Violence in the New Nation: The Early 1800s
1800 The Library of Congress is established.
1801
1801 Thomas Jefferson is elected as the third President of the United States.
1803
1803 Louisiana Purchase—The United States purchases land from France and begins westward exploration.
1804 Journey of Lewis and Clark—Lewis and Clark lead a team of explorers westward to the Columbia River in Oregon
1805
Massachusetts State prison opens, and with it the state eliminates use of whipping, branding, and pillory as punishment.
1812
1812 War of 1812—Fought between the United States and the United Kingdom
1820
1820 Missouri Compromise—Agreement passes between pro-slavery and abolitionist groups. It states that all the Louisiana Purchase territory north of the southern boundary of Missouri (except for Missouri) will be free states, and the territory south of that line will be slave.
1823
1823 Monroe Doctrine—States that any efforts made by Europe to colonize or interfere with land owned by the United States will be viewed as aggression and require military intervention.
1823 Texas Rangers form to protect settlers in what is modern-day Texas.
1825
1825 The Erie Canal is completed—This allows direct transportation between the Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean.
1829
1829 Eastern State Penitentiary, the first prison to incorporate solitary confinement, built in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
1834
1834 New York and then Pennsylvania become the first two states in the country to ban public executions.
“Put yer hands up!” the man with the badge demands.
The man in black only sneers and gestures toward his gun belt.
“All right then . . . draw!” the lawman retorts.
Wham! Wham! Smoke fills the street, and in a moment, when it clears, one man lies in the dirt.
This is the dramatic image most Americans have in their minds when they think about lawmen and outlaws in the 1800s.
Such men did indeed exist in the Old West, but these characters were only one part of the larger story of crime and punishment in nineteenth-century United States.
Throughout the 1800s, groups of people—slaves of African background, Irish immigrants, First Nations peoples, Spaniards, Mexicans, pro- and anti-slavery activists, gold miners, cattle owners, sheep owners, land owners, and others—struggled to gain control over resources and ensure their survival in the expanding nation. Often, violence was their route to prosperity, and the line between “lawmen” and “outlaws” was drawn more by economic interests than by principles of justice.
INCREDIBLE INDIVIDUAL
Butch Cassidy
Butch Cassidy was a real-life nineteenth-century bad guy. He was born Robert Leroy Parker and grew up on his parents’ ranch in Utah. In his early teens, he left home and fell in with Mike Cassidy, a horse thief and cattle rustler. He worked for a little while as a butcher, where he earned the nickname “Butch.” He took the name Cassidy in honor of his mentor and friend.
Butch crossed the law for the first time when he journeyed to a clothing shop in another town, only to find the shop closed. He took a pair of jeans anyway, as well as a piece of pie, and left an IOU promising to pay on his next visit. However, the storeowner pressed charges.
Over the next few years, Butch’s offenses were far more serious. He held up banks and stole horses. He was arrested, went to prison, was released—and joined a circle of criminals, a gang known as the Wild Bunch. The Wild Bunch was responsible for numerous killings during their robberies.
Reforming Criminal Punishments
“In no country is criminal justice administered with more mildness than in the United States. . . . Americans have almost expunged capital punishment from their codes.” In 1835, when visiting Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville penned these words, the United States was only sixty years old, but it had already made impressive changes in its approaches to crime and punishment.
In the 1700s, authorities punished crimes most often by public ridicule, banishment, or execution. They staged hangings as lavish public ceremonies to impress the public and deter future lawlessness. Then, immediately following the American colonies’ declaration of independence from England, the Quakers—who opposed violence in any form—set about reforming criminal laws. The 1776 Pennsylvania constitution included construction of public “houses” to incarcerate criminals, as an alternative to execution.
States designed large penitentiaries (prisons) in the early 1800s to turn criminals into model citizens. The most influential prison was Eastern State Penitentiary, built in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1829. It featured the “solitary confinement” theory of rehabilitation: as soon as an inmate entered Eastern State, a guard covered his head with a hood so he would not see fellow inmates. Guards did not allow prisoners to socialize, play sports, visit friends from outside, receive letters, or do anything else—except read the Bible and perform physical labor.
Two Witnesses—Two Different Views
Alexis de Tocqueville visited Eastern State Penitentiary in 1831. He reported:
Thrown into solitude the prisoner reflects. Placed alone, in view of his crime, he learns to hate it. . . . Can there be a combination more powerful for reformation than that of a prison which hands over the prisoner to all the trials of solitude, leads him through reflection to remorse, through religion to hope?
Eleven years later, Charles Dickens disagreed. In his travel journal in 1842, he wrote:
In its intention I am well convinced that it is kind, humane, and meant for reformation; but I am persuaded that those who designed this system of Prison Discipline, and those benevolent gentleman who carry it into execution, do not know what it is that they are doing. . . . I hold this slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the brain to be immeasurably worse than any torture of the body.
The Eastern State Penitentiary.
Violence Over Immigration Issues: The Gangs of New York
When the Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville came to the United States in the 1830s, he was impressed by the peaceful state of American society. He could not foresee that waves of violence were about to descend on the United States—first in the East, then later in the West.
From 1845 to 1850, disease wiped out potatoes in Ireland, causing a million deaths from starvation, and sending half a million Irish men, women, and children to the United States. Many Irish died in over-packed vessels known as “coffin ships.” When the Irish immigrants arrived, they faced discrimination: they were Catholics, and Protestant Americans did not welcome their faith. Furthermore, the Irish were desperate enough to work for the very lowest wages, and this fueled resentment against the new immigrants, resulting in violence against them.
In 1842, Charles Dickens described the Five Points area of New York, where Irish immigrants lived, as “a world of vice and misery.” To survive in these mean streets, Irish immigrants banded together for survival by any means necessary in groups with colorful names like the “Dead Rabbits” or “Bowery Boys.” Philip Hone, a New York merchant, wrote in his diary in 1839: “The city is infested by gangs of hardened wretches. . . [They] patrol the streets making the nights hideous and insulting all who are not strong enough to defend themselves.” Corrupt politicians, eager for votes and finances, recruited gangs for extortion, running illegal businesses, and violent actions against political opponents. At the same time, more established settlers, ironically calling themselves “Natives,” formed their own gangs to fight against the Irish.
The copper badges of the New York City police force may have been why they came to be called “cops.”
Up until 1850, New York City had no official police. When politicians did get around to organizing law enforcement, they actually created two different groups—one called Metropolitans, and the other called Municipals. Citizens recognized the city police by their copper badges, which may have been the origin of the term “cop” as slang for police officers. The two rival police forces battled against one another, sometimes freeing criminals imprisoned by the opposing force.
DEAD RABBITS’ FIGHT WITH THE BOWERY BOYS
New York, July 4 1857.
A song written at Hoboken, by a Saugerties Bard.
They had a dreadful fight, upon last Saturday night,
The papers gave the news accordin’;
Guns, pistols, clubs and sticks, hot water and old bricks,
Which drove them on the other side of Jordan.
Like wild dogs they did fight, this Fourth of July night,
Of course they laid their plans accordin’;
Some were wounded and some killed, and lots of blood spill’d,
In the fight on the other side of Jordan
The new Police did join the Bowery boys in line,
With orders strict and right accordin’;
Bullets, clubs and bricks did fly, and many groan and die,
Hard road to travel over Jordan.
A riot between New York City police and the “Dead Rabbits.”
Crossings sweepers were among the street children of which Police Chief Matsell complained. He wrote of these children, “Clothed in rags, filthy in the extreme, both in person and in language, it is humiliating to be compelled to recognize them as a part and portion of the human family.”
New York Police Chief George W. Matsell, Semi-Annual Report, 1849
In connection with this report, I deem it my duty, to call the attention of your Honor to a deplorable and growing evil which exists amid this community, and which is spread over the principal business parts of the city. It is an evil and a reproach to our municipality, for which the laws and ordinances afford no adequate remedy.
I allude to the constantly increasing number of vagrants, idle and vicious children of both sexes, who infest our public thoroughfares, hotels, docks, &c.; children who are growing up in ignorance and profligacy, only destined to a life of misery, shame and crime, and ultimately to a felon’s doom. Their numbers are almost incredible, and to those whose business and habits do not permit them a searching scrutiny, the degrading and disgusting practices of these almost infants, in the school of vice, prostitution and rowdyism, would certainly be beyond belief. The offspring of always careless, generally intemperate and oftentimes immoral and dishonest parents, they never see the inside of a schoolroom; and so far as our excellent system of public education i[s] concerned, and which may be truly said to be the foundation stone of our free institutions, is to them an entire nullity. Left in many instances to roam day and night wherever their inclination leads them, a large proportion of these juvenile vagrants are in the daily practice of pilfering wherever opportunity offers, and begging when they cannot steal.
INCREDIBLE INDIVIDUAL
“Boss” Tweed
William Magear Tweed, known as “Boss” Tweed, excelled at political corruption. He is most famous for his leadership of Tammany Hall, the Democratic Party power block that controlled New York City’s politics in the mid-1800s. In the fictional movie, Gangs of New York, Tweed says, “The appearance of law must be upheld, especially while it’s being broken.” If he didn’t actually say that, he certainly lived by the principle. Controlling the courts, police, and public works, Tweed stole somewhere in the realm of $200 million from New York citizens—that would be 8 billion in today’s currency! Tweed was arrested for his crimes and jailed in 1871; he died in prison of pneumonia seven years later.
A DEPLORABLE “LODGING HOUSE” FOR IMMIGRANTS IN NEW YORK’S FIVE POINTS
New York Illustrated News, 1859
Down half a dozen ricketty steps, the door was already open to one of the filthiest, blackest holes we had yet seen.
A number of wretched bunks, similar to those on ship-board, only not half as convenient, ranged around an apartment about ten feet square. Nearly every one of the half-dozen beds was occupied by one or more persons. No regard was paid to age or sex; but man, woman, and child were huddled up in one undistinguishable mass. . . . The most fetid odors were emitted, and the floor and the walls were damp with pestiferous exhalations. . . . Not the slightest breath of air reached these infernal holes, which were absolutely stifling with heat.
In response to an inquiry regarding two small children sleeping soundly in one of the hideous beds, the manager replied that their older sister who cared for them was out begging, even at that late hour.
Anglo-American Law Comes to the West—The Texas Rangers
In 1821 Stephen F. Austin arranged for 300 families from the Eastern United States to settle in what was then known as the Spanish Province, what we now call Texas. Two years later, nearly 700 Easterners had moved there. Austin then called these settlers together and asked them to form an armed band for their protection. They called this group, formed in 1823, the Rangers, because their duties required them to “range” over the entire territory.
Early on, the Rangers provided the settlers with protection against Native Americans, who fought to preserve their own homelands threatened by waves of white settlers. Later, in the 1800s, the Rangers enforced the law against cattle rustlers and desperados. This same law enforcement organization—the Texas Rangers—continues to serve today.
One of the Texas Rangers.
Mark Twain’s view of Southern justice from “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”
In this episode, a lynch mob has gathered, attempting to bring a wealthy citizen, Colonel Sherburn, to justice after he gunned down a drunken man who accosted him. Huck describes the resulting confrontation:
They swarmed up in front of Sherburn’s palings as thick as they could jam together, and you couldn’t hear yourself think for the noise. . . . Just then Sherburn steps out on to the roof of his little front porch, with a double-barrel gun in his hand, and takes his stand, perfectly ca’m and deliberate, not saying a word. The racket stopped, and the wave sucked back.
Sherburn never said a word—just stood there, looking down. The stillness was awful creepy and uncomfortable. Sherburn run his eye slow along the crowd; and wherever it struck the people tried a little to outgaze him, but they couldn’t; they dropped their eyes and looked sneaky. Then pretty soon Sherburn sort of laughed; not the pleasant kind, but the kind that makes you feel like when you are eating bread that’s got sand in it.
Then he says, slow and scornful:
“The idea of you lynching anybody! It’s amusing. The idea of you thinking you had pluck enough to lynch a man! Because you’re brave enough to tar and feather poor friendless cast-out women that come along here, did that make you think you had grit enough to lay your hands on a man? Why, a man’s safe in the hands of ten thousand of your kind—as long as it’s daytime and you’re not behind him. Do I know you? I know you clear through . . . . The average man’s a coward. . . . Now leave!”
Virginia, 1801
Althea Cunningham walked quickly down the cobblestone street past a couple of cart vendors hawking vegetables and fruits, and came to a small brick building with a sign hanging over the door: Debtor’s Gaol. She raised and lowered the big brass knocker, and a porter opened the door.
“Yes?”
“I’m here to see my father, James Cunningham, Esquire.” She pointed to a basket under her arm, with two loaves of freshly baked bread.
The porter opened the door further, gestured, “This way, ma’am.”
A debtors’ jail in Virginia, like the one where Althea’s father was imprisoned.
The porter took out his keys and unlocked a door behind him, gesturing again for Althea to enter.
“Oh, Father!” Althea ran to her father. He was gaunt, his hair turning prematurely grey, and his clothes fraying, but James Cunningham still had the bearing of a distinguished gentleman as he rose from the wooden bench where he sat.
“Althea! What a delight to see you, dear.”
“Mother baked this bread this morning, and—Oh, Father, I cannot believe you are here—I cannot believe the injustice.”
He sighed. “It is the law.”
“Yes, but you have committed no crime, only fell into financial misfortune.”
He shook his hand. “Owing debt I cannot pay—it is not violence, true, but still it is a crime . . . and I must pay the penalty until somehow I make good all my obligations.”
“Oh, Father.” Althea buried her face in her hands. “How can we earn the money to pay off your debts when you are imprisoned here?”