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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.
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.
"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
"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.
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