Stephen John Hartnett

Stephen John Hartnett is an Associate Professor and chair of the Department of Communication at the University of Colorado Denver. Hartnett is the author of Globalization and Empire: The U.S. ...

Executing Democracy: Volume 1
Capital Punishment & the Making of America, 1683–1807

Stephen John Hartnett

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 until 1807, when the Federalists sought to impose law-and-order upon the New Republic. (The forthcoming volume 2 concludes in 1843, at the close of one of the nation's most heated periods of debate regarding executions.)

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 postwar 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.

CONTENTS:

List of Illustrations...vii
Preface...ix
Acknowledgments...xvii
INTRODUCTION. The Rhetorical History of "A Very Hard Choice"...1
CHAPTER 1. Settler Debauchery, Capital Punishment, and the Theater of Colonial (Dis)Order, 1683–1741...41
CHAPTER 2. The Paradox of a Republican Revolution Using Executions as Pedagogy, 1768–1784...79
CHAPTER 3. The Hanging of Abraham Johnstone and the Turning of Terror into Hope, 1797...123
CHAPTER 4. Enlightenment, Republicanism, and Executions, 1785–1800...161
CONCLUSION. The Hanging of John M'Kean and the Perils of Sinning in an Age of Reason...211
Notes...219
Bibliography...275
Index...303

Rhetoric & Public Affairs Series