The Anti-Gallows Movement in Antebellum Literature

The Anti-Gallows Movement: Cesare Beccaria, Monetesquieu, and Republican Criminal Justice Reform in Antebellum Literature 1772-1862 examines the development of anti capital punishment sentiment in antebellum American Literature. Legal and philosophical debates over the effectiveness of capital punishment and penal reform have played a significant role in American civic and political life since the republican rejection of the Monarchy and oppression during the Revolution. In the late eighteenth a