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CAPITAL PUNISHMENT in EARLY AMERICA, 1750-1800 by Gabriele

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CAPITAL PUNISHMENT in EARLY AMERICA, 1750-1800 by Gabriele THEATER OF DEATH: CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IN EARLY AMERICA, 1750-1800 by Gabriele Gottlieb Equivalent of B.A., Augsburg University, Germany, 1995 M.A., University of Pittsburgh, 1998 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the University of Pittsburgh in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2005 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH Arts and Sciences This dissertation was presented by Gabriele Gottlieb It was defended on 12/07/2005 and approved by Seymour Drescher, University Professor, Department of History Van Beck Hall, Associate Professor, Department of History Wendy Goldman, Full Professor, Department of History, CMU Dissertation Advisor: Marcus Rediker, Full Professor, Department of History ii Copyright © by Gabriele Gottlieb 2005 iii Theater of Death: Capital Punishment in Early America, 1750-1800 Gabriele Gottlieb, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2005 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 iv 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. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .......................................................................................................IX 1.0 INTRODUCTION........................................................................................................ 1 2.0 “I AM MADE A SPECTACLE TO THE WORLD:” EXECUTION DAY IN EARLY AMERICA.................................................................................................................... 14 3.0 BOSTON, PHILADELPHIA, AND CHARLESTON: AN INTRODUCTION ... 64 4.0 EXECUTIONS IN BOSTON, PHILADELPHIA, AND CHARLESTON, 1750- 1800: A STATISTICAL ANALYSIS ........................................................................................ 95 5.0 CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IN THE LATE-COLONIAL PERIOD, 1750-1800 128 6.0 CAPITAL PUNISHMENT AND THE AGE OF REVOLUTION...................... 159 7.0 CONCLUSION......................................................................................................... 233 BIBLIOGRAPHY..................................................................................................................... 238 vi LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Executions in Boston by Year, 1750-1800..................................................................... 99 Table 2: Executions in Boston by Gender, 1750-1800............................................................... 101 Table 3: Executions in Boston by Race, 1750-1800................................................................... 101 Table 4: Executions in Philadelphia by Year, 1750-1800 .......................................................... 105 Table 5: Percentage of Executions in Philadelphia by Nature of Crime, 1750-1800................. 108 Table 6: Executions in Philadelphia by Gender, 1750-1800 ...................................................... 109 Table 7: Executions in Philadelphia by Race, 1750-1800 .......................................................... 109 Table 8: Executions in Pennsylvania by County, 1750-1800..................................................... 111 Table 9: Rates of Execution in Pennsylvania, 1750-1800 .......................................................... 112 Table 10: Percentage of Prosecutions by Nature of Crime in Philadelphia, 1750-1800 ............ 113 Table 11: Executions by Year in Charleston, 1750-1800........................................................... 116 Table 12: Rates of Executions in South Carolina, 1750-1800.................................................... 118 Table 13: Executions in Charleston by Gender, 1750-1800....................................................... 121 Table 14: Executions in Charleston by Race, 1750-1800........................................................... 121 Table 15: Executions in South Carolina by County, 1750-1800 ................................................ 122 Table 16: Executions by Colony/State, 1750-1800 .................................................................... 124 Table 17: Executions by Year, 1750-1800 ................................................................................. 125 Table 18: Executions by Nature of Crime, 1750-1800............................................................... 126 vii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: The Last Words and Dying Speech of Elisha Thomas (1788)....................................... 52 Figure 2: The Dying Address of the Three Thayers (1825) .......................................................... 54 Figure 3: The Last Words and Dying Speech of Thomas Goss (1778) ......................................... 55 Figure 4: The American Bloody Register (1784) .......................................................................... 56 Figure 5: Life, Last Words and Dying Confession of Rachel Wall (1789) ................................... 57 Figure 6: A Solemn Farewell to Levi Ames (1773)....................................................................... 58 Figure 7: A Representation of the Figures Exhibited and Paraded through the Streets ............. 145 Figure 8: An Exhortation to young and old to be cautious of small Crimes (1773)................... 150 Figure 9: Dr. Wm. Rogers and Bishop White conduct a service in Walnut Street Jail .............. 196 viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The people who have contributed to this project are numerous and it is impossible to name them all. I nevertheless would like to thank them, for the many discussions about the death penalty, their insights into its workings, and their inspiring support. There are a few people who spent extensive time with my project. I would like to especially thank the members of my committee, Seymour Drescher, Wendy Goldman, and Van Beck Hall who have all challenged my thinking and have helped me to sharpen my arguments. My deepest gratitude and appreciation belongs to my friend and advisor Marcus Rediker for introducing me to early American and Atlantic history, for encouraging me to explore my own interests, for inspiring me with his own work and teaching, and for mentoring me both academically and personally. I thank him especially for enduring the numerous drafts and versions of this dissertation and for commenting on each of them in such a careful and caring manner. Several institutions have provided financial assistance which enabled me to engage in extensive research in Boston, Philadelphia, and Charleston and several other archives around the country. The University of Pittsburgh and the Department of History gave me support through the Mellon Doctoral Fellowship, the Lillian B. Lawler Dissertation Fellowship, and summer research funding. I also received several short-term grants by various archives. I spent a month at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and the Library Company of Philadelphia, which gave me the opportunity to dive deep into diaries, journals, letters, and other valuable sources. This ix project was also supported by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission where I explored the legal records of Pennsylvania. The Quaker Collection of Haverford College gave me a wonderful month on campus to research Quaker attitudes and the role of Quakers in the penal reform movement. Finally, I spent a month at the David Library of the American Revolution in Washington Crossing. I would like to thank all these institutions and their staffs for supporting me in my research efforts. In each of the archives, the staff has proved an invaluable resource in locating sources,
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