:Rough Justice: Lynching and American Society, 1874–1947

Abstract

Scholars in recent years have produced dozens of good books on lynching, moving the subject toward the center of American history generally and specifically to struggles with race, violence, and law. Some have focused on a single lynching, placing one tragic event in larger contexts. Others have sought to find patterns across time and space, usually the South from post-Reconstruction to the 1930s. Michael J. Pfeifer takes the nation as his subject. He reminds us, as has other recent work, that lynching was not ephemeral and not exclusively southern. More important, Pfeifer attempts to create order out of the chaos of thousands of lynchings by showing how and why lynching patterns reflected social identities, beliefs, and values. Pfeifer's central argument is that lynching was part of a broader cultural war between those Americans who privileged due process and those who wanted community-based, quick, and violent retribution against certain suspected criminals. The latter, proponents of rough justice, were often lower-class, rural whites who believed the criminal justice system too slow and inefficient and insisted on personal and harsh retribution; the former were usually middle-class, often urban dwellers who saw law as neutral and fair and as a prerequisite to economic development. To bring more definition to these two sides, Pfeifer moves to analyses of regional differences, focused on the states of Iowa, Wisconsin, Wyoming, Washington, California, Louisiana, and New York.