Bleeding Kansas" has earned its name. A state already scarred from the violence wrought by the likes of John Brown and William Quantrill, Kansas witnessed further episodes of wanton bloodshed in the late nineteenth century when settlers poured into a supposedly peaceful frontier.Focusing on the tumultuous years 1885–1892, Robert K. DeArment's compelling narrative is the first to reveal the complete story of the county seat wars that raged in Kansas—controversial episodes that made national news in the late 1900s but are largely unknown today. With a story populated by some of the most notorious characters of the West—including Sam Wood, Theodosius Botkin, Bat Masterson, and Bill Tilghman—Ballots and Bullets relives the violence that only avarice can breed. Ordinary, decent citizens were drawn into bitter conflicts to advance their own communities and block the fortunes of other towns, even if it meant using hired gunmen. Gripping and historically accurate, DeArment's account reveals a shocking chapter in the history of the West.

"Richard Maxwell Brown's brief study of 'violence and American values' is quite simply a tour de force of provocatie, well-conceived, and smoothly written historiography....rich with novel insights, new conceptualizations, and solid documentation." -Richard W. Etulain, in Reviews in American History. "Fascinating and provocative, No Duty to Retreat is an authoritative examination of violence not only on the American frontier and in American society at large, but in American jurisprudence as well." -Robert M. Utley, author of High Noon in Lincoln, Billy the Kid, and Cavalier in Buckskin: George Armstrong Custer and the Western Military Frontier. " No Duty to Retreat] is a delightful book and a provocative one to contemplate....It belongs in the library of all westerners." - Gordon Morris Bakken, in Montana: The Magazine of Western History. 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, Bernard Goetz shot four threatening young men in a New York subway car. Apart from gunfire, what do the two events 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. Richard Maxwell Brown is Beekman Professor Emeritus of Northwest and Pacific History at the University of Oregon and the nation's leading expert in the history of violence in American, western, and frontier history

Those who will recall the Simpson trial as the legal extravaganza of its century might be surprised by striking parallels between it and the late-nineteenth century trial of the infamous Frank James. In 1882, James urrendered to authorities voluntarily and was tried for murder the following year in Gallatin, Missouri. Petrone's analysis of primary and secondary sources tells the story of a charismatic prominent figure, who assembles his century's legal dream team and in the face of overwhelming incriminating evidence, wins acquittal from a sympathetic jury. 'The trial of Frank James has never before been explored in detail, although his acquittal has long screamed for explanation' - Bill O'Neal. 'Scholars as well as 'buffs' have always neglected the trial of Frank James. Thus ""Judgment at Gallatin"" fills in a major gap in our knowledge of the James brothers' - Richard Maxwell Brown.

Bleeding Kansas"" has earned its name. A state already scarred from the violence wrought by the likes of John Brown and William Quantrill, Kansas witnessed further episodes of wanton bloodshed in the late nineteenth century when settlers poured into a supposedly peaceful frontier.Focusing on the tumultuous years 1885-1892, Robert K. DeArment's compelling narrative is the first to reveal the complete story of the county seat wars that raged in Kansas - controversial episodes that made national news in the late 1900s but are largely unknown today. With a story populated by some of the most notorious characters of the West - including Sam Wood, Theodosius Botkin, Bat Masterson, and Bill Tilghman - Ballots and Bullets relives the violence that only avarice can breed. Ordinary, decent citizens were drawn into bitter conflicts to advance their own communities and block the fortunes of other towns, even if it meant using hired gunmen. Gripping and historically accurate, DeArment's account reveals a shocking chapter in the history of the West.

"Helldorado" offers cinematic images of wagon trains crossing the Great Plains, of Phoenix and Denver emerging from the dust and mud, of Tombstone blazing through a silver bonanza, and of the railroad joining East and West to change history. In his memoirs, originally published in 1928, William M. Breakenridge is shown doing about everything an enterprising and vigorous young man could do on the frontier. After leaving Wisconsin at the age of sixteen, he became a teamster, railroader; and lawman in Colorado, Arizona, and elsewhere. He took part in the Sand Creek Massacre, here described from his own point of view. "Helldorado" heats up in its evocation of early-day Tombstone, where, as deputy sheriff, Breakenridge encountered the Earp brothers, Doc Holliday, Bat Masterson, Luke Short, John Ringo, and Buckskin Frank Leslie.

The organized gangs of robbers and killers who roamed the Midwest and Southwest from the 1860s to the 1930s went to the same school and were succored by each other's notoriety. So Paul I. Wellman makes a case for "the contagious nature of crime." William Quantrill and his guerrillas established a criminal tradition that was to link the James, Dalton, Doolin, Jennings, and Cook gangs; Belle and Henry Starr; Pretty Boy Floyd; and others in "a long and crooked train of unbroken personal connections."

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.