Author:
Hartnett, Stephen J.
Imprint:East Lansing, Mich. : Michigan State University Press, c2010-2012.
Description2 v. : ill. ; 24 cm.
Note:"In Executing Democracy I offer a two-volume rhetorical history of public debates about crime, violence, and corporeal - expecially capital - punishment in America from the late seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth century. Volume 1 begins in 1683, when William Penn first struggled to govern the rowdy indentured servants of Phildelphia; volume 2 ends in 1843, at the close of one of the nation's most heateed periods of debate regarding executions. I argue in both volumes that crime, violence, and punishment are not peripheral issues triggered by aberrant behaviors but central components of how our society has functioned ever since the first European settlers came to the New World. As the subtitle of the work suggests, studying the history of capital punishment amounts to an opportunity for revising some of our core notions about the making of America."--taken from the Preface
Note:v. 1. Capital punishment & the making of America, 1683-1807 -- v. 2. Capital punishment & the making of America, 1835-1843.
Bibliography Note:Includes bibliographical references (p. 275-302) and index.
