Public punishment versus private judgment: Anti-gallows sentiment and criminal reform in antebellum literature 1772-1855

Abstract

Scope and Method of Study: Drawing upon historical, sociological, and cultural studies, this dissertation addresses how the literary work of antebellum American writers contributed to anti-capital punishment sentiment and legal reform during the early national period.

Findings and Conclusions:

This dissertation analyzes the development of anti-capital punishment sentiment in American literature from 1772-1855. In the early national and antebellum United States, criminal narratives and literature in the form of the execution sermon, the gothic novel, autobiographical testimony, and the African-American slave narrative informed the citizenry as to the public abuse of convicted criminals on the gallows and made the individual aware of the need for republican legal reforms such as trial by jury, the creation of penitentiaries, and private punishment. In the early national and antebellum periods, a less authoritarian system of justice encouraged by the principles of Enlightenment philosophy caused social reformers and philosophers to advocate for a more humane system of public punishment. The late Enlightenment belief in the humanity of each individual along with the growing republican contempt for the right of the state to execute its citizens led prominent literary minds to question the efficacy of capital punishment and public execution as a viable means of criminal reform. This project discusses the development of antigallows sentiment in the creative work of authors and progressive reformers from a variety of social backgrounds and ideological perspectives. Socially conscious writers from the Native American clergyman Samson Occom to the physician Benjamin Rush and from the former slave Frederick Douglass to the novelists Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville employed the republican legal discourse of the Enlightenment to influence the cultural attitudes of Americans concerning public punishment and transgressive behavior.