Published by H-Law@h-net.msu.edu (December 2005)

Michael J. Pfeifer. _Published by H-Law@h-net.msu.edu (December 2005)

Michael J. Pfeifer. _Rough Justice: Lynching and American Society,
1847-1947_. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004. x + 245 pp. Notes,
bibliography, index. $35.00 (cloth), ISBN 0-252-02917-8.

Reviewed for H-Law by Dennis B. Downey, Department of History,
Millersville University

Lynching and the Revolt against (Legal) Formalism

Sunday, August 28, 2005, was the fiftieth anniversary of the murder of
Emmett Till, the African-American teenager from Chicago whose death in the
Mississippi Delta became a catalyst for the modern Civil Rights movement.
Had he lived, Till would be approaching retirement age, and like many of
his generation taking stock of a full life as he prepared for its next
stage.  Instead, his life was cut short in an instance of vicious
brutality that shocked the nation.  Many would say that Till was lynched,
and that the swift acquittal of the two men accused in the case compounded
the failure of due process and equal justice in this "most Southern place
on earth."

I thought of Emmett Till as I read Michael Pfeifer's important new study
of lynching in American history.  Like the Till case itself, any effort to
plumb the depth of emotional ferocity and make sense of the phenomenon is
fraught with peril.  Pfeifer has entered the quixotic debate over lynching
and popular violence with a bold perspective, offering fresh insights and
cleverly restating established judgments to suit his own purposes.  The
result is a tightly focused study that is thoughtful, nuanced, and
demanding in the best sense of the word.  In sum, _Rough Justice_ is an
important contribution that provokes deep thinking about crime and
punishment, violence and regionalism in American history.

Michael Pfeifer contributes to the scholarly discourse on lynching in
three distinct but complementary areas.  More than any other work on the
subject, _Rough Justice_ advances a comparative approach to lynching as a
dimension of popular violence in American history.  His comparisons follow
a regional trajectory, focusing on seven states in three regions (West,
Midwest, and South).  Furthermore, Pfeifer's regionalism is an implicit
challenge to the common association of lynching with a tradition of
popular violence rooted in a distinctive Southern culture.  Finally,
Pfeifer sets his discussion of lynching within a larger consideration of
the formal (read legal) administration of justice.  On this last and
perhaps most challenging point, Pfeifer writes persuasively, "To dismiss
the relationship between lynching, law and the death penalty is to ignore
a debate that constantly ignited fin-de-siecle midwesterners, westerners,
and southerners as well as lynching's first historians"  (p. 8).

_Rough Justice_ is an outgrowth and elaboration of Pfeifer's doctoral
dissertation at the University of Iowa (1998), and there is evidence of
that beginning throughout the narrative.  The research into primary
sources is impressive and the secondary literature is up-to-date. (Readers
might wish to consult Pfeifer's website, which stores a vast amount of
information on the lynching.)  Only infrequently does social science
jargon interrupt the flow of the manuscript.  For example, I am still
pondering the precise meaning of "masculinist perspective" in his
discussion of gender and the lynch mob (p. 62).

On the comparative dimensions of _Rough Justice _, Pfeifer is broad in his
thinking but surprisingly limited in his scope.  Broad in the sense that
he analyzes incidents and patterns in diverse states, and limited in the
sense that he is very selective in the states and incidents brought under
analysis.  The states in question are Iowa, Wisconsin, Wyoming,
Washington, California, Louisiana, and New York, or more precisely "the
region beyond the Alleghenies" (p. 63).  Pfeifer ascribes different
patterns and motivations to mob behavior in these states, and different
attitudes towards the criminal justice system.  To the author's credit,
Pfeifer's analysis is respectful of the complex motivations that could
stir local mobs to action.  Class interest is an overriding feature of his
analysis, but race, ethnicity and gender are important social factors
taken into consideration.  One of the great virtues of this study is its
awareness of similarities and differences between racial and nonracial
lynchings, and the underlying ideologies at work.

The strength of any comparative history is measured by how representative
the case studies are in illuminating similarities and differences across
time and space.  On this point, I think Pfeifer could have extended his
reach to be more inclusive of other incidents that fall within his
regional categories.  It is reasonable to question his selectivity, even
if one still can appreciate the demanding analysis he puts forth.  He
could have been less dismissive of eastern episodes, and he could have
looked more deeply into western and midwestern patterns.  Pfeifer's
apparent selectivity does not undermine his comparative interest, but it
does shift the balance in favor of the other two contributions:  the
debate about Southern distinctiveness and the analysis of attitudes
towards crime and punishment, especially the death penalty.

Implicitly, _Rough Justice_ makes a strong argument for understanding
lynching as more than a Southern phenomenon, more that is than the product
of a distinct regional culture that flourished in the post-Civil War era.
While the overwhelming number of lynchings occurred in the South, a
significant number, perhaps 15 or 20 percent, did not.  Pfeifer's evidence
compels a broader perspective than most historians and students of the
subject have allowed.  Without belaboring the point, the large number of
lynchings (racial and nonracial) beyond the American South were not
aberrations, and they cannot be explained by the mere migration of
southern attitudes to other regions.  Instead, as Michael Pfeifer
demonstrates, the roots of lynching lie deeper in the popular psyche, if
that is the word, and they relate to the deep-seated political and
cultural changes at work in American life.  On this point, while Michael
Pfeifer repeatedly acknowledges the influence of scholars like W. Fitzhugh
Brundage, Stuart Tolnay and E. M. Beck, one senses the abiding influence
of Richard Maxwell Brown's older studies, especially _Strains of Violence_
(1975), in his approach to crime and justice issues.

And herein is what I think is the most original feature of _Rough
Justice_, namely placing the discussion of lynching within the larger
context of shifting attitudes toward criminal justice in the United
States.  Popular sovereignty, an abiding rural localism, and fixed
attitudes toward "social enemies" (p. 12) all played a part in a pattern
of revolt against legal formalisms rooted in nineteenth-century culture
that survived well into the twentieth century.  What Pfeifer writes of
Wyoming stands for the other states under review:  "The complaints of the
rough-justice camp were rooted in a rural cultural perspective
unsympathetic to the deliberative nature of due process law and to the
legal reforms promoted by a rising middle class ... of city-dwellers.  The
net effect was a ... cultural war waged between rough-justice and due
process camps" (p. 29).  This "cultural conflict over criminal justice"
(p. 96) and capital punishment demonstrated deep divisions among the
citizenry.  Ideological differences, contrasting social experiences and,
indeed, I would say, very particular notions of the meaning of democracy
lay beneath the cultural debate over citizens' rights and communal
punishment.

Popular versus bureaucratic approaches to punishment (extralegal and legal
violence, if you will); entrenched rural workers at odds with a rising
urban middle class; and a spirit of localism ran up against enlightened
legal reform interests, all amount to a colossal clash of perspectives
over law enforcement.  Pfeifer is by no means one-dimensional in his
approach, and his analysis is rich and deep, but in a very clever way he
has resurrected the "modernization" debate in American history.  One might
also go so far as to say that this is a story of regional cultural
hegemony in the emergence of a more integrated national society.

Northeastern legalists serve as the agents of progress in bequeathing a
more progressive approach to due process reform, in effect remaking the
terms of capital punishment.  Historically, Pfeifer states,
northeasterners preferred "crime-control measures that fell short of
extralegal killing" (p. 123).  What began east of the Alleghenies in the
early-nineteenth century, we are told, eventually triumphed west of the
mountains with the collapse of localism and the end of an "embarrassing
fin-de-siecle revolt against due process" (p. 122).  A middle class and
the "integrative forces of the market" (p. 123) transformed the criminal
justice system in America, forging a new standard on issues of crime and
punishment.

I find Pfeifer's analysis compelling, even when I do not agree with
particular points he raises.  In some respects his selectivity limits the
impact of his argument.  And, where he would stress popular or rough
justice as a "revolt" against legal formalisms, I would choose the word
"resistance" as if to suggest deep-seated attitudes that are somehow
imbedded in our political and social fabric.  This is more than mere
semantics, but I think we are not that far apart.  I especially appreciate
the manner in which he has cautioned against viewing lynching as a
distinctive Southern phenomenon.

This book makes you think, not only about lynching and extralegal violence
in American history, but about larger debates over the death penalty. What
Pfeifer has done is to shift the discussion of lynching and race to a
broader field of play:  popular violence and cultural attitudes toward the
law.  In some respects this is reminiscent of earlier works, but with a
more sophisticated approach to the subject.  In so doing, as discerning
readers will note, he encourages a reconsideration of race and regionalism
in contemporary America.  This is particularly evident in his concluding
remarks about the contentious debate over a death penalty moratorium in
states like Illinois and Maryland.

This book deserves a wide readership.  Social and legal historians,
students of race and violence in America, and those interested in crime
and punishment will benefit from its bold analysis of lynching and the
revolt against due process.  _Rough Justice_ blends regional analysis with
well-formed views on popular violence and criminal justice, demonstrating
how the past continues to speak to the present aspect of American life.



         Copyright (c) 2005 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits
         the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit,
         educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the
         author, web location, date of publication, originating list, and
         H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For other uses
         contact the Reviews editorial staff: hbooks@mail.h-net.msu.edu



: Lynching and American Society,
1847-1947_. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004. x + 245 pp. Notes,
bibliography, index. $35.00 (cloth), ISBN 0-252-02917-8.

Reviewed for H-Law by Dennis B. Downey, Department of History,
Millersville University

Lynching and the Revolt against (Legal) Formalism

Sunday, August 28, 2005, was the fiftieth anniversary of the murder of
Emmett Till, the African-American teenager from Chicago whose death in the
Mississippi Delta became a catalyst for the modern Civil Rights movement.
Had he lived, Till would be approaching retirement age, and like many of
his generation taking stock of a full life as he prepared for its next
stage.  Instead, his life was cut short in an instance of vicious
brutality that shocked the nation.  Many would say that Till was lynched,
and that the swift acquittal of the two men accused in the case compounded
the failure of due process and equal justice in this "most Southern place
on earth."

I thought of Emmett Till as I read Michael Pfeifer's important new study
of lynching in American history.  Like the Till case itself, any effort to
plumb the depth of emotional ferocity and make sense of the phenomenon is
fraught with peril.  Pfeifer has entered the quixotic debate over lynching
and popular violence with a bold perspective, offering fresh insights and
cleverly restating established judgments to suit his own purposes.  The
result is a tightly focused study that is thoughtful, nuanced, and
demanding in the best sense of the word.  In sum, _Rough Justice_ is an
important contribution that provokes deep thinking about crime and
punishment, violence and regionalism in American history.

Michael Pfeifer contributes to the scholarly discourse on lynching in
three distinct but complementary areas.  More than any other work on the
subject, _Rough Justice_ advances a comparative approach to lynching as a
dimension of popular violence in American history.  His comparisons follow
a regional trajectory, focusing on seven states in three regions (West,
Midwest, and South).  Furthermore, Pfeifer's regionalism is an implicit
challenge to the common association of lynching with a tradition of
popular violence rooted in a distinctive Southern culture.  Finally,
Pfeifer sets his discussion of lynching within a larger consideration of
the formal (read legal) administration of justice.  On this last and
perhaps most challenging point, Pfeifer writes persuasively, "To dismiss
the relationship between lynching, law and the death penalty is to ignore
a debate that constantly ignited fin-de-siecle midwesterners, westerners,
and southerners as well as lynching's first historians"  (p. 8).

_Rough Justice_ is an outgrowth and elaboration of Pfeifer's doctoral
dissertation at the University of Iowa (1998), and there is evidence of
that beginning throughout the narrative.  The research into primary
sources is impressive and the secondary literature is up-to-date. (Readers
might wish to consult Pfeifer's website, which stores a vast amount of
information on lynching.)  Only infrequently does social science
jargon interrupt the flow of the manuscript.  For example, I am still
pondering the precise meaning of "masculinist perspective" in his
discussion of gender and the lynch mob (p. 62).

On the comparative dimensions of _Rough Justice _, Pfeifer is broad in his
thinking but surprisingly limited in his scope.  Broad in the sense that
he analyzes incidents and patterns in diverse states, and limited in the
sense that he is very selective in the states and incidents brought under
analysis.  The states in question are Iowa, Wisconsin, Wyoming,
Washington, California, Louisiana, and New York, or more precisely "the
region beyond the Alleghenies" (p. 63).  Pfeifer ascribes different
patterns and motivations to mob behavior in these states, and different
attitudes towards the criminal justice system.  To the author's credit,
Pfeifer's analysis is respectful of the complex motivations that could
stir local mobs to action.  Class interest is an overriding feature of his
analysis, but race, ethnicity and gender are important social factors
taken into consideration.  One of the great virtues of this study is its
awareness of similarities and differences between racial and nonracial
lynchings, and the underlying ideologies at work.

The strength of any comparative history is measured by how representative
the case studies are in illuminating similarities and differences across
time and space.  On this point, I think Pfeifer could have extended his
reach to be more inclusive of other incidents that fall within his
regional categories.  It is reasonable to question his selectivity, even
if one still can appreciate the demanding analysis he puts forth.  He
could have been less dismissive of eastern episodes, and he could have
looked more deeply into western and midwestern patterns.  Pfeifer's
apparent selectivity does not undermine his comparative interest, but it
does shift the balance in favor of the other two contributions:  the
debate about Southern distinctiveness and the analysis of attitudes
towards crime and punishment, especially the death penalty.

Implicitly, _Rough Justice_ makes a strong argument for understanding
lynching as more than a Southern phenomenon, more that is than the product
of a distinct regional culture that flourished in the post-Civil War era.
While the overwhelming number of lynchings occurred in the South, a
significant number, perhaps 15 or 20 percent, did not.  Pfeifer's evidence
compels a broader perspective than most historians and students of the
subject have allowed.  Without belaboring the point, the large number of
lynchings (racial and nonracial) beyond the American South were not
aberrations, and they cannot be explained by the mere migration of
southern attitudes to other regions.  Instead, as Michael Pfeifer
demonstrates, the roots of lynching lie deeper in the popular psyche, if
that is the word, and they relate to the deep-seated political and
cultural changes at work in American life.  On this point, while Michael
Pfeifer repeatedly acknowledges the influence of scholars like W. Fitzhugh
Brundage, Stuart Tolnay and E. M. Beck, one senses the abiding influence
of Richard Maxwell Brown's older studies, especially _Strains of Violence_
(1975), in his approach to crime and justice issues.

And herein is what I think is the most original feature of _Rough
Justice_, namely placing the discussion of lynching within the larger
context of shifting attitudes toward criminal justice in the United
States.  Popular sovereignty, an abiding rural localism, and fixed
attitudes toward "social enemies" (p. 12) all played a part in a pattern
of revolt against legal formalisms rooted in nineteenth-century culture
that survived well into the twentieth century.  What Pfeifer writes of
Wyoming stands for the other states under review:  "The complaints of the
rough-justice camp were rooted in a rural cultural perspective
unsympathetic to the deliberative nature of due process law and to the
legal reforms promoted by a rising middle class ... of city-dwellers.  The
net effect was a ... cultural war waged between rough-justice and due
process camps" (p. 29).  This "cultural conflict over criminal justice"
(p. 96) and capital punishment demonstrated deep divisions among the
citizenry.  Ideological differences, contrasting social experiences and,
indeed, I would say, very particular notions of the meaning of democracy
lay beneath the cultural debate over citizens' rights and communal
punishment.

Popular versus bureaucratic approaches to punishment (extralegal and legal
violence, if you will); entrenched rural workers at odds with a rising
urban middle class; and a spirit of localism ran up against enlightened
legal reform interests, all amount to a colossal clash of perspectives
over law enforcement.  Pfeifer is by no means one-dimensional in his
approach, and his analysis is rich and deep, but in a very clever way he
has resurrected the "modernization" debate in American history.  One might
also go so far as to say that this is a story of regional cultural
hegemony in the emergence of a more integrated national society.

Northeastern legalists serve as the agents of progress in bequeathing a
more progressive approach to due process reform, in effect remaking the
terms of capital punishment.  Historically, Pfeifer states,
northeasterners preferred "crime-control measures that fell short of
extralegal killing" (p. 123).  What began east of the Alleghenies in the
early-nineteenth century, we are told, eventually triumphed west of the
mountains with the collapse of localism and the end of an "embarrassing
fin-de-siecle revolt against due process" (p. 122).  A middle class and
the "integrative forces of the market" (p. 123) transformed the criminal
justice system in America, forging a new standard on issues of crime and
punishment.

I find Pfeifer's analysis compelling, even when I do not agree with
particular points he raises.  In some respects his selectivity limits the
impact of his argument.  And, where he would stress popular or rough
justice as a "revolt" against legal formalisms, I would choose the word
"resistance" as if to suggest deep-seated attitudes that are somehow
imbedded in our political and social fabric.  This is more than mere
semantics, but I think we are not that far apart.  I especially appreciate
the manner in which he has cautioned against viewing lynching as a
distinctive Southern phenomenon.

This book makes you think, not only about lynching and extralegal violence
in American history, but about larger debates over the death penalty. What
Pfeifer has done is to shift the discussion of lynching and race to a
broader field of play:  popular violence and cultural attitudes toward the
law.  In some respects this is reminiscent of earlier works, but with a
more sophisticated approach to the subject.  In so doing, as discerning
readers will note, he encourages a reconsideration of race and regionalism
in contemporary America.  This is particularly evident in his concluding
remarks about the contentious debate over a death penalty moratorium in
states like Illinois and Maryland.

This book deserves a wide readership.  Social and legal historians,
students of race and violence in America, and those interested in crime
and punishment will benefit from its bold analysis of lynching and the
revolt against due process.  _Rough Justice_ blends regional analysis with
well-formed views on popular violence and criminal justice, demonstrating
how the past continues to speak to the present aspect of American life.



         Copyright (c) 2005 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits
         the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit,
         educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the
         author, web location, date of publication, originating list, and
         H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For other uses
         contact the Reviews editorial staff: hbooks@mail.h-net.msu.edu

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