Executing Democracy

by Hartnett, Stephen J.

• ISBN13: 9781611860474
• ISBN10: 1611860474
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-11-01
• Publisher: Michigan State Univ Pr

Summary

This eye-opening and well-researched companion to the first volume of Executing Democracyenters the death-penalty discussion during the debates of 1835 and 1843, when pro-death penalty Calvinist minister George Barrell Cheever faced off against abolitionist magazine editor John O'Sullivan. In contrast to the macro-historical overview presented in volume 1, volume 2 provides micro-historical case studies, using these debates as springboards into the discussion of the death penalty in America at large. Incorporating a wide range of sources, including political poems, newspaper editorials, and warring manifestos, this second volume highlights a variety of perspectives, thus demonstrating the centrality of public debates about crime, violence, and punishment to the history of American democracy. Hartnett's insightful assessment bears witness to a complex national discussion about the political, metaphysical, and cultural significance of the death penalty.

Table of Contents

Illustrations	p. vii
Preface: "What Follies and Monstrous Barbarities"	p. xi
Acknowledgments	p. xix
The Second Great Awakening and the "Grotesque Sublime" of Antebellum America	p. 1
O'Sullivan and Cheever's Death Penalty Debate, 1835-1842, and "The Highest Interests of Humanity"	p. 63
O'Sullivan and Cheever's Death Penalty Debate of 1843 and "The Great Merciless Machine of Modernity"	p. 129
Conclusion: Capital Punishment and the Dilemmas of Antebellum Modernity	p. 211
Appendix: The Liberator Attacks the Death Penalty, 1842-1843	p. 223
Notes	p. 229
Bibliography	p. 281
Index	p. 307
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.