This dissertation analyzes capital punishment from 1750 to 1800 in Boston, Philadelphia, and Charleston. All were important Atlantic ports with bustling waterfront and diverse populations. Capital punishment was an integral part of eighteenth-century city life with the execution day as its pinnacle. As hangings were public and often attended by thousands of people, civil and religious authorities used the high drama of the gallows to build community consensus, shape the social order, and legitimize their power. A quantitative analysis of executions reveals patterns of punishment over time. The number of executions was relatively low in the colonial period, varied greatly during the Revolution, rose sharply in the mid- to late-1780s, and then declined during the 1790s in Boston and Philadelphia but remained high in Charleston. There were also important differences between the cities which influenced the death penalty: the fusion of civil and religious authority in Boston, most visible in execution sermons; a penal reform movement and opposition to capital punishment in Quaker-influenced Philadelphia; and the relations between masters and slaves as well as the question of dual sovereignty over life by the state and the master in Charleston.
This study argues that capital punishment was an important tool of social control in early urban America. Executions were especially frequent in moments of real or perceived crisis. The mindset of juries was therefore essential in determining the punishment of a crime. More importantly, the death penalty was especially deployed to control the lower classes, as the majority of the condemned were young, male, and poor. Executions were correlated to forced labor. Boston, the city with the lowest percentage of forced labor, experienced the lowest rate of executions. Charleston, the city with the highest percentage, also witnessed the highest rate. Philadelphia fell between. The 1780s, a time when contemporaries believed that they experienced an unprecedented crime wave, saw the highest numbers of executions in all three cities with a peak late in the decade. By then the protection of property had become the primary agenda of the death penalty in urban areas.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PITT/oai:PITTETD:etd-12082005-165901 |
| Date | 30 March 2006 |
| Creators | Gottlieb, Gabriele |
| Contributors | Van Beck Hall, Seymour Drescher, Wendy Goldman, Marcus Rediker |
| Publisher | University of Pittsburgh |
| Source Sets | University of Pittsburgh |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-12082005-165901/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Pittsburgh or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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