Executing Democracy: Volume One

Capital Punishment & the Making of America, 1683-1807

Stephen J. Hartnett

• Publisher: Michigan State University Press
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN:
  9781611865370
  9780870138690
• eBook ISBN:
  9781628950717
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Rhetoric
• Index: Social Sciences

Executing Democracy: Capital Punishment & the Making of America, 1683-1807 is the first volume of a rhetorical history of public debates about crime, violence, and capital punishment in America. This examination begins in 1683, when William Penn first struggled to govern the rowdy indentured servants of Philadelphia, and continues up until 1807, when the Federalists sought to impose law-and-order upon the New Republic.
     This volume offers a lively historical overview of how crime, violence, and capital punishment influenced the settling of the New World, the American Revolution, and the frantic post-war political scrambling to establish norms that would govern the new republic.
     By presenting a macro-historical overview, and by filling the arguments with voices from different political camps and communicative genres, Hartnett provides readers with fresh perspectives for understanding the centrality of public debates about capital punishment to the history of American democracy.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction. The Rhetorical History of “A Very Hard Choice”
• Chapter 1. Settler Debauchery, Capital Punishment, and the Theater of Colonial (Dis)Order, 1683–1741
• Chapter 2. The Paradox of a Republican Revolution Using Executions as Pedagogy, 1768–1784
• Chapter 3. The Hanging of Abraham Johnstone and the Turning of Terror into Hope, 1797
• Chapter 4. Enlightenment, Republicanism, and Executions, 1785–1800
• Conclusion. The Hanging of John M'Kean and the Perils of Sinning in an Age of Reason
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index