In 1877, a decade after the Civil War, not only was the US gripped by a deep depression, but the country was also in the throes of nearly unimaginable violence and upheaval marking the end of the brief period known as Reconstruction and a return to white rule across the South. Celebrated historian Michael A. Bellesiles reveals how the fires of that fated year also fuelled a hothouse of cultural and intellectual innovation. The story of 1877 is also related through the the lives of famous historical icons such as Billy the Kid and John D. Rockefeller.

Violence forms a constant backdrop to American history, from the revolutionary overthrow of British rule, to the struggle for civil rights, to the present-day debates over the death penalty. It has served to challenge authority, defend privilege, advance causes, and throttle hopes.
In the first anthology of its kind to appear in over thirty years, Documenting American Violence brings together excerpts from a wide range of sources about incidents of violence in the United States. Each document is set into context, allowing readers to see the event through the viewpoint of contemporary participants and witnesses and to understand how these deeds have been excused, condemned, or vilified by society. Organized topically, this volume looks at such diverse topics as famous crimes, vigilantism, industrial violence, domestic abuse, and state-sanctioned violence. Among the events these primary sources describe are:
--Benjamin Franklin's account of the Conestoga massacre, when an entire village of American Indians was killed by the Paxton Boys, a group of frontier settlers
--militant abolitionist John Brown's attack on Harper's Ferry
--Ida B. Wells' condemnation of lynchings in the South
--the massacre of General Custer's 7th Cavalry at Little Bighorn, as witnessed by Cheyenne war chief Two Moon
--Nat Turner's confession about the slave revolt he led in Southampton County, Virginia
--Oliver Wendell Holmes' diaries and letters as a young infantry officer in the Civil War
--a police officer's account of the Haymarket Trials
--Harry Thaw's murder of the Gilded Age's most prominent architect, Stanford White, through his own published version of the events
--thepost-trial, public confessions of Ray Bryant and J.W. Milam for the murder of Emmett Till
--the Los Angeles Police Department's investigation into the causes of the 1992 riot
Taken as a whole, this anthology opens a new window on American history, revealing how violence has shaped America's past in every era.

On July 4, 1852, Frederick Douglass stood in front of a crowd in Rochester, New York, and asked, "What to the slave is the Fourth of July?" The audience had invited him to speak on the day celebrating freedom, and had expected him to offer a hopeful message about America; instead, he'd offered back to them their own hypocrisy. How could the Constitution defend both freedom and slavery? How could it celebrate liberty with one hand while withdrawing it with another? Theirs was a country which promoted and even celebrated inequality. From the very beginning, American history can be seen as a battle to reconcile the large gap between America's stated ideals and the reality of its republic. Its struggle is not one of steady progress toward greater freedom and equality, but rather for every step forward there is a step taken in a different direction. In Inventing Equality, Michael Bellesiles traces the evolution of the battle for true equality - the stories of those fighting forward, to expand the working definition of what it means to be an American citizen -from the Revolution through the late nineteenth century. He identifies the systemic flaws in the Constitution, and explores through the role of the Supreme Court and three Constitutional amendments - the 13th, 14th, and 15th - the ways in which equality and inequality waxed and waned over the decades.