Rites of Execution
Title | Rites of Execution PDF eBook |
Author | Louis P. Masur |
Publisher | Oxford University Press, USA |
Pages | 219 |
Release | 1989 |
Genre | Capital punishment |
ISBN | 0195066634 |
This study examines the conflict over capital punishment and the transformation of American culture between the Revolution and the Civil War.
Rites of Execution
Title | Rites of Execution PDF eBook |
Author | Louis P. Masur |
Publisher | |
Pages | 208 |
Release | 1991 |
Genre | |
ISBN |
Rites of Execution : Capital Punishment and the Transformation of American Culture, 1776-1865
Title | Rites of Execution : Capital Punishment and the Transformation of American Culture, 1776-1865 PDF eBook |
Author | Riverside Louis P. Masur Professor of History University of California |
Publisher | Oxford University Press, USA |
Pages | 222 |
Release | 1989-02-16 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 0198021585 |
Between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, Western societies abandoned public executions in favor of private punishments, primarily confinement in penitentiaries and private executions. The transition, guided by a reconceptualization of the causes of crime, the nature of authority, and the purposes of punishment, embodied the triumph of new sensibilities and the reconstitution of cultural values throughout the Western world. This study examines the conflict over capital punishment in the United States and the way it transformed American culture between the Revolution and the Civil War. Relating the gradual shift in rituals of punishment and attitudes toward discipline to the emergence of a middle class culture that valued internal restraints and private punishments, Masur traces the changing configuration of American criminal justice. He examines the design of execution day in the Revolutionary era as a spectacle of civil and religious order, the origins of organized opposition to the death penalty and the invention of the penitentiary, the creation of private executions, reform organizations' commitment to social activism, and the competing visions of humanity and society lodged at the core of the debate over capital punishment. A fascinating and thoughtful look at a topic that remains of burning interest today, Rites of Execution will attract a wide range of scholarly and general readers.
Compact American Promise
Title | Compact American Promise PDF eBook |
Author | James L. Roark |
Publisher | |
Pages | |
Release | 2001-05 |
Genre | |
ISBN | 9780312399290 |
American Concise History
Title | American Concise History PDF eBook |
Author | James A. Henretta |
Publisher | |
Pages | |
Release | 2002-03-01 |
Genre | |
ISBN | 9780312404543 |
American Concise History
Title | American Concise History PDF eBook |
Author | James A. Henretta |
Publisher | |
Pages | |
Release | 2001-11-01 |
Genre | |
ISBN | 9780312403355 |
Lincoln’s Hundred Days
Title | Lincoln’s Hundred Days PDF eBook |
Author | Louis P. Masur |
Publisher | Harvard University Press |
Pages | 385 |
Release | 2012-09-22 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 0674067533 |
"The time has come now," Abraham Lincoln told his cabinet as he presented the preliminary draft of a "Proclamation of Emancipation." Lincoln's effort to end slavery has been controversial from its inception-when it was denounced by some as an unconstitutional usurpation and by others as an inadequate half-measure-up to the present, as historians have discounted its import and impact. At the sesquicentennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, Louis Masur seeks to restore the document's reputation by exploring its evolution. Lincoln's Hundred Days is the first book to tell the full story of the critical period between September 22, 1862, when Lincoln issued his preliminary Proclamation, and January 1, 1863, when he signed the final, significantly altered, decree. In those tumultuous hundred days, as battlefield deaths mounted, debate raged. Masur commands vast primary sources to portray the daily struggles and enormous consequences of the president's efforts as Lincoln led a nation through war and toward emancipation. With his deadline looming, Lincoln hesitated and calculated, frustrating friends and foes alike, as he reckoned with the anxieties and expectations of millions. We hear these concerns, from poets, cabinet members and foreign officials, from enlisted men on the front and free blacks as well as slaves. Masur presents a fresh portrait of Lincoln as a complex figure who worried about, listened to, debated, prayed for, and even joked with his country, and then followed his conviction in directing America toward a terrifying and thrilling unknown.