Against the Gallows: Antebellum American Writers and the Movement to Abolish Capital Punishment

Contents

Acknowledgments ix Chapter One | Haunted by the Gallows Antebellum American Literature and Capital Punishment 1 Chapter Two | The Politics of Poetry The Democratic Review and Anti-Gallows Verse in 1840s America 34 Chapter Three | The American Newgate Novel Antebellum Crime Fiction and Anti-Gallows Sympathy 65 Chapter Four | Walt Whitman’s Anti-Gallows Writing The Appeal to Christian Sympathy 95 Chapter Five | Women’s Anti-Gallows Writing The Sentimental Strategy of E. D. E. N. Southworth 134 Chapter Six | Herman Melville’s Billy Budd The Legacy of Antebellum Anti-Gallows Literature 160 Notes 183 Bibliography 205 Index 223 Contents ...