A confused and tedious treatment of the legal doctrine and moral
tradition in America of "no duty to retreat" - the doctrine that
one need not retreat when attacked, but may stand one's ground and
defend oneself. Brown (Northwest & Pacific History/Univ. of
Oregon; Strain of Violence, 1975) points out that under English
common law, a murder defendant, in order to successfully argue
self-defense, had first to convince the jury that he had used all
available means of avoiding the situation. Brown also recognizes
that American courts have vitiated and, in most cases, eliminated
this requirement. In several long, digressive chapters, he examines
the role of the gunfighter in the Old West, particularly in a war
between settlers and railroad interests in California in the
1870's. Advancing a historical theory seemingly irrelevant to his
subject, Brown reduces the history of the West to a confrontation
of socioeconomic forces (he repeatedly labels it the "Western Civil
War of Incorporation," a war between industrial and agrarian
forces) but fails to explain clearly how a "duty to retreat" would
have applied in these cases. He goes on to advance a number of
sociological theories about the crime surge in American society
(although choosing not to mention drugs, demographics, or the
proliferation of guns), and argues, finally, that America's refusal
to retreat has embroiled it in foreign wars (though one could make
a similar argument about the foreign policy of Britain, which has
etained the duty to retreat). Brown's information and theories are
interesting enough, but too little logical thread holds the various
arguments together as the author digresses from his legal argument
to sociohistorical theorizing. (Kirkus Reviews)
In 1865, Wild Bill Hickok killed Dave Tutt in a Missouri public
square in the West's first notable "walkdown." One hundred and
twenty-nine years later, Bernhard Goetz shot four threatening young
men in a New York subway car. Apart from gunfire, what could the
two events possibly have in common? Goetz, writes Richard Maxwell
Brown, was acquitted of wrongdoing in the spirit of a uniquely
American view of self-defense, a view forged in frontier gunfights
like Hickok's. When faced with a deadly threat, we have the right
to stand our ground and fight. We have no duty to retreat.
No Duty to Retreat offers an engrossing account of how this idea of
self-defense emerged, focusing in particular on the gunfights of
the frontier and their impact on our legal traditions. The right to
stand one's ground, Brown tells us, appeared relatively recently.
Under English common law, the threatened party had a legal duty to
retreat "to the wall" before fighting back. But from the nineteenth
century on, such authorities as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes
rejected this doctrine as unsuited to both the American mind and
the age of firearms. Brown sketches the influence of frontier
violence, demonstrating the tremendous impact of the famous gunmen
and the prevalence of what he calls "grassroots
gunfighters"--unsung men who resorted to their guns at a moment's
notice. These duels, ambushes, and firefights, he writes, were more
than personal vendettas: They were part of a "Western Civil War of
Incorporation," pitting gunmen--usually Republicans and Unionists,
who sided with the expanding banks, railroads, and
businesses--against cowboys and independent farmers, who were often
Democrats sympathizing with the Confederacy. Brown examines the
gunfight near the O.K. Corral in this light, showing how it was a
climax of tensions between Tombstone's Republican businessmen
(represented by Wyatt Earp) and the county's cowboys (led by the
Clantons and McLaurys). He also looks at such lesser-known battles
as the Mussel Slough war, in which resisting farmers, imbued with
the no-retreat ethic, fought for their independent lifestyle
against encroaching rail barons. This Civil War of Incorporation
fed the violence of the West and reinforced the legal doctrine of
"no duty to retreat."
The frontier days are long past, but Brown shows how the ethic of
no retreat continues to shape everything from our entertainment to
our foreign policy (including President Bush's "line drawn in the
sand") to our politics to cases like that of Bernhard Goetz. Though
challenged as never before by the values of peace and social
activism, it remains a central theme in American thought and
character.
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