8 N e w York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper, and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability. M a n u f a c t u r e d in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 http://www.nyupress.org 6 Penitentiary Punishment Reformers proposed replacing traditional punishments with incarceration in penitentiaries. They contended that substantial inmate time in controlled penal environments could be used to calm excessive passions, neutralize malignant influences, break bad habits and reinforce good ones, instill positive values, and teach skills that would be crucial once convicts were set free. They wanted the brutality associated with tra- ditional jails to be eliminated in favor of humanitarian, therapeutic reha- bilitation regimens that would be more moderate than traditional pun- ishments but also more invasive. Ideally, solitary confinement and hard labor along with moral and religious instruction would encumber con- victs inner selves and outward conduct so that they could be trusted to resume their place in free society. Penitentiary punishment involved the application of patriarchal political power to strip men of their liberty and then to punish, discipline, rehabilitate, and restore them to free society and citizenship. Rehabilitation Penal reformers portrayed incarceration as an effort to defend and extend liberty. New Yorks Society for the Prevention of Pauperism declared that the safety of life and property, the enjoyment of personal liberty, the blessing of social intercourse, and the strength and stability of govern- ments themselves could be secured solely by regulations which coerce the refractory and operate as dissuasives from the indulgence of passions hostile to the general good. Specifically, citizen liberty was safeguarded when convicts were stripped of liberty and imprisoned. Reformers did not dwell on convicts loss of liberty. On the one hand, liberty denied was re- pulsive to the mind, which made it an effective deterrent, especially for 130 Penitentiary Punishment I 131 the idle, the needy, and the profligate who might commit crimes to gain access to prison shelter and food. On the other hand, convicts were to be denied liberty today so that they could be rehabilitated and restored to liberty tomorrow. New Hampshire and Illinois laws explicitly affirmed that convict rehabilitation and restoration to liberty was a governmental obligation and goal.1 Penal activists emphasized that rehabilitation and deterrence legit- imized convict incarceration in penitentiaries. Livingston put it this way: Reformation of the criminal may reasonably be expected. He is effectu- ally restrained f r o m a repetition of his crime. A permanent and striking example is constantly operating to deter others. The punishment being mild, public feeling will never enlist the passions of the people in opposi- tion to the law. The same cause will ensure a rigid performance of their duty by public officers. Jurors, f r o m a false compassion, will seldom ac- quit the guilty; and if by chance or prejudice they should convict the in- nocent, their error or fault is not as in the cases of infliction of stripes— permanent stigmas or death—without the reach of redress. These are ad- vantages which render the penitentiary system decidedly superior to any other. 2 Penitentiary punishment promised the protection of citizen liberty, restoration of rehabilitated convicts to liberty, and deterrence of future crimes. In the 1780s, Pennsylvania reformers persuaded state legislators to re- duce the number of capital crimes, eliminate most corporal punishments, and make imprisonment at hard labor the predominant punishment for serious crimes. Officials converted Philadelphias city jail into the nations first penitentiary, the Walnut Street Prison. According to William Brad- ford, its main goal was prevention of crimes. Prevention meant keep- ing convicts from committing more crimes by incarcerating them; ending their criminality by rehabilitating and restoring them to liberty; and de- terring people from breaking laws by publicizing examples of remorseful felons. With penitentiary punishment focused on prevention, reformers felt, crime rates would fall significantly. One reformer reported that Wal- nut Street Prison discipline did indeed result in a rapid and before un- heard of decrease in crime.3 After visiting the Walnut Street facility in the 1790s, the Due de la Rochefoucauld-Liancourt noted that amendment, or correction of 132 I Penitentiary Punishment the guilty, was the penitentiarys main goal. Charles Bulfinch, an archi- tect who studied prison reform and designed penitentiaries, was con- vinced by the Walnut Street Prison experience that convicts were likely to consent to the punishment which the law may direct when they were assured that the punishment was inflicted on them with the hope of ef- fecting their reformation. Consent was important. It helped to legitimize the convicts loss of liberty as well as ensure the convicts cooperation in the rehabilitation process.4 Religious commentators believed that divine justice authorized peni- tentiary punishment. John Reynolds saw sinfulness and depravity of man as the source of crime and penitentiaries that adopted a mild and salutary process to reform the sons of guilt and crime as a solution. Bishop William White promoted penitentiaries as products of the benign and salutary influences of Christianity. Quaker Thomas Eddy claimed that Christianity taught men to love your enemies as well as to help convicts seek penitence and find grace. Penitentiaries were houses of pen- itence that prepared men to receive Gods grace. Many reformers believed in mens inner goodness. Robert Turnbull wrote, for example, We know that there are in every man, even the most hardened offenders, some few sparks of honor, a certain consciousness of the intrinsic beauty of moral goodness, which though they may be latent and apparently extinguished, yet may at any time be kindled and roused into action by the application of a proper stimulus. Reynolds agreed that fallen as a brother may be from the moralities which at one time adorned him, the manifested good- will of his fellow man still carries a charm and an influence along with it. 5 For religious reformers, penitentiaries aimed at the actual saving of the criminals soul by religious and spiritual conversion.6 Other reformers claimed that penitentiary punishment was legitimate because it enabled officials to proportion punishments to crimes. New Hampshires constitution stated, All penalties ought to be proportioned to the nature of the offense. Lesser crimes would draw short sentences; heinous crimes called for long-term incarceration. Bradford added that harshness of prison conditions should be adjusted to the gravity of par- ticular misdeeds. The more atrocious offenders might be required to live in narrow cells, subsist on coarse fare, languish in solitude, and suffer tedious days and long nights in feverish anxiety. Penitentiary punishments were to be severe for the very worst convicts. However, when severity approached cruelty, officials needed to remember that the goal was reforming the criminal, not avenging the crime.7 Penitentiary Punishment I 133 Part of the reformer case for penitentiary punishment was that it could help to indemnify victims and taxpayers. Prisoners were to engage in hard labor, which provided them the wherewithal to pay reparation to party injured and to reimburse the public for the expense incurred by their apprehension, trial, and confinement. All reformers wanted peniten- tiaries to be economically self-sufficient, if not profitable. However, they tended to be more comfortable using the language of rehabilitation than the idiom of the marketplace, and they usually emphasized what they saw as a close connection between hard labor and rehabilitation.8 Englishman William Roscoe explored another advantage of peniten- tiaries. Like Bentham, he argued that punishment added pain to the world; this pain could be justified only if a beneficial alteration was ef- fected; and the desired beneficial alteration was rehabilitation. He con- cluded, Punishment, strictly speaking, is therefore only allowable as a medium of reformation, to reclaim the offender and secure society from further injury. American reformers agreed that incarceration should be tied to rehabilitation, which contributed to the public good. Pennsylva- nias 1786 penal law was premised on the idea that every good govern- ment wishes to reclaim rather than to destroy offenders. Rehabilitated criminals became serviceable members of the community. Peniten- tiaries produced rehabilitated souls, each one becoming an improved and useful individual and a renovated man, if not a model citizen.9 Some reformers coupled rehabilitation to images of suffering. Mild treatment of prisoners inflicted no evil greater than was required but had little deterrent value. However, penitentiaries could appear to be sites of terror if officials dramatized the suffering entailed by imprisonment, prolonged solitude, and hard labor. Livingston wanted to wrap peniten- tiaries in a mantle of mystery. They were to be closed to visitors. Public ignorance would invite people to imagine all those horrors by which mystery always aggravates apprehended evils. Other reformers worried that word of mild treatment would leak out and spoil the mystery. To make the strongest impression upon the public mind, Samuel Hopkins told the New York State Senate, prison inmates had to suffer sufficiently to excite feelings of terror among the public. Hopefully, inmate suffer- ing would inspire a salutary horror of the consequences of criminality. Vermont lawyer Daniel Chapman wanted penitentiary punishment to be felt and seen as equivalent to an ignominious death upon the scaffold.10 Early penal reformers were remarkably optimistic. They were con- vinced that most convicts could be reclaimed by letting the moral sense 132 I Penitentiary Punishment be awakened and a moral influence be established in the minds of the im- provident, the unfortunate, and the depraved. After all, The pulse of spiritual or moral health is still beating in all those guilty souls and proper attention would soon restore them to its blissful enjoyment. With soul searching, religious conversions, and secular breakthroughs, a great ma- jority could be redeemed from guilt and restored to society. A 1798 let- t e r t o Philadelphia Monthly Magazine a m p l i f i e d o p t i m i s m w i t h t h e c l a i m that, under proper penal conditions, the most hardened convict will nat- urally admit contrition and embrace reformation. Optimism was espe- cially strong among those reformers seeking to tame young mens wild impulses and passions and prevent crimes arising from a frenzy of de- sire. Young males committed most crimes of passion. By imprisoning them for a few years, they could be controlled until their hot passions cooled. Penitentiary time was male maturation time.11 What counted as rehabilitation was disputed. Some reformers equated it with a change of heart and soul as well as behavior. Advocates of the Pennsylvania system argued that penitentiaries should remedy all the neglects of early education; correct idle and depraved habits contracted in after life; give to hard labor the solace and support of a firm conviction of its reasonableness and a just appreciation of the benefits accompany- ing its steady pursuit; and to religion its character of genial heat and light, designed . . . to illuminate, to warm and to cheer us through life, and to light us up a path to heaven.12 The goal was what Foucault calls spiri- tual conversion. Most reformers favored the Auburn system, which focused on disciplining outward behavior. Warden Elam Lynds drew on his military background to equate rehabilitation with regimentation and discipline. Mark Colvin claims the Auburn system aimed to break the spirit of the prisoner. Foucault argues that it sought to produce the obe- dient subject.13 Either way, reformers expected the rehabilitated convict to be restored to a disciplined liberty. Controlled Penal Environments Reformers did not want to make convicts worse by forcing them to spend years in filthy, brutal, traditional jails. In the late 1780s and 1790s, the Philadelphia Society to Alleviate the Miseries of Public Prisons pioneered the clean up campaign. In its first Memorial to the state legislature, the society recommended ending public labor and substituting more private Penitentiary Punishment I 134 or even solitary labor, a separation of the sexes within prison, and the prohibition of spirituous liquor amongst the criminals.14 These were first steps toward developing a penal system that placed convicts for prolonged periods in controlled penal environments. Reformers agreed that prisoner rehabilitation took time. Roscoe felt that reasonable and sufficient time was needed for the inculcation of better principles and habits, and the effectual reformation of the of- fender. A Massachusetts commission claimed that sentences of less than three years cannot give hope of reformation. Thomas Eddy proposed a minimum of four or five years. Many reformers wanted to lengthen sentences to be able to distinguish real rehabilitation from pretense. Brad- ford explained, Much time must be allowed [because] it is easy to coun- terfeit contrition. A sudden conversion was suspect. Eddy agreed, Sufficient time should be allowed to discover [the convicts] real dispo- sition, which, on some occasion, at an unguarded moment, will show it- self. Reformers had other reasons for lengthy sentences. Bradford felt that robbers and burglars were the most incorrigible criminals. For them, Reformation, though not impossible, must be the work of much time. Livingston suggested that criminals suffering habitual depravity needed long discipline to amend. Indeed, long prison terms were a sign of progress. The very worst felons were those who escaped the scaffold to receive long sentences. They needed to endure a very long and uninter- rupted curative process and then provide unequivocal evidence of re- formation after a very long probationary period without relapse to be set free. Their long sentences demonstrated that there was still hope for the most hopeless wrongdoers.15 Rehabilitation required more than time; it also demanded institutional control of all aspects of inmates lives and environments. Institutional control enabled prison officials to block bad influences and introduce positive ones. Penitentiaries isolated convicts from taverns, theaters, whorehouses, gambling halls, and other sources of corruption. They cut off communication between inmates and abusive, neglectful families. Warden Gershom Powers felt that sequestering inmates from all outsiders forced convicts to reflection and communion with their own hearts at their meals, in their shops, their solitary cells, and through all the un- varying routine of their labor and rest. Enforced silence also fostered re- habilitation. Criminals who were free from the sound of a human voice were free from crude language that inflamed passions and free to feel the agony and remorse necessary for penitence. Powers wanted his Auburn 132 I Penitentiary Punishment penitentiary to feel like the stillness of the tomb. Reformers designed penitentiaries to be desexualized institutions that eliminated everything calculated to inflame the passions and sharpen the evil propensities of men.16 Males and females were separated; masturbation and sodomy were prohibited; alcohol, tobacco, and other stimulants were banned. Penitentiary personnel were to promote prisoner self-discipline, virtue, and obedience in the service of economic productivity and good citizen- ship. Sean McConville writes, Prisoners were to become better by being subject to controls on every aspect of daily life: sleeping, eating, working, associating with others, reading—and in religion, dress, and exercise.17 Penitentiary officials were to have sufficient authority to do whatever was necessary to neutralize causes of crime and rehabilitate criminals. Officials could even control inmates gender identity. Traditional pun- ishments obliterated masculinity. A New Jersey senator stated, Degrade a man by an infamous punishment which destroys his personal honor and self-respect and you do all human ingenuity can to make him cowardly. Flogging was an unmanly punishment that stripped men of their dig- nity. Myra Glenn notes, Publicly stripping, spread eagling, and whip- ping a man dramatized his complete and humiliating subservience to an- other individual in much the same way that slaves or domesticated ani- mals were subservient to their respective masters. Flogging whipped the manhood out of men. It degraded and debased them. It was a rash and cruel punishment that destroyed the spark of manhood. Reformers knew that male criminals were easily typecast as effeminate. They were slaves to untamed desires and faulty reason. They were as passionate and irrational, ill-informed and ill-educated, easily duped, confined by their parochial knowledge and interests, as the wife was con- fined to the home. The penitentiarys controlled environment afforded officials an opportunity to rebuild inmates sense of masculinity by restor- ing the reason, independence, bravery, moderation, productivity, and fiscal responsibility valued in mature men and good citizens.18 Following John Howard, American reformers advocated respecting convicts manhood as a basis for their rehabilitation. Rather than expose inmates to public humiliation, Pennsylvania officials shielded them from the public gaze of visitors and prevented them from being objects of cu- riosity, not unlike animals in a menagerie. A reform-minded Georgia su- perintendent refused to usher convicts to degradation by undue sever- ity; he tried instead to nurture that self-respect which is all-important to moral reformation. Manly self-respect was important, Turnbull ex- Penitentiary Punishment I 137 plained, because it enabled prison officials to teach inmates their relative duties considered as men, moralists, and members of society. Hopefully, prison officials exhibited a paternal calmness and warmth that deterred prisoners from contracting habits of effeminacy. Officials might en- courage prisoners to engage in paid labor and thereby develop a modicum of independence that would enhance both their manly dignity and their prospects for supporting their families.19 If penitentiary officials failed to promote hegemonic masculinity among inmates, reformers feared, convicts would develop counterhege- monic prison subcultures in which breaking rules, resisting punishment, and defying authority would become markers of manhood. Nevertheless, reformers were not consistent about creating environments that pro- moted republican manhood. When evaluating punishments for disobedi- ent prisoners, they often proposed the emasculation of unruly inmates by way of solitary confinement and whippings—much as if they were ani- mals in a zoo. Even then, reformers imagined that this emasculation was a prelude to penitence and revived manhood.20 Orientation, Classification, and Individuation New prisoner orientation was an opportunity for penitentiary officials to give the convict a new identity. The Maryland State Prison required a new prisoner to bathe, don prison clothing, and be shaved on one side of his head, an operation . . . being partly intended as a punishment but chiefly as a mark by which he may be detected in case of escape. Livingston sug- gested that immediate solitary confinement for two days would put a new inmate on the road to redemption. On the third day, he wrote, the chaplain shall visit him in his cell and shall endeavor to impress on his mind as well the wickedness as the danger of vicious and unlawful pur- suits, and he shall exhort him to obedience and industry during the term of his service and urge the utility of acquiring the means of an honest sup- port by labor on his discharge.21 With a clean body, a distinctive ap- pearance, some soul searching, and sound advice, inmates physical and psychological separation from free society was complete. They were ready for prison discipline. Pennsylvania reformers supported long-term solitary confinement. They wanted to introduce new inmates to it and motivate them to ask for a Bible and work. Inspectors explained in an 1831 report, When a con- 132 I Penitentiary Punishment vict first arrives, he is placed in a cell and left alone without work and without any book. His mind can only operate on itself; generally but a few hours elapse before he petitions for something to do and for a Bible. . . . If the prisoner has a trade that can be pursued in his cell, he is put to work as a favor; as a reward for good behavior and as a favor, a Bible is allowed him. If he has no trade or one that cannot be pursued in his cell, he is allowed to choose one that c a n . . . . Work and moral and re- ligious books are regarded and received as favors and are withheld as punishment.22 A major advantage of solitude was that men would seek any distraction to escape ennui. Officials were to provide distractions that contributed to rehabilitation. New York Warden Gershom Powers spelled out basic reformer themes in his orientation speech to new convicts: From bad example, idleness, or the indulgence of evil passions, you have been led to the commission of crime, by which you have violated the laws of your country, forfeited your liberty, and offended your God. The consequence is that instead of n o w enjoying the inestimable privileges of a free American citizen . . . you appear in culprit robes, doomed to the gloomy solitude of a prison. . . . Weep not for yourself only but remem- ber the sighs of a father, the tears of a mother, the anguish of a wife and children, suffering and disgraced by your crimes. Cherish n o malevolent feelings against society or the government for arresting you in your ca- reer of criminality but rather be t h a n k f u l for the mildness of our laws; that instead of forfeiting your life on an ignominious gallows as would have been the case under most other governments, you are only re- strained for a time, for the safety of society, and your o w n good; that the most favorable means are afforded for repentance and reformation by forming regular, temperate a n d industrious habits, learning a useful trade, yielding obedience t o laws, subduing evil passions, and by receiv- ing moral and religious instruction. If you will but faithfully improve the opportunities with which you will be thus favored, your case is far f r o m being hopeless; your sufferings during confinement will be greatly miti- gated; you will return to your friends and to society with correct views and good resolutions, and then friends and society will receive you again with open arms and, like the compassionate father to his prodigal son, will say of you, he was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is f o u n d . 2 3 Penitentiary Punishment I 138 Powers promoted three reformer themes. First, the criminal was not in- herently evil; he was moved to crime by untamed passions and external influences. The result was a painful loss of liberty, family, and society. Sec- ond, the criminal was fortunate that he was entering an American peni- tentiary. Rather than face the gallows, he had an opportunity to rehabil- itate himself. Third, the road to rehabilitation was clear, the chances for it were promising, and the rewards were great. It was now the convicts responsibility to put away the past to secure the blessings of future lib- erty. Most reformers opposed total solitary confinement and nearly all pen- itentiaries required inmates to eat and work together. They devised ways to minimize any mutual contamination that might occur when prisoners congregated. Boston reformers claimed, It would be better if prisons were so constructed that there could be a perfect separation, at least by night; but till they are so constructed, it is necessary that there should be classification. Preferred principles of classification required the separa- tion of males and females, old and young, condemned and uncon- demned, blacks and whites, debtors and criminals. Men and women had to be separated to calm the passions that fostered crime. Young offenders were to be insulated from seasoned criminals. Pennsylvanias 1786 penal law directed that the old and hardened offenders be prevented from mixing with and thereby contaminating and eradicating the remaining seeds of virtue and goodness in the young and unwary. Most reformers urged racial separation too. Boston activists asserted that propriety de- manded the separation of white and black prisoners. A Virginia report observed that white inmates came from the lowest part of society but free Negroes and mulattos are a grade or so below them and should not be associated with them. For a few years, Virginia experimented with selling black felons into slavery rather than housing them with white in- mates.24 Once new prisoners were oriented, classified, and separated, reformers recommended that officials develop an individualized treatment program for each inmate. Roscoe wrote that measures must be adopted as are suitable to the peculiar situation, disposition, and feelings of each pris- oner, with variations of lenity and severity as . . . suit the circumstances of the case. Officials were to inquire into the character, temper, and moral constitution of the individual . . . to adopt such measures for his improvement as may be best adapted to the case. If he be ignorant, we 132 I Penitentiary Punishment must instruct him; if he be obstinate and arrogant, we must humiliate him; if he be indolent, we must rouse him; if he be desponding, we must encourage him. Turnbull wanted prison officials to consider an individ- uals conduct prior to sentencing, the nature and circumstances of his crime, and his behavior in court to determine his character and disposi- tion and the degree of care which may be requisite for the annihilation of his former bad habits. Inmates were to be rehabilitated one criminal at a time.25 Calls for individuation were partly based on recognition that discipline affected each prisoner differently. Bostons Prison Discipline Society sug- gested that fifteen days of solitary confinement was as painful to a con- vict habituated to comfort as six months solitary confinement was to a soldier inured to hardship. A sociable man would find solitary confine- ment to be a terrible punishment but a stupid, ignorant, and carnal man would not mind it. Reformers also sought individuation in granting pardons. Eddy called on officials to assess each convicts degree of de- pravity, suffering, and decency as well as his record of industry, sobriety, and … Oxford University Press and American Historical Association are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The American Historical Review. http://www.jstor.org Gouge and Bite, Pull Hair and Scratch: The Social Significance of Fighting in the Southern Backcountry. Author(s): Elliott J. Gorn Source: The American Historical Review, Vol. 90, No. 1 (Feb., 1985), pp. 18-43 Published by: on behalf of the Oxford University Press American Historical Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1860747 Accessed: 17-08-2015 04:12 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected] This content downloaded from 150.135.135.70 on Mon, 17 Aug 2015 04:12:29 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions http://www.jstor.org http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=oup http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=aha http://www.jstor.org/stable/1860747 http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp Gouge and Bite, Pull Hair and Scratch: The Social Significance of Fighting in the Southern Backcountry ELLIOTTJ. GORN I WOULD ADVISE YOU when You do fight Not to act like Tygers and Bears as these Virginians do-Biting one anothers Lips and Noses off, and gowging one another- that is, thrusting out one anothers Eyes, and kicking one another on the Cods, to the Great damage of many a Poor Woman. Thus, Charles Woodmason, an itinerant Anglican minister born of English gentry stock, described the brutal form of combat he found in the Virginia backcountry shortly before the American Revolution. Although historians are more likely to study people thinking, govern- ing, worshiping, or working, how men fight-who participates, who observes, which rules are followed, what is at stake, what tactics are allowed-reveals much about past cultures and societies. The evolution of southern backwoods brawling from the late eighteenth century through the antebellum era can be reconstructed from oral traditions and travelers accounts. As in most cultural history, broad patterns and uneven trends rather than specific dates mark the way. The sources are often problematic and must be used with care; some speculation is required. But the lives of common people cannot be ignored merely because they leave few records. To feel for a fellers eyestrings and make him tell the news was not just mayhem but an act freighted with significance for both social and cultural history.2 The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation provided generous support for my research on violence. Many people read and commented on the manuscript, among them David Brion Davis, Jean Agnew, Kai Erikson, Fred Hobson, Gerald Burns, John Endean, and Allen Tullos. I thank them all for their aid. I also wish to thank the anonymous readers and the editors of the American Historical Review whose comments proved invaluable. My wife, Anna, critiqued and edited the text, while our baby, Jade, gouged and chewed the pages-and those were the least of their contributions. l Woodmason, Burlesque Sermon, in Richard J. Hooker, ed., The Carolia Backcountry on the Eve of the Revolution (Chapel Hill, 1953), xi-xxxvi, 158. The Burlesque Sermon was written in the late 1760s or early 1770s. For the quotation that appears in the title of the essay, see A Kentucky Fight, New York Spirit of the Times, December 12, 1835, p. 2. 2 Harden E. Taliaferro, Fishers River Scenes and Characters (New York, 1839), 198. Let me state explicitly that this is a study in male culture, but it is informed by central insights of recent womens history-that gender definitions are malleable, that they have a formative impact on the past, and that to ignore them is to misrepresent social and cultural development. 18 This content downloaded from 150.135.135.70 on Mon, 17 Aug 2015 04:12:29 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp Gouge and Bite, Pull Hair alnd Scratch 19 As EARLY AS 1735, BOXING was much in f;ashion in parts of Chesapeake Bay, and forty years later a visitor from the North declared that, along with dancing, fiddling, small swords, and card playing, it was an essential skill for all young Virginia gentlemen.3 TIhe term boxing, however, did not necessarily refer to the comparatively tame style of bare-knuckle fighting familiar to eighteenth-century Englishmen. In 1746, four deaths pr-ompted the governor of North Carolina to ask for legislation against the barbarous and inhuman manner of boxing which so much prevails among the lower sort of people. The colonial assemnbly responded by making it a felony to cut out the Tongue or pull out the eyes of the Kings Liege People. Five years later the assembly added slitting, biting, and cutting ofi noses to the list of offenses. Virginia passed similar legislation in 1748 and revised these statutes in 1772 explicitly to discourage men from gouging, plucking, or putting out an eye, biting or kicking or stomping upon quiet peaceable citizens. By 1786 South (Carolina had made premeditated mayhenm a capital offense, defining the crime as severing anothers bodily parts.4 Laws notwithstanding, the carnage continued. Philip Vickers Fithian, a New Jerseyite serving as tutor for an aristocratic Virginia famnily, confided to his journal on September 3, 1774: By appointment is to be fought this Day near Mr. Lanes two fist Battles between four young Fellows. The Cause of the battles I have not yet known; I suppose either that they are lovers, and one has in Jest or reality some way supplanted the other; or has in a merry hour called him a Lubber or a thick-Skull, or a Buckskin, or a Scotsmani, or perhaps one has mislaid the others hat., or knocked a peach out of his Hand, oI- offeIred hlim a diram without wiping the mouth of the Bottle; all these, and ten thousand moIe qllte as trifling and ridiculous are thought and accepted as just Causes of immediate Quarrels, in which every dliabolical Strategem for Mastery is allowed and practiced. The trifling and ridiculous reasons for these fights had an unreal quality for the matter-of-fact Yankee. Not assaults on persons or property but slights, insults, and thoughtless gestures set young southerners against each other. To call a man a buckskin, for example, was to accuse him of the poverty associated with leather clothing, while the epithet Scotsman tied him to the low-caste Scots-Irish who settled the southern highlands. Fithian could not understand how such trivial offenses caused the bloody battles. But his incomprehension turned to rage when he realized that spectators attended these odious and filthy anmusemnenits and that the fighters allayed their spontaneous passions in order to fix convenient dates and places, which allowed time for rumors to spread and crowds to gather. The Yankee concluded that only devils, prostitutes, or monkeys could sire creatures so unfit for human society.6 3 Williaim Gooch to thc Bishol) of Lon(don], JLlv 8, 17 35, in (. NMcLarciin Bryden, e(l., IhCe Virginial (Clergy: Governor Goochs Letters to the Bisho) of Lonldoni, 1727-1749, fromii the FLilhamI N uLnscr-ipts,- 1ogsmla Mazgazios oJflotors and Biogarplh, 32 (1924); 219, 332; and Philip Vicker s Fithiani to John Peck, AuguLst 12, 1774, inI Fithian, Journal and Letters, ed. Hloloiter Dickinson Farish (Williamslburg, Va., 1943 ), 212. TFom Parratinore, (GoLgitg inI Early North Carolina, Nodst Carolinia Folklorej oarn(l, 22 (1974): 38; Jane Carson, Colonial VsI,rosiiTa (it Pl/a (WilliamisbuLrg, Va., 1965), 166-67; and Jack Kenniiy Williamiis, 1oges inI VillaMin: (orime and RIettiblbtiotn itl Antte-Bellomrti Soot/h C(irolisia (ColUmnia, S.C., 1959), 33. 1 he SoLth Carolina law included finigers and eyes but excluded nioses anlld ears. 5 Fithian, Journaloe assd Letters, 240-4 1. 6 Ibid.; anid Rhys Isaac, TIse Tsrasmssfosrsatioii o/ VoVisrsia, 1740-1 790 (Chapel Hill, 1982), 44. This content downloaded from 150.135.135.70 on Mon, 17 Aug 2015 04:12:29 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp Descriptions of these fist battles, as Fithian called them, indicate that they generally began like English prize fights. Two men, surrounded by onlookers, parried blows until one was knocked or thrown down. But there the similarity ceased. Whereas Broughtons Rules of the English ring specified that a rounld ended when either antatgonist fell, southern bruisers only began fighting at this point. Enclosed not inside a formal ring-the magic circle defining a special place with its own norms of conduct-but within whatever space the spectators left vacant, fighters battled each other until one calle(d enough or was unable to continue. Combatants boasted, howled, and cursed. As words gave way to action, they tripped and threw, gouged and butted, scratched and choke(d each other. But what is worse than all, Isaac Weld observed, these wretches in their conmbat endeavor to their utnmost to tear out each others testicles.7 Around the beginning of the nineteenth century, men sought original labels for their brutal style of fighting. Rough-and-tumble or simply gouging graclually replaced boxing as the name for these contests.8 Before two bruisers attacked each other, spectators might demand whether they proposed to fight fair- according to Broughtons Rules-or rough-and-tumible. Honor dictated that all techniques be permitted. Except for a ban on weapons, most nmen chose to fight no holts barred, doing what they wished to each other without interference, until one gave up or was incapacitated., The emphasis on maximum disfiguremnent, on severing bodily parts, made this fighting style unique. Amid the gener-al mayhem, however, gouging out an opponents eye becamiie the sine qua nori of rough-and-tumble f-ighting, imuch like the knockout punch in modern boxing. TIhe best gougers, of course, were adept at other fighting skills. Somne allegedly filecd their teeth to bite off an enemys appendages more efficiently. Still, liberatinig ani eyeball quickly became a fighters surest route to victory and his mnost prestigious accomplishment. To this end, celebrated heroes fired their fingerniails hlard, honed them-i sharp, anid oiled them slick. You have conme off badly this timie, I doubt? declared an alarmed passerby on seeing the piteous condition of a renowned fighter. Have I, says he triumphantly, shewing ftoin his pocket at the samne time an eye, Weld, TraveLs Througrh the Sttes of Nort/li Asmeti (, 1 (3d e(liL., 1Lndon, 1800(): 191. Weldl claillc(l he s Aw for or five IIIeII castrated an(ld co(nfined to their sick l)eds (IIinilng hiS trlVs sin Virginia ai(nd Maryland. Thle Comport Edition oJfthle OxfOrd otig/il Dirtiooisi (Ne.xw Yo)rk, 1971), 1: 1180, 2: 2582. TThomas Ashe, Tsrave/.i ini Amserica (LondoI, 1809), 86. IhoImas AllnlhreC, vvfio serve(d iII Vir-gillial (Lrillg thlC ReVOILtion, oA)served that hightecrs agreed ahIead of tinc on wh ihch tactics to alhv, then ahided hy theii OW11 rleCs: Allb)rey, Tsraels Throligh thl l nter)ior Pariti of Alierria, 2 (1789; iepnint c(fiL, Bostoii, 1823), 215-1 8. Gouginig aniother manis evc was IIot native to thlC C(uhiIICS hnt d(l nlteCe(ldeits in the iiiotlhCr CiOLnnt,y. A few repor-ts lacecl the practice in Lancashire and \orikslire; tlet Iocwlaild its aisri t lensandilats ill listerde .IS) used these taetics. GOLIgimg Wlas c(imion emll(ogll iII EllgliSh Irillng figlhtS t1hat the 1838 RlIICS of the Lonclo Prize Ring bannccl it BLit Whilt had heemn anl ocasimioal practiCC iIe BFI3itiII Wias CIesCdto( tO LIIliqsln highltimxg styVle in the Americain SoL II. See Dr. Bearlsley, (O)1 ttme lsc and(1 bInSe of Po)n)UlaII Sl)OI-tS ami LXCeises, Resemnbling r hose of the Greeks an(d Roniaiiiis, NicholoOis Ph/on osofi/orl blogozoir, 15, ex(cerptel in Poitf/ lo, 1, ser. 4 (1 8 16): 407-09; JeInie Hlinlinaia, Amser sica S)ortsi 1 785-1835 (1)DU rlmiam, N.(., 193 1), chap. 10(; New I oris Spirit (f th/i Tiunwi JcmlI 4 1840). 20(7; Henry Adams, Te Formatiote +(rso, e(l. Hlerhert Agar (1 iloix, 1918), 28; Kick and(t Bite in Lancashire, New(, York SportingA lXogozin, Novemnber I83-1, ). 188; Jolmi Ford(l, PriegJlitil,g: ThueAge oJRegeors Boximoniai (New York, 1971), 1 16-18; 1J C. FLII-IiS, /1e A 4su1esA (Ii.iS A Sori sl liji.toe ofthle U nsitedl Stites, 1587-1914 (Ncrw York, 1969), 216; JaIncs (J. Lex hum. The .Siotds I.ih: A1 Sooil lijitoi (Ghacl Hill, 1962), 263-66; Am-thlLr K. Miu Frme, 7/is Ps ouitier Xliod (New \Y-k, 1957), 11 1; and Parraniiru c, G(,olgilg in Nor tlh Cal olilmlia, 6.O This content downloaded from 150.135.135.70 on Mon, 17 Aug 2015 04:12:29 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp Gouge and Bite, Pull Hair and Scratch 21 which he had extracted during the combat, and preserved for a trophy.0 As the new style of fighting evolved, its geographical distribution changed. Leadership quickly passed from the southern seaboard to upcountry counties and the western frontier. I Although examples could be found throughout the South, rough-and-tumbling was best suited to the backwoods, where hunting, herding, and semisubsistence agriculture predominated over market-oriented, staple crop production. Thus, the settlers of western Carolina, Kentucky, and Tennessee, as well as upland Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia, became especially known for their pugnacity.2 The social base of rough-and-tumbling also shifted with the passage of time. Although brawling was always considered a vice of the lower sort, eighteenth- century Tidewater gentlemen sometimes found themselves in brutal fights. These combats grew out of challenges to mens honor-to their status in patriarchal, kin- 000~~~~:-A0SE; 2; : iCt~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~. s .f........ . The Hands of Celebrated Gougers. Drawings reproduced from Richard M. Dorson, Davy Crockett: American Comic Legend (New York, 1939), 42. based, small-scale communities-and were woven into the very fabric of daily life. Rhys Isaac has observed that the Virginia gentry set the tone for a fiercely competitive style of living. Although they valued hierarchy, individual status was never permanently fixed, so men frantically sought to assert their prowess-by grand boasts over tavern gaming tables laden with money, by whipping and 10 Anburey, Travels Through the Interior Parts of Amernca, 203; Parramore, Gouging in North Carolina, 57-58; and Adland Ashby, A Visit to North America (London, 1821), 73. In colonial days, an eye could be saved by calling out kings curse; Guion Griffs Johnson, Antebelum North Carolina: A Social History (Chapel Hill, 1937), 16-17. 11 The tradition lingered in pockets along the coast. A Florida grand jury member watched outside the courthouse as his son fought another boy. Not yet a decade old, the youngster received some manly advice when the battle ended: Now you little devil, if you catch him down again bite him, chaw his lip or you neverll be a man. Henry Benjamin Whipple, as quoted in John Hope Franklin, The Militant South (Cambridge, Mass., 1956), 11-12. 12 Tom Parramore, the most thorough student of rough-and-tumble fighting, offered only southern sources and argued that gouging spread as far as the Louisiana Territory early in the century; Gouging in North Carolina, 56, 58. Gouging was occasionally practiced above the Ohio, but it was not elevated to a characteristic fighting style. Lumbermen in the northern forests practiced some of the rough-and-tumblers arts, but they were noted for marking a fallen opponent by stomping his face with caulked boots, leaving scars similar to those This content downloaded from 150.135.135.70 on Mon, 17 Aug 2015 04:12:29 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp 22 EliiottJ. Gorn tripping each others horses in violent quarter-races, by wagering one-half years earnings on the flash of a fighting cocks gaff. Great planters and small shared an ethos that extolled courage bordering on foolhardiness and cherished magnificent, if irrational, displays of largess. 3 Piety, hard work, and steady habits had their adherents, but in this society aggressive self-assertion and manly pride were the real rrmarks of status. Even the gentrys vaunted hospitality demonstrated a familys community standing, so conviviality itself became a vehicle for rivalry and emulation. Rich and poor might revel together during public times, but gentry patronage of sports and festivities kept the focus of power clear. Above all, brutal recreations toughened men for a violent social life in which the exploitation of labor, the specter of poverty, and a fierce struggle for status were daily realities.4 During the final decades of the eighteenth century, however, individuals like Fithians young gentlemen became less inclined to engage in rough-and-tumbling. Many in the planter class now wanted to distinguish themselves from social inferiors more by genteel manners, gracious living, and paternal prestige than by patriarchal prowess. They sought alternatives to brawling and found them by imitating the English aristocracy. A few gentlemen took boxing lessons from professors of pugilism or attended sparring exhibitions given by touring exponents of the manly art.5 More important, dueling gradually replaced hand-to-hand combat. The code of honor offered a genteel, though deadly, way to settle personal disputes while demonstrating ones elevated status. Ceremony distinguished anti- septic duels from lower-class brawls. Cool restraint and customary decorum proved a mans ability to shed blood while remaining emotionally detached, to act as mercilessly as the poor whites but to do so with chilling gentility.I6 produced by smrallpox. The ltitmberjack code, as folklorist Richard Dorsoni calleti it, grew out of a pattern of living sinilar to that of the rough-anti-tumblers. Drinking, treating frienids, imilpttlsive pleasuLre seekillg, hel-oi labor, and ViCiOttS fightiing were part of all-miiale peer groLps tIn the niorthernl woods; personal ht)nt)r anti valtor were the touchstones of ltltnberjactk life. See Dorson, BloodtopperS antd Bearwalkeri: Folk Traelitions of the Upper Peninsula (Catmbridge, Mass., 1952), clhap. 9; Fiurnas, The Amenria in, 215-16; and(i Alan Lotinax, Illkougs of /Naort/h America (New York, 1975), 106-07, 1 19-20. Fred Harvey Hattington has pointet( outt inI private correspon- deuice that leaders of New Yor-k City gangs in the mid-nineteenth cenlttLrv were somiietimies referred to as gougers or routgh-and-turmblers. Moreover, in 182 1, Ohio passedc a law againist gottging OLtt eyes, b)iting off facial parts, anii so ftrth. Nevertheless, miieni in the East and MitIdle Wecst rlid iot glorify malylyhemii aitI mutilation in practice and folklore to the same extetit as rid the souLthernii backwoodstmen. See Gabriel FLrtrmani, The Customs, Amusemenits, Style of Living antI Manniers of the People of thel United States fromii the Fir-st Settlemienit to the Presenlt lite, New York Historial Society, NewN, York, N.Y., MS. 2673, typescript copy, pp. 303-05; and Elliott J. Gorn, I he Manily Art: Bar-e-Kinuckle lPrize Fighting antI the Rise of Amierican Sports (Ph.D. dissert.ation, Yale University, 1983), chap. 5. 3 Isaac brilliantly evoked life in mid-eighteenth-CentUry Virginia. Sc-c Traifo-rmationi of Jirginia, chaps. 5, 6. On play, competitiveniess, anct prowess in southesrni CtltrtIe, sCee . H. Breenl, Hor-ses anld (Gentletmen: Ihe Ctiltural Signifiharte of Gambling aimionig thhe Gentry of Virginia, William (alnd AJary Quiarterl/. 3nd ser., 34 (1977): 256-57; Carson, Colonial Uirgnmaim (it Play, cha1p. 3; Hollimiats, Amiericcani Sporius, chap. 12; C. Vaininl Woodward, Ihe Southerni Ethic in a PLiritanl World, inl his Aimeiicao Coonteipoiolt (Bostoni, 1971), 13-46; andcl Bertram Wyatt-Browni, Sothern IIonor: Ethliis and(l Behcaior in the 01(c Soutthl (Newt York, 1 982). Oni these tlhemies, see Breeni, Horses and (,Gentlemen, 256-57; Isaact, Transflormah .otio of)1 7siginia, 94-104; and Wyatt-Browni, Soutthern-l Monor, chaps. 2, 3, 6, 11, 13. 15 Isaac traced this chanige; Traf,n,Joorinationi of 1ngingiaim, pts. 2, 3. Also sece Lotlise Jordian Wtalmsley, Sport Attittudes and Practices ofRepresentative Anisricas Befoire 1870 (Farmiville, Va., 1938), 296; anId (Gorn, Ilhe Manlyx Art, 141-54. l6 Isaac, Transformation f VirginTia, 319, 322. Also see D)ickson BrUtre, 1ioli nte and Cultuiie in tlne Attbehelluni South (Austin, 1979), introdUlt(0tion antd chap. 1; Wyatt-Boswn, Souithler-ni Iaotiol, nlal). 13; antI Johnson, Antebellum Nortl Uairolinci, 42-46. This content downloaded from 150.135.135.70 on Mon, 17 Aug 2015 04:12:29 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp Gouge and Bite, Pull H-alir arid Scr(atch 23 Slowly, then, rough-and-tumble fighting found specific locus in both human and geographical landscapes. We can watch men grapple with the transition. When an attemnpt at a formal duel aborted, Savannah politician Robert Watkins and United States Senator James Jackson resorted to gouging. Jackson bit Watsons finger to save his eye.7 ~Similarly, when a low fellow who pretends to gentility insulted a distinguished doctor, the gentlenman responded with a proper challenge. He had scarcely uttered these words, before the other flew at him, and in an instant turned his eye out of the socket, and while it hung upon his cheek, the fellow was barbarous enough to endeavor to pluck it entirely out.8 By the new century, such ambiguity had lessened, as rough-and-tunmble fighting was relegated to inldividuals in backwoods settlemeents. For the next several decades, eye-gouging matches were focal events in the culture of lower-class males who still relished the wild ways of old. I SAW MORE THAN ONE MAN WHO WANTED AN EYE, and ascertained that I was now in the region of gouging, reported young Timothy Flint, a Harvard educated, Presbyterian minister bound for Louisiana missionary work in 1816. His spirits buckled as his party turned down the Mississippi from the Ohio Valley. Enterpris- ing farmers gave way to slothful and vulgar folk whom Flint considered barely civilized. Only vicious fighting and disgusting accounts of battles past disturbed their inertia. Residents assured him that the blackguards excluded gentlemen from gouging matches. Flint was therefore perplexed when told that a barbarous- looking man was the best in one settlement, until he learned that best in this context meant not the most moral, prosperous, or pious but the local chamipior who had whipped all the rest, the rnan most dexterous at extracting eyes.9 Because rough-and-tumble fighting declined in settled areas, somne of the most valuable accounts were written by visitors who penetr-ated the backcountry. Travel literature was quite popular during Americas infanicy, and many profit-minded authors undoubtedly wrote with their audiences expectations in mind. Imnages of heroic frontiersmen, of crude but unencumbered natural men, enthralled both writers and readers. Some who toured the new republic ini the decades following 17 William Oliver Stevenis, Pistols at Tenr Paces (Bostoni, 1 940), 33-37; (;eorge G. Smith, The Story of (eorgia and the Georia People, 1 732-1860 (Atlanta, 1 900), 184; antld Jones Fight, Neztw Vnr-k Spinnt of thle Timties, January 25, 1840, pp. 559-60, i-eprinted in ibid., JuLnIe 15, 1844, p. 181 . Ihe anlLthol of Jonies Fight was anonymoutts, hot clearly the story was derived from oral traditioni. Althotughi dLeslillg hecame a m ark of genitlemranily statuLS, SoC)ial elites sometim-ies backslid inito street brawling dturinig the antehellum period. For eXamlples, see WilliamIs, Vogues in Villainy, 23. 18Anburey, Travels Throagh the Iinterior- Partos a/Amttieiica, 201-02. Goulgers occasionally threatened their social betters. An Eniglish tr-aveler- in Virginiia recalled that his patty Hed fromii a stiall gang-headcd hy a veteran cyclops-that tried to provoke a battle. In KentUcky, year-s later, Adlland Ashby clar-ed niot ot)ject to the company of one he considered beneath him. tIo (to so0, he feared, miight cost anl eye; ViWsit to North Amernca, 73. Also see the Marquis de Chastellux, Travels in Nor-th Amnerica int the Yetars 1 780-1782 (New York, 1828), which was translated by ani English genitleman who resided in America at that periotl (translators note is on pages 292- 93). 19 Flint, Recollections ojfthe Last Ten Years (Bostoni, 1 826), 97-98. I he r-ight and left baniks of the Ohio became a common symhol of the contrast between slave anid free states in the writinigs of foreign travelers. Americas miost perceptive visitor, Alexis de Tocqueville, included this nmotif. See DeiaiorraryN, in Amternca, ed. Phillips Bradley, 2 vols. (New York, 1945), 1: 376-79. This content downloaded from 150.135.135.70 on Mon, 17 Aug 2015 04:12:29 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp (24 ElliottJ. Gorn the Revolution had strong prejudices against Americas democratic pretensions. English travelers in particular doubted that the upstart nation-in which the lower class shouted its equality and the upper class was unable or unwilling to exercise proper authority-could survive. Ironically, backcountry fighting became a symbol for both those who inflated and those who punctured Americas expansive national ego. Frontier braggarts enjoyed fulfilling visitors expectations of backwoods deprav- ity, pumping listeners full of gruesome legends. Their narratives projected a satisfying, if grotesque, image of the American rustic as a fearless, barbaric, larger- than-life democrat. But they also gave Englishmen the satisfaction of seeing their former countrymen run wild in the wilderness. Gyouging matches offered a perfect metaphor for the Hobbesian war of all against all, of men tearing each other apart once institutional restraints evaporated, of a heart of darkness beating in the New World. As they made their way from the northern port towns to the southern countryside, or down the Ohio to southwestern waterways, observers concluded that geographical and moral descent went hand in hand. Brutal fights dramatically confirmed their belief that evil lurked in the deep shadows of Americas sunny democratic landscape. And yet, it would be a mistake to dismiss all travelers accounts of backwoods fighting as fictions born of prejudice. Many sojourners who were sober and careful observers of America left detailed reports of rough-and-tumbles. Aware of the tradition of frontier boasting, they distinguished apocryphal stories from personal observation, wild tales from eye-witness accounts. Although gouging matches became a sort of literary convention, many travelers compiled credible descriptions of backwoods violence. The indolence and dissipation of the middling and lower classes of Virginia are such as to give pain to every reflecting mind, one anonymous visitor declared. Horse-racing, cock-fighting, and boxing-matches are standing amusements, for which they neglect all business; and in the latter of which they conduct themselves with a barbarity worthy of their savage neighbors.92( Thomas Anburey agreed. He believed that the Revolutions leveling of class distinctions left the lower people dangerously independent. Although Anburey found poor whites usually hospitable and generous, he was disturbed by their sudden outbursts of impudence, their aversion to labor and love of drink, their vengefulness and savagery. They shared with … Online - Midterm Exam 75 points Identifications (10 points each) – Total 40 points. Instructions: Choose FOUR of the following persons, concepts, or events to identify. Identify the person or event with relevant contextual information, and state why he/she/it was important to the history of crime and the themes we have discussed in the course. If you do more than five identifications, I will grade only the first four.    1. Montesquieu  6. 13th Amendment 2. Black Codes 7. Double Character 3. Auburn   8. Maleficium 4. Confidence Man  9. Caning of Charles Sumner 5. Honor Culture  10. The Watch System   Short Answer Questions (35 points)  Instructions: Answer ONE of the following questions. Short answers should be 2-3 paragraphs long (Avoid going over 3 paragraphs). Answers should consist of complete sentences, and they should not be written in bullet point format. The best answers will draw in specific examples from course readings.   1. Give three examples of the ways in which the ideological trends of the Enlightenment era changed how Americans thought about crime, criminals, and/or punishment. Be sure to reference at least one of the readings in your answer. (Note: This answer should be three paragraphs long, one for each example.)  2. Historians disagree on whether the West was actually wild. From what you learned in class and the readings, was the West wild? This is not an opinion question. You must use specific examples and evidence from readings to argue your point. It does not matter what position you take, but you must back up your argument with specific evidence. Now, for extra information. Part 1 is identifications. For the most part, students do very well on the short answer (think of it as a mini-essay - no more than 1000 words (or 1 page double spaced), but struggle with the IDs. So please, look at what the directions state. There are two parts to the ID question. Here is an example of what a 10/10 answer looks like on the Midterm:  John Haviland – A nineteenth-century architect who had a distinguished career as a prison designer. Haviland designed the Tombs in New York, but he is most known for designing Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Haviland reflected the Enlightenment idea that environment could affect people’s behavior. He designed Eastern State to be imposing, so there was no question of what kind of building it was and used a medieval castle as the model. It was so imposing that when English novelist Charles Dickens visited the prison, he was struck by the architecture and said that, “it left no doubt to what kind of person was in there.” The importance of Haviland is that his design of Eastern State Penitentiary showed the increasing institutionalizing of civic governments, for example: schools, prisons, and asylums. He represents the nineteenth-century idea that buildings and the environment could shape or reform a person’s behavior. (Hence why each cell in Eastern State held only one prisoner and kept them isolated from everyone.) Although the United States did not adopt the Eastern State Prison system, it was important to the idea that prisons should reform the criminal. Notice the BOLDED part of the answer. In the directions, I specifically ask for the importance of the term. You may absolutely word it like I did in this example. Its totally fine to write, the importance of (term) is that . . .  Okay, let me or your TA know if you have any questions, the logistics. Because its an exam we will not read a draft beforehand nor give you specific answers to a question.  Now, for the Midterm questions. There has been some confusion regarding the IDs. First, everything you need can be found in the course materials, especially the lectures (power point presentations). You do not need other sources - so in other words, dont google the terms. For the most part, everything you need is in the power point lectures. The actual definition per se. You just have to figure out what that term is and what lesson that was (this is why I told you all to take notes as you went through the slides and VoiceThreads). If you google a term, lets say, Confidence Man youre going to get a lot of general information, some results will talk about other countries or recent financial schemes. I dont want you to use that. I want you to use the information I gave you on the power point lecture. Its all there, all you need to do is put it into your words and in sentence form. This is what historians do. They read primary and secondary sources and state them in their own words. Now, lets take the 13th Amendment - this is one that I guess you could google and be okay with it, but remember, what everyone concentrates on with this one is the abolishing slavery....but look back at that weeks lesson (Im specifically not telling you which week we covered these terms, this is part of the exam). What else did the 13th Amendment state that relates to the History of Crime? I want you to concentrate on that too! So if you googled 13th Amendment youd get the actual amendment, which I guess could help with reading the actual language, but I also want you to relate it to what we studied in this class.  I hope that helps clarify things with the IDs. The same can be said with the short answer, but in this one your readings will also help you answer the questions. Youll still need the Power Point lectures, but I want you to relate to the readings also. And remember, only pick ONE short answer to answer. So if you choose short answer 1 - you will look at the lecture for the Enlightenment and that will give you the overview of the period, and then look at the following slides and lessons to pick 3 ideological changes in the criminal justice system. Then go back and use a reading for each one. I dont need or want a summary of the reading (many of you did so on the paper #1). I want you to use the reading to back up your argument. So for instance you could say, in this reading (list author), he/she argues that . . . and we can see this in . . . (give example). You may use parenthetical citations if you quote (you dont really need to quote though). I just want you to refer to the readings and the argument of the author. This is a short answer, so please dont turn in 3 pages. A paragraph should be around 5-8 sentences long. If you go a little over thats fine. Do not, for any reason, use bulleted points. You must write in sentence/paragraph form. And this is an exam, first person is fine.  The Wild West? HIST/PA/SOC 349 The Mythic West American myths of the “Old West” tend to emphasize its lawlessness Popular memory dictates that Gunslingers were everywhere Shootouts were common Stagecoach and bank robberies were frequent West was a society in which might made right Competing Views of the WEst Historians disagree about how violent and lawless the West actually was Some historians emphasize that violence is a myth Claim that many historians have merely asserted violence and tried to explain it rather than proving it Claim that mutual cooperation and self-governance were the rule of the West rather than the exception Other historians assert that violence was extremely common in the West Point to high homicide rates How Wild Was the West? The West was unusually violent for its time period and certainly violent by today’s standards Murder rates were tremendously high However, much of the violence in the West was not the type of violence that we imagine Much of it was racial violence or drunken brawling rather than organized gunfighting Many crimes like robbery were rarer in the West than we might think Homicides in Early California Gold Rush California was extremely violent Between 1852 and 1855, the murder rate in Los Angeles was 331 per 100,00 people People who lived in Los Angeles during those 4 years had a 1 in 76 chance of being murdered Homicide Rates in the Mid-19th-Century West Many mining towns had extremely high rates of homicide in their early years Rates tapered off as time went on Cattle towns also tended to have high murder rates People who lived in Dodge City during its first decade had a 1 in 61 chance of being murdered Comparison of Murder Rates To give you a sense of how high the murder rates were in the West… U.S. officials in the 1980s panicked when the homicide rate in Miami hit 36 per 100,000 In 19th century New York, the murder rate was 15 per 100,000 Only the Red River Delta of Louisiana, at 193 murders per 100,000 people, rivaled the West Realities of Violence Much of the violence that occurred took the form of drunken bawls rather than formal gunfights Moreover, much of the violence was racial in nature rather than a result of personal conflicts Aurora, Colorado: 17 people died from violence arising from personal conflicts; 200 Indians and 30 white people died as a result of racial violence This was a common pattern; a great deal of violence resulted from land grabs and tensions between diverse ethnic groups (Mexicans and Tejanos, Chinese Immigrants, whites, people of European descent, and Native Americans) Native Americans and Violence Native Americans in the West often lived in or traded within white settlements, but tensions over land encroachment did occur frequently “Indian Hunting” was also common practice, particularly in early California 4,500 Indians slayed between 1848 and 1880 Hi Good and Robert Anderson slaughtered Yahi people By 1872, they and other Indian hunters had decreased the Indian population of the area from its original 2,000-3,000 people to fewer than 50 Anti-Chinese Violence Violence against Chinese immigrants became common in the 1870s and 1880s As Chinese laborers flocked to Western cities, white laborers responded with hostility “Anti-Coolie” societies perpetuated violence against Chinese immigrants 1885: White mob in Rock Spring, Wyoming massacred 25 Chinese residents and burned Chinese section of town to the ground Between 1890 and 1900, Chinese population of CA fell by about 1/3 as a result of racial hostility and restrictive immigration and labor policies Mexican Settlers in the West There was also extensive violence between Mexican settlers to the West and white settlers Cortina War of 1859 in South Texas: Texas Rangers policed and fought Indian and Mexican population Juan Cortina, son of prominent Tejano family, saw a local sheriff pistol whip a Mexican laborer and shot him He fled, but brought 60 men back to Brownsville, TX Freed Mexican prisoners, sacked white-owned shops, and executed four white people who had murdered people of Mexican descent War broke out between Cortina’s forces and the Texas Rangers (and eventually the U.S. Army) Realities of Violence Stagecoach robberies were not common Bank robbery was also rare Theft was uncommon The only crime besides murder that was decided common was prostitution Prostitution in the WEst Brothels were common in frontier towns Josephine Airey, a Chicago native who moved to Helena, MT and opened a famous brothel became one of the largest landowners in Montana Lou Graham, Seattle brothel keeper, became one of the largest landowners in the Pacific Northwest Helped to fund public school district Madam Anna Wilson of Omaha donated her house to the town after her death so it could be used as a hospital Why The West was Wild The West was a unusually pluralistic region West was heavily demographically male Many men lived nomadic lives as cattlemen; when they came into towns seasonally, they usually liked to take advantage of the occasion Extensive drinking and brawling in cattle towns There was an absence of governmental structure There was an increase in governmental structure Frontier Thesis of Violence The West was wild because it was a frontier region where government was largely absent Men were encouraged to settle disputes between themselves (similar to theory about violence in the backcountry) Some people actually argue that Southerners seeking new land transmitted honor culture to the West War of Incorporation Thesis Advanced by historian Richard Maxwell Brown Argued that violence occurred not because the West was an uncivilized, open frontier, but rather because there were forces emerging that threatened to make it more like the Eastern United States Wars of Incorporation (according to Brown): Early wars of incorporation were Indian wars Later wars of incorporation were between people who wanted to integrate the West into Eastern economic networks and national governmental structures Political Differences Incorporation Gunfighters: Examples: Wyatt Earp, Buffalo Bill Often from Northern Republican stock Generally supported efforts to incorporate Western towns Supported policies to make them more friendly to business and capital investments Political Differences Resistance Gunfighters: Examples: Billy the Kid, Jesse James Often from Southern or Texan Democratic stock Opposed, or were perceived as opposing, the encroachment of Eastern capitalistic and commercial forces on rural life of the West Tonto BasIn War Took place in Gila County, AZ, 1886-1887 Was mainly a feud between two cattle herding families, the Tewksburys and the Grahams Disputes over water and grazing rights and race (Tewksburys were part Shoshone) but also over politics Tewksbury family was Democratic “Cornbread and cheap living” Grahams were Republicans “Wheat and Work” Eastern Influences Jesse James, who is often associated with the Wild West, was actually in many ways a product of a very Eastern-oriented conflict: the Civil War James had been a guerilla fighter in Missouri during the war James brothers carried their violence over to peacetime, which embittered them because radical Republicans took control of Missouri Myth or reality So was the West wild? I think you can argue it either way. At least until incorporation, the West was wild, but once people started settling the region (town) then instituting government controls and societal standards took over. A lot of what we think of the West actually comes from Hollywood. Actually, the West had some of the strictest gun control. Railroad companies, travel agencies, the media, and real estate moguls ”sold” the West as exotic and adventurous. Continued well into the 20th century. In reality though, the West was extremely violent for people of color and immigrants (specifically Asian immigrants). Along the border, Texas Rangers hunted and killed Mexicans. African Americans and Native Americans forced into slavery, children taken away and apprenticed. Asians would be barred from entering the country in 1882. Violence in the West Anti Chinese political cartoon on the left. The Texas Rangers posing in front of murdered Mexicans. Crime and the Civil War HIST/PA/SOC 349 Tensions Over Slavery After 1820, slavery was a defining political issue for the country, although politicians often avoided talking about it prior to the 1850s The 1850s saw bitter and sometimes brutal contestations over the expansion of slavery into Western territories Compromise of 1850 Bleeding Kansas (1854-1861) Jayhawkers (anti-slavery) and Border Ruffians (pro-slavery) clashed over the status of Kansas Caning of Charles Sumner (1856) Representative Preston Brooks beat Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner with a cane for criticizing slavery and insulting his cousin John Brown’s Raid After receiving news of the Sumner caning, John Brown attacked and hacked to death several pro-slavery settlers in Kansas Years later in 1859, Brown began what he hoped would become a massive slave revolt by invading the arsenal at Harpers Ferry, VA Several people were killed Clash of Political Gangs In U.S. cities, political gangs clashed violently with one another on election days Some conflicts were between Nativist whites and Irish gangs, but many were between rival Irish gangs in cities like NYC Vote rigging and election riots became common in the 1850s The Dead Rabbits and the Bowery B’Hoys The Civil War Abraham Lincoln elected in 1860 Before Lincoln was inaugurated, seven Southern states seceded, citing the desire to preserve the institution of slavery Lincoln was not an abolitionist at the start of the war, but he was a proponent of free labor Following the firing on Fort Sumter in April of 1861, four more states seceded Resulting war would last for four years and result in between 650,000 and 720,000 dying and 4.2 million people being freed Civil War and Crime The Civil War complicated definitions of crime somewhat Many areas, particularly captured Southern cities, were actually under martial law Dissenters to both Confederate and Union causes were often arrested for fomenting dissatisfaction or advocating for the enemy cause People could be arrested for distributing song sheets or wearing stars and bars regalia Benjamin Butler, who grew tired of Southern women insulting and spitting at his troops in New Orleans, issued General Order 28 in 1862 Women and Crime The number of women arrested and jailed for crimes increased dramatically during the Civil War period Women’s criminality had been on the rise since the 1840s, but the number of women incarcerated during the war to unprecedented highs 1864: 37.2\% of MA prisoners were female Many cities saw number of female prisoners rise by about 1/3 During same period, number of male prisoners dropped by half Women were arrested for property crimes at 10 times the rate of men Counterfeiting Southern print technology lagged behind Northern print technology by quite a bit Confederate bills were often poorly printed and inconsistent in their designs, which made them easy to counterfeit Both Southern and Northern printers began counterfeiting bills in huge numbers North did not regard counterfeiting of Southern bills as criminal since Confederacy was illegitimate Samuel Upham After witnessing widespread public interest in Confederate money, Philadelphia printer Samuel Upham began printing “novelty” Confederate bills The bills were easy to pass off as real Upham may have introduced up to $15 million dollars in fake currency into the South Helped to destabilize Confederate money Prostitution Prostitution expanded rapidly during the Civil War as masses of women following the armies (camp followers) and others settled in military-occupied cities Washington, DC, for example, had 450 brothels by 1864 Estimated 7,500 prostitutes operating in and around the city Female virtue if it ever existed in this Country seems now almost a perfect wreck. Prostitutes are thickly crowded through mountain & valley, in hamlet and city.” -W.J. Ninns Licensing of Prostitution Nashville, TN fell under Union control early in the war 1,500 prostitutes streamed into the city to take advantage of the presence of Union troops Provost Marshal George Spalding ordered prostitutes into a ship called the Idahoe in an attempt to rid the city of them When that failed, he created a system of licensing in which all prostitutes had to register, pay a fee, and submit to medical inspection. Intended to ward off venereal disease, which was a major problem in the army Bread Riots The Confederate Army faced constant food shortages Many Southern civilians believed (correctly) that food speculators were artificially inflating prices or withholding food from market In the Spring of 1863, poor white women rioted over food prices in Atlanta, GA; Salisbury, NC; Mobile, AL; Petersburg, VA; Richmond, VA; and at least 7 other cities Often robbed merchants at gunpoint if they refused to provide flour, bacon, or molasses at a fair price NYC Draft Riots (1863) In 1863, the Federal government passed the National Conscription Act, which allowed men to be drafted into the Union Army Made exceptions for people who could afford to hire substitutes or pay $300 fee Many poor men were angry about this, not only because it exempted the rich but also because it forced them to fight in a war whose cause they increasingly opposed Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863 Signaled the fact that the war had become a war of emancipation rather than simply an effort to keep the Union together NYC Draft Riot On July 13th, after the draft began, rioters began attacking government buildings and the draft office Rioting eventually included 5,000-15,000 people As riots grew, rioters began attacking black New Yorkers and buildings that were centers of the city’s black community Colored Orphan Asylum was burned and looted Between 11 and 18 black New Yorkers were lynched, and 70 more went missing 120 people were killed Took the arrival of the Union army from Gettysburg to quell the disturbances The Red Times: Reconstruction Violence HIST/PA/SOC 349 Reconstruction Reconstruction, which lasted from 1865-1877, was one of the most violent “peacetime” periods in American history The Southern United States, which had historically been more violent than the rest of the country, devolved into even more bloodshed Homicide rates were high Red River Delta region of Louisiana had the highest homicide rate of any area of the U.S. during Reconstruction Much of this violence was racial violence committed against African-Americans Homicides of all types went up in places like LA, however Emancipation “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” Many enslaved people gained their freedom during the war by running to Union Army lines In 1865, the states ratified the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which formally abolished slavery except under certain conditions These conditions would prove to be disastrous in their consequences for African-Americans and their relationship to the criminal justice system Nevertheless, millions of African-American gained legal freedom as a result of the Amendment The Black Codes When Southern states had their political power restored by Andrew Johnson, they immediately set about passing laws called Black Codes Black Codes varied by state, but common provisions included Requiring black people to be under contract for their labor at all times or face imprisonment Curtailing their movements and negotiating power when it came to employment Establishing required work hours for black laborers Denying blacks the right to bear arms or assemble Allowing black children to be taken from their parents and apprenticed out to white people Radical Reconstruction The Radical Republican congress wrested control of Reconstruction from Johnson in 1866 Divided the South into military districts, and established Freedmen’s Bureau offices around the South to ensure that freedpeople were being treated fairly Forced Southern states to ratify the 14th Amendment, which guaranteed equal protection under the law regardless of face Required black suffrage in 1867; secured the ratification of the 15th Amendment in 1870 Granted black men the right to vote nation-wide An Imperfect Freedom “But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a state, or the members of the legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such state, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such state.” Reconstruction was in many senses disappointing in terms of the promotion of racial equality Freedpeople were not granted land or reparations 14th Amendment, like the 13th, contained what would be become a very unfortunate exception Nevertheless, Reconstruction ushered hundreds of black men into political positions, local, state, and national Biracial governance Rise of Vigilantism Many white Southerners reacted extremely poorly to Reconstruction Attacked Reconstruction governments as corrupt, ineffectual, and dangerous because they promoted “Negro Rule” Resented the legal equality granted to African-Americans and wanted to reassert white supremacy Because they did not have the ability to reassert white supremacy legally, many Southerners turned to vigilantism to intimidate and terrorize the black population into submission Ku Klux Klan, founded in 1866, was one of the first of these groups Other groups included the Knights of the White Camelia, Red Shirts, and White League White Terrorism The Klan and like-minded groups attacked Southern blacks (and their white allies) for any number of offenses: owning or being reputed to own a gun, having or being alleged to have interracial relationships, being too economically successful Among the most likely people to be targeted, however, were people involved in Republican politics 1 in 10 black state legislators was subject to physical violence by the Klan One of the Klan’s primary aim was to suppress the black vote through terrorism and allow white Democrats to retake Southern governments Vigilantism and Voter Suppression Politically motivated violence was frequent around election times Violence around election times In 1868, the year Grant took the presidency, there were 200 politically motivated murders in Arkansas 1,000 people were murdered in LA between April and November The effects of this violence were dramatic: In 1867 elections, 28,000 black men voted In 1868, 501 did In Georgia, 9,300 votes were case by black men in 1867 97 were cast in 1868 Extra-Legal Violence When white Democrats proved unable to control the elections, they sometimes led armed rebellions against the Reconstruction governments Battle of Liberty Place/Canal Street, New Orleans, 1872 Mob of White Leaguers armed themselves and battled the Metropolitan Police Force in order to install a Democrat to the governorship Congressional Intervention Congress passed a series of three Enforcement Acts in 1870-1871 that targeted the Klan and criminalized violations of the 14th and 15th Amendments Provided for Civil Rights violations to be prosecuted at the federal level While the Acts were enforced, convictions rates for those charged under them were low Northern interest in Reconstruction faded after 1872 Fatigue and a worsening economic situation in the North lessened support for Reconstruction Freedmen’s Bureau was allowed to lapse in 1872 All but three Southern states were controlled by Democrats by 1876 The End of Reconstruction U.S. v. Cruikshank (1875) Case arose from the 1873 Colfax Massacre in LA White Democrats had murdered 60-150 black Republicans after a disputed election White perpetrators were charged under the Enforcement Act Supreme Court ruled that only civil rights violations committed by states, not individuals, were subject to federal prosecution This basically gave white Southerners carte blanche to terrorize black Southerners because they could count on not being prosecuted Compromise of 1877 Rutherford B. Hayes promised to withdraw troops from the South in return for electoral votes The Aftermath of Reconstruction Violence died down in the 1880s, but only because Southern states could use legal means to repress the black population Between 1890 and 1910, ten of eleven Southern states passed laws that disenfranchised blacks, albeit not officially Used poll taxes and literacy tests Implemented legal segregation—Jim Crow—during the same period Cartoon criticizing literacy tests, Harper’s Weekly, January 18, 1879 Justice System and Racial Control The Southern justice system became a tool for exerting racial control over and disenfranchising the black population Black people were charged more frequently than white people for crimes like vagrancy Black people were more likely to be convicted of crimes than white people were, and also more likely to be given long sentences Black prison population skyrocketed Prison labor Many black prisoners were forced to work on chain gangs under abysmal conditions One historian described life on Mississippi’s Parchman Prison Farm as “worse than slavery” Deaths were commonplace on chain gangs Once white Southerners no longer had an economic stake in the relative well-being of black bodies, conditions grew even more inhumane The South Post-Reconstruction “[The South’s] police system was arranged to deal with blacks alone, and tacitly assumed that every white man was ipso facto a member of that police. Thus grew up a double system of justice, which erred on the white side by undue leniency and the practical immunity of red-handed criminals, and erred on the black side by undue severity, injustice, and lack of discrimination.” W.E.B. Du Bois Crime and Violence in Antebellum Northern Cities HIST/PA/SOC 349 09/25/2017 Questions for Today Why did cities expand so much between 1830 and 1850? How did 19th century Americans imagine the relationship between urban places and crime? How violent were cities, actually? Why did Cities Grow? In the early 19th century, there was a “transportation revolution” in the United States State and local governments and private companies built turnpikes and roads, canals, and railroads to facilitate inexpensive and more convenient transportation Better transportation allowed for economic growth and a “market revolution” More and more Americans started producing commodities that they then shipped for sale in distant and foreign markets Urban Population Growth, 1800-1860 City 1800 1810 1820 1830 1840 1850 New York 60.5 101 131 215 374 650 Philadelphia 61.6 87.3 109 161 259 405 Baltimore 26.5 46.6 62.7 80.6 110 179 Boston 24.9 38.7 54 85.6 183 308 Charleston 18.8 24.7 24.8 30.3 42.6 50 Washington, DC 11.2 20.4 28.8 35.5 50.2 67 New Orleans 17.2 27.2 46.1 105 123 Urban Population in Selected U.S. Cities, in Thousands Market revolution sparked growth of manufacturing sector and drew people to cities for work Cities also became important centers of shipping for commodities bound for market New Anxieties In the 18th century, many Americans were used to living in small communities in which they new many of their neighbors Even cities were small enough that people were often familiar with each other As cities grew, they expanded to the point that they allowed for a certain amount of anonymity Economic changes also made markets less personal and enabled more people to have access to traditional markers of social status New Anxieties With all these changes, how do you know who’s genuine and who is not? How do you know who to trust? Two figures come to symbolize these anxieties: 1. Confidence Man Sometimes a criminal and a fraudster; sometimes merely a bad influence 2. Painted Woman Sometimes a prostitute, but sometimes just someone who is false—appears one thing, but is actually another Cities as Dangerous Many 19th century Americans fear that young men and women flocking to cities to find work will be taken advantage of by confidence men and other shady characters Men will be drawn into bad economic schemes and led morally astray by confidence men Women will be deprived of their morality and possibly tricked or seduced Cities get reputations as havens of sexual vice or immorality Cities as Havens of Sexual Vice Advertisements from New York newspapers Cities as Havens of Sexual Vice Perceptions of High Crime “The property of the citizen is pilfered, almost before his eyes. Dwellings and warehouses are entered with an ease and apparent coolness and carelessness of detection which shows none are safe...Thousands that are arrested go unpunished, and the defenseless and the beautiful are ravished and murdered in the day time, and no trace of the criminals is found.” -New York City Council Report, 1842 Gangs in Washington, DC. From “Rowdyism,” Baltimore Sun, June 25, 1844 Were Cities Actually Violent According to Roger Lane, the period of urbanization between 1835 and 1910 saw an increase in the overall number of crimes, but a decrease in the number of serious crimes Cities had a civilizing influence However, many cities did see outbreaks of violence in the 1830s and early 1840s Rioting became far more common Tensions in Cities Whether or not cities were actually as dangerous as reformers said they were, cities could be tense places in antebellum America, particularly in the 1830s Sources of Tension: 1. Changes in Manufacturing and Labor Opportunities to enter skilled artisan class declined somewhat in the 19th century as process of manufacturing grew less dependent on skills and more centered around wage labor Capitalism created economic stratification At the same time, toleration of poverty went down Tensions in Cities 2. Political tensions As politics became increasingly democratized, the political process became more contentious and boisterous 3. Racial tensions Many white Americans resented having to compete with free black Americans for wages and work This became particularly acute with the rise of the Abolitionist movement in the 1830s 4. Ethnic tensions Immigrants flooded into American cities in the 1840s and ’50s Irish immigrants were poor, unskilled, and often Catholic U.S. Population Expansion Rioting in the 1830s Rioting became much more common in the 1830s Many cities experienced race riots in which white workers (sometimes immigrants) terrorized black populations and their allies New York (July 7-11th, 1834): White rioters attack abolitionists and then attack strongholds of black community life A month later, white Philadelphians attacked and looted the homes of over thirty black families, killing two people Philadelphia Nativist Riots (1844) Nativists caught in a storm sought shelter in an Irish neighborhood Nativists and Irish fought Nativist mobs burned down churches and houses of Irish Philadelphians 20 people died Philadelphia Nativist Riots (1844) Philadelphia Nativist Riots (1844) Other Sources of Violence Tensions between wealthier urban dwellers and poor urban dwellers sometimes erupted into violence New York (1837) Bread riots broke out over the cost of flour Political tensions (especially between Nativists and immigrant Democrats) could break out into violence Political gangs formed in many U.S. cities in the 1840s and 1850s Christiana Riot (1851) Tolerance for violence was lower in many cities even as rioting became common Christiana Riot (1851) White slaveowner tried to recapture four fugitive slaves hiding in Christiana Slaveowner was shot Perpetrator ended up being charged with treason The Watch System and the Rise of Professional Policing HIST/PA/SOC 349 Significance of Professional Policing The development of professional policing was part of a process of modernizing, strengthening, and expanding the power of the state Max Weber on the modern state: “A state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.” “The modern state is a compulsory association which organizes domination.” Early Law Enforcement In early America and in most rural communities into the nineteenth century, the primary agent of law enforcement was the sheriff Sheriff was responsible for serving warrants and making arrests when needed, but he also performed a wide variety of other tasks not related to crime Sheriff could make arrests without a warrant, but had few incentives Sheriffs were often paid per warrant served Reactive rather than proactive Early Law Enforcement In some areas, particularly towns and cities, local communities hired constables Constables functioned similarly to the sheriff, only they operated at the town or city level rather than the county level Primary differences: Constables were charged with walking the cities to report nuisances, health hazards, etc. as well as to keep watch for crimes in progress Constables also supervised forces called night watches Boston established night watch in 1631; other cities and towns followed in the decades after Boston Night Watch, 1819 Night Watches In the early years, generally not professional bodies of law enforcers Some carried a mace or a rattle, but few had any other markers of authority Night watchmen, like the constables who served them, performed a variety of functions besides watching for crime Monitoring for fires, looking for unsecured doors, trimming wicks of street lamps, etc. Night Watchmen Night watchmen were seldom full-time law enforcers In some cities, like New York, watchmen received small stipends for their work In other cities, serving on the watch was like having jury duty—it was simply a responsibility that came with being a citizen or landholder Service on the night watch was unpleasant, and typically people who served were those who a) needed extra money, or b) could not afford to buy their way out Depictions of Watchmen Left: Baltimore Night Watchman, 1825 Right: English Night Watchman Depictions of Watchmen Stereotypes of Night Watchmen Lazy, slovenly, elderly Likely to be of the same class that committed most of the crimes in American cities (i.e. poor) Ineffectual at preventing crime Comedic figures Night Watch Many cities realized as early as the 18th century that better pay made the watch more effectual However, pay remained low for several reasons: Strong emphasis on voluntary service Fears about standing armies and corruptive potential of salaries for public officials Resentment of high taxes Authority of Night Watchmen Night watchmen had, by modern standards, extremely limited authority to police Could usually only respond to crimes in progress No investigative authority Were often forbidden from entering private dwellings Reported gambling dens, brothels, etc. but seldom broke them up 31 Moves to Reform By the 19th century, many Americans (and Britons) realized that not paying watchmen a salary also had strong corruptive potential In England in the late 1820s, the first efforts to professionalize and modernize police began to gain traction Robert Peel, the Home Secretary, proposed a Metropolitan Police Bill (1829) that centralized police forces under the Home Office Peelers or Metropolitans Bobbies were the first professional police force Received salaries Wore uniforms Expected to detect crime instead of just observe crimes in progress Replaced older, thief-taker system Were centralized, not just in terms of being national, but also in terms of being part of one body rather than disjointed watches Rise of Professional Policing The professionalization of the police was a process The U.S. never emulated the total centralization of the police By the 1840s, however, many U.S. cities began to develop similar, uniformed and salaried police forces Roots of Southern Violence HIST/PA/SOC 349 Southern Uniqueness The South was among the most violent regions of the country for much of American history Murder rates were highest in the 17th century, but they remained above national averages through the 19th Southerners evinced a high toleration for violence and for vigilantism South was slower than other regions of the country to develop prisons What is the South? South was a region defined by slavery in the early part of the nineteenth century Slavery had been a national institution prior to the American Revolution Many Northern states dispensed with it in the aftermath of independence Southern states, which were economically dependent on slave labor for the production of tobacco, rice, and (by 1820) cotton, retained the institution Explanations for Southern Violence Prevalence of Honor Culture Violence to one’s reputation was, in a sense, indistinguishable from physical violence Sleights against reputation had to be defended Discouraged use of courts and instead emphasized displays of masculinity and courage through physical violence Explanations for Southern Violence Southern agrarian economy did not require “dignity” in the same way that the Northern industrial capitalist economy did South had unique patterns of settlement South was settled by Scots-Irish people Herders rather than farmers in old country Absence of social fixedness made them more likely to resort to vigilantism instead of law Transmitted this culture to America Explanations for Southern Violence Presence of slavery Violence was necessary to maintain the system of slavery Enslaved people were brutally punished if they ran away, shirked work, or committed minor offenses Enslaved people were also encouraged to work through systematic torture Killing of enslaved people was largely tolerated “When a new hand, one unaccustomed to the business, is sent for the first time into the field, he is whipped up smartly, and made for that day to pick as fast as he can possibly. At night it is weighed, so that his capability in cotton picking is known. He must bring in the same weight each night following. If it falls short, it is considered that he has been laggard, and a greater or less number of lashes is the penalty. An ordinary days work is two hundred pounds. A slave who is accustomed to picking, is punished, if he or she brings in a less quantity than that.” -Solomon Northup Effects of Slavery on Southern Violence Slavery created constant tensions between black and white Southerners Racism, paranoia, and a desire to control black labor on the part of white Southerners increased violence against enslaved and free black Southerners alike Black Southerners’s desire for freedom and resentment of their oppression prompted some to commit acts of violence against white Southerners 1800: Gabriel attempts to lead an insurrectionary force into Richmond to fight for the freedom of enslaved people 1822: Denmark Vesey, a free black man, allegedly organizes a slave uprising in Charleston, SC 1831: Nat Turner, an enslaved preacher in Southampton County, VA gets a band of enslaved people together and kills at least 50-60 white people Effects of Slavery on Southern Violence Slavery bred tyrannical impulses and desire for absolute authority Slavery weakened the Southern criminal court system by removing so many people from the dominion of criminal law Weak criminal courts promoted vigilantism Slavery limited economic opportunities available to poor whites and free blacks alike Without legitimate means of advancement, people turned to violence and to crime Explanations for Southern Violence “Various fatal flaws in Southern culture: a brooding and pervasive sense of grievance and displaced frustration, an undue affection for guns, and a pessimistic evaluation of human nature that automatically assumed violence to the be the inevitable—if unfortunate—recourse in the face of intractable problems.” -Edward Ayers The Modern South The Modern South State peace index, based on the homicide rate, violent crime rate, incarceration rate, police presence, and availability of small arms. Prosecution, Policing, and Punishment in the Antebellum South HIST/PA/SOC 349 Cannibalism! Baltimore Sun, August 28, 1849. The following slides show police briefs – cannibalism – as a result of fighting. Cannibalism! Baltimore Sun, January 2, 1852. Cannibalism! Baltimore Sun, May 17, 1844 Maryland Penitentiary Records Look at the ”Marks” section - ”wants” means missing. How do you think this prisoners were maimed? Criminal Courts In many Southern states, particularly prior to the 1840s, there were two distinct court systems: Circuit courts handled cases involving white defendants Most case heard involved violent crime, but convictions for violent offenses were rare Courts of Oyer and Terminer handled cases of enslaved and free black defendants Typically did not provide for jury trials Sometimes did not allow for any representation for the accused Goals of Criminal Courts When it came to prosecuting enslaved people, Southern courts tried to preserve and reinforce the system of slavery This meant protecting white supremacy and the authority of slave-owners to do as they wished with their enslaved property Sometimes, however, courts struggled with how best to defend the institution of slavery and how to balance the property rights of individual slave-owners with the welfare of the larger system of slavery “Double Character” Slaves were legally property, not people Supreme Court of Alabama ruled that a slave “has no legal mind, no will which the law can recognize. And yet, property cannot commit crimes Slavery thus had a “double character” under the law Slaves were property in civil cases and people in criminal ones Criminal courts thus, out of necessity, had to recognize the humanity of slaves Complication: Murder of overseer Larger plantations often had white overseers whose job it was “discipline” enslaved people and ensure that they worked efficiently Because overseers were responsible for whipping enslaved people, they were popular targets for violence What happened if an enslaved person killed his or her overseer? Complication: Murder of overseer On on hand, an enslaved person killing an overseer was a crime and a severe violation of both the plantation hierarchy and the broader social order of the South On the other hand, overseers were easily replaced; slave-owners had an interest in preserving their enslaved property Some slave-owners actively hindered investigations into overseers’ deaths in order to avoid losing their slaves Rights of Slave-owners Enslavers were generally given rights that bordered on absolute over their enslaved people’s bodies It was illegal to murder a slave willfully in most states, but few white people were convicted of this. In South Carolina, where most cases involving the murder of slaves were dismissed before they went to trial, the conviction rate was still only 36\% Slave-owners also had the legal right to force enslaved women into sex This was not legally regarded as rape Northern abolitionist criticized this aspect of slavery strongly The Celia Case In 1855 Missouri, an enslaved woman named Celia hit her enslaver, Robert Newsome, over the head with a stick as he tried to sexually assault her. Newsome was killed; Celia burnt his body Celia was charged with murder, but she was allowed legal representation and a jury trial (this became more common in Southern states after the 1840s) Made the argument that she killed Newsome in self-defense. Defense did not work, but trial demonstrates conflicting ends of legal system Important to remember – at this time slaves considered property. So the fact that she was given legal representation and a trial is contradictory to that argument. Southern policing In large part because of fears of slave revolt, Southern states developed police forces early In cities and towns, these were organized militias that enforced curfew In rural areas, these were slave patrols composed of white citizens who rode around checking enslaved people for passes and tracking runaways Slave Patrols Slave patrols were intended to protect the public order and to preserve property rights Slave-owners often disliked them, though Felt they were a challenge to their authority Sometimes colluded with enslaved people to allude the patrols or undermine them Shows tension between preserving order in a slave system and respecting absolute property rights Penal Reform Southern states less enthusiastic about prisons and penal reform than the Northern states were South and North Carolina did not build penitentiaries Southerners continued to believe in the efficacy of public, corporal punishments Southern jails often resembled the older model of jail with fee systems and poor conditions Fee Schedule in the Richmond Jail Enslaved Person: 20-25 cents per day White Person: 30 cents per day Free Black Person: 43 cents per day Inmates charged 5 cents for each shackling/unshackling Legal Reform in Revolutionary America (and the Early Republic) HIST/PA/SOC 349 Changing Attitudes Enlightenment – 18th Century – 1700s. A renewed interest in ancient Greece – especially with math, science, philosophy, art, and music. More reasoning – less on “God caused things to fall” and more on scientific explanations. Began in Europe, but spread to the colonies. Declaration and Constitution highly representative of Enlightenment ideas. Crime in Enlightenment The Enlightenment also influenced the development of crimes, criminals, and punishment. Thinkers looked for ways to not punish criminals per se, but to prevent crimes. Preventing crimes focused on standardizing crimes and punishments. Philosophers saw swift and certain punishment that was standardized for all and would prevent people from committing crimes. If people knew the punishment before the crime, with no leeway, they would choose not to commit a crime. Think about the Star Trek episode. This is a really good example of this theory. Now think…what could go wrong? The American Revolution and LAw Following the Declaration of Independence in 1776, some states initially maintained the same office holders, courts, and even laws that had operated during the colonial period Consistency in courts was initially considered necessary to maintain a semblance of order However, the same ideologies that motivated the American Revolution prompted significant changes to the criminal law during the war and during the early national period Important Currents of Thought Shift in religious thought Religion increasingly focused on individual conversion experiences and repentance Greater faith in human redemption Enlightenment Ideology Faith in human perfectibility Belief in tabula rasa Humans are not inherently good or evil They are rational actors Obsession with quantifying, ordering, and creating rational hierarchies of knowledge Emphasized secular society Crime and sin not the same Discomfort with Common Law Common law relied on precedent and judicial discretion rather than written legislation Many reformers and political thinkers expressed dissatisfaction with the opaqueness of law under this system Reformers also believed that high levels of judicial discretion were indicative of despotic systems Montesquieu: law under a Republican Society had to be clear and followed to the letter Move away from common law prosecutions at federal level United States v. Hudson and Goodwin (1812) established that federal courts could not try crimes without a relevant law having been passed Montesquieu Wrote The Spirit of the Laws (1748) Three basic types of government: despotic, monarchic, and republican Harsh punishments were suited to despotic governments but not to republican governments Punishments increased in inverse proportion to how much a state valued liberty 8 Complaints against Judicial Discretion “In despotic governments there are no laws; the judge himself is his own rule. There are laws in monarchies; and where these are explicit, the judge conforms to them; where they are otherwise, he endeavours to investigate their spirit. In republics, the very nature of the constitution requires the judges to follow the letter of the law; otherwise the law might be explained to the prejudice of every citizen, in cases where their honour, property, or life is concerned.” -Montesquieu Cesare Beccaria Italian nobleman Wrote On Crimes and Punishments (1764) Revised ideas about the relationship between law, punishment, and crime “Man is a calculating animal” Argued against the notion that law had to be severe to be effective William Eden English nobleman Authored Principles of Penal Law (1771) Punishments should be based in “natural justice” and “public utility” If this were so, justice and mercy would go hand in hand In the promulgation of every new offense, let the lawgiver expose himself to feel what wretches feel; and let him not seem to bear hardest on those crimes, which, in his elevated station, he is least likely to commit.” Did not argue for the elimination of the death penalty, but did argue for it to be used far more sparingly Thomas Jefferson cited Eden more than any other thinker when it came to criminal law reform Results of Reformist Impulses Some Americans began arguing for the abolishment of the death penalty on grounds of humanitarianism and requirements of just governance Benjamin Rush, future prison reform advocate, argued that the death penalty was contradictory to reason, against the law of God, and outside the political contract William Paterson (NJ) Results of Reformist Impulses Many Americans began to argue for the elimination of the death penalty for minor crimes Constitution of New Hampshire: “No wise legislature will affix the same punishment to crimes or theft, forgery, and the like, which they do to those of murder and treason.” Law should seek to reform rather than “exterminate” Many states reformed their penal codes to reflect this understanding of law Things to think about How did the Enlightenment change the way Americans thought about crime and punishment. Philosophers questioned man’s ”original sin” which led them to think of other ways in which to prevent crime. Americans began questioning the death penalty. Which lends us to believe that people believed in rehabilitation and that people could be influenced by good as opposed to a finite term of good vs. evil.