Rites of Execution : Capital Punishment and the Transformation of American Culture, 1776-1865

Between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, Western societies abandoned public executions in favor of private punishments, primarily confinement in penitentiaries and private executions. The transition, guided by a reconceptualization of the causes of crime, the nature of authority, and the purposes of punishment, embodied the triumph of new sensibilities and the reconstitution of cultural values throughout the Western world. This study examines the conflict over capital punishment in the United States and the way it transformed American culture between the Revolution and the Civil War. Relating the gradual shift in rituals of punishment and attitudes toward discipline to the emergence of a middle class culture that valued internal restraints and private punishments, Masur traces the changing configuration of American criminal justice. He examines the design of execution day in the Revolutionary era as a spectacle of civil and religious order, the origins of organized opposition to the death penalty and the invention of the penitentiary, the creation of private executions, reform organizations' commitment to social activism, and the competing visions of humanity and society lodged at the core of the debate over capital punishment. A fascinating and thoughtful look at a topic that remains of burning interest today, Rites of Execution will attract a wide range of scholarly and general readers. Contents......Page 10 Introduction......Page 14 1. Ritual and Reform in Antebellum America......Page 20 2. The Design of Public Executions in the Early American Republic......Page 36 3. The Opposition to Capital Punishment in Post-Revolutionary America......Page 61 4. The Dream of Reformation and the Limits of Reform......Page 82 5. The Origins of Private Executions in America......Page 104 6. Anti-Gallows Activists and the Commitment to Moral Reform......Page 128 7. The Conflict over Capital Punishment in Antebellum America......Page 152 Epilogue......Page 171 Notes......Page 176 B......Page 210 C......Page 211 F......Page 212 L......Page 213 N......Page 214 P......Page 215 R......Page 216 S......Page 217 T......Page 218 Z......Page 219 Louis Masur's handsomely written account describes how, in the 1830s, public hangings were abandoned in favour of executions in the seclusion of prison yards. Masur sees attitudes toward state killing from the Revolution to the Civil War as reflecting the nation's social thinking This study examines the social and moral conflict caused by the issue of capital punishment in the United States. It analyzes the manner in which capital punishment transformed American culture between the American Revolution and the Civil War.