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Reviewed by:
  • American Homicide
  • Elaine Frantz Parsons (bio)
American Homicide. By Randolph Roth. (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009. Pp. 655. Cloth, $45.00.)

American Homicide is based on a massive data-gathering project headed by Randolph Roth and Douglas Eckberg that should transform the study of violence in the United States. The Historical Violence Database (http://cjrc.osu.edu/researchprojects/hvd/) includes a staggering amount of evidence—including a substantial sampling of "newspaper articles, diaries, letters, local histories, coroners' reports, vital records, government documents, court records, and court case files" (477)—from the colonial days through the present. With this book, Roth takes the database for a ride. His ambitious task is to explain change over time in homicide rates by region, type of homicide, and race and immigrant status of perpetrators [End Page 272] and victims. He argues that four interconnected factors have profoundly influenced homicide rates: belief in the stability of government, levels of popular trust in government, patriotism and a sense of solidarity, and belief in the legitimacy of social hierarchy and the possibility of finding an acceptable place within it without violence.

The chapter that is likely to be of most interest to readers of this journal is entitled "All Is Confusion, Excitement and Distrust," which focuses on the mid-nineteenth through early twentieth century. This is the crucial period in Roth's analysis: when the U.S. homicide rate diverged from that of other Western nations. While homicides in other nations declined during this time, those in the United States increased, particularly during the 1840s and 1850s. Roth acknowledges that immigration, economic hardship, and "the conquest of areas populated by Hispanic and Native peoples" were factors in many homicides (299) but determines that, ultimately, homicide increased "because Americans could not coalesce into a nation" (300). As Americans became disillusioned with the nation, and unsure that they had a fair position within it, more of them "chose to protect their rights … by force, either because they felt that they could no longer count on the government … or because they despised the government" (301). Some of the murders during this period could be attributed directly to these causes, such as those related to guerilla activity during the Civil War, labor violence, vigilantism, Reconstruction-era racial violence, or nativist riots; most, however, were only indirectly motivated by them.

Roth claims that "America became homicidal in the mid-nineteenth century because it was the only major Western country that failed at nation-building" (384). Yet that dynamic played out differently in different regions. In the North, a low murder rate during the early national period skyrocketed in the antebellum period, due to the deskilling of labor, increased class tensions, and nativism. Changes in murder culture also contributed, such as the emergence of a "new [more aggressive] masculine style" (314), an increase in men carrying handguns and knives (315), and the development of a paid police force (325). The rural South already had a high murder rate by the 1820s and was one of the few areas not to experience an increase in the 1840s and 1850s. Regional solidarity fostered by "the appeal of the proslavery movement and the absence of immigrants" (239) kept rates from rising before and during the Civil War. After the war, however, alienated whites drove up murder rates, though less in places where established political elites managed to retain political control. Finally, the Southwest experienced a "staggering" murder rate in the [End Page 273] 1840s and 1850s, fueled by the displacements of the Mexican War and related racial and property violence, but also by the immigration of southerners accustomed to violence, the impotence of the government, and labor disputes. This rate decreased in the ensuing decades but remained high compared to the rest of the nation.

Roth, then, endeavors to do it all: he provides a grand overarching explanation without sacrificing local difference and detail. Not surprisingly, however, this approach has its drawbacks. Roth has to rely on a rather shallow understanding of each context he discusses. Take, for instance, his central claim that nineteenth-century Americans' distrust of the national government led to alienation and an unwillingness to respect the legal...

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