Excerpt from Confessions, Trials, and Biographical Sketches of the Most Cold Blooded Murderers, Who Have Been Executed in This Country From Its First Settlement Down to the Present Time: Compiled Entirely From the Most Authentic Sources; Containing Also, Accounts of Various Other Daring Outrages Committed in This and Other Countries Our publicatior? Is to the moral what the surgeon's is to the physical man. Details of horrid and unnatural crime cannot be contemplated with composure but the avidity manifested by the public mind, for the perusal, argues - however paradoxical it may seem - an universal interest in such recitals. This feeling was implanted by paovnce in the mind of man for a great and good end - and as far as our imperfect perceptions may attempt to penetrate the veil which con ceals Hts designs, we are justified in supposing that that end is the enforcement and wider utility of example. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

This eye-opening and well-researched companion to the first volume of Executing Democracy enters the death-penalty discussion during the debates of 1835 and 1843, when pro-death penalty Calvinist minister George Barrell Cheever faced off against abolitionist magazine editor John O’Sullivan. In contrast to the macro-historical overview presented in volume 1, volume 2 provides micro-historical case studies, using these debates as springboards into the discussion of the death penalty in America at large. Incorporating a wide range of sources, including political poems, newspaper editorials, and warring manifestos, this second volume highlights a variety of perspectives, thus demonstrating the centrality of public debates about crime, violence, and punishment to the history of American democracy. Hartnett’s insightful assessment bears witness to a complex national discussion about the political, metaphysical, and cultural significance of the death penalty.