Hi Reb,
I Googled to see what I could find on pre-Civil War crime rates. (There seems to be general agreement that the crime rate post Civil War was the highest in the nation's history).
"Crime statistics for the last (meaning 19th) century are, quite naturally, often very defective, but there are important exceptions. One example is Massachussetts, where criminal records for the 19th Century are probably better kept than elsewhere. The conclusions drawn from these are therefore of major significance."
"While all criminal statistics are subject to some doubt, the central conclusion about figures from Massachussetts may be stated with confidence: serious crime in metropolitan Boston has declined sharply between the middle of the 19th Century and the middle of the 20th Century."
From a Senate Committee about Washington just before the Civil War, "Riot and bloodshed are a daily occurence. Innocent and unoffending persons are shot, stabbed and otherwise shamefully maltreated and not infrequently the offender is not even arrested."
Los Angeles 1850s: "In a single 15 month period in the 1850s, a total of 44 murders were committed in Los Angeles, then a town of 8,000 inhabitants - almost forty or fifty times higher than the city's current murder rate."
"Because domestic tranquility appeared to be the norm, Americans who came of age during the 40s and 50s are unaware of how violent and crime ridden the US had always been....... the upsurge of crime in the 1960s appeared an aberration from the norm, not a return to it."
Let me know if you want the specific references to follow up.
Cheers,
Sid.
Now Here's an Interesting Story....
Moderator: Commissar D, the Evil
Washington is not part of the United States. 
As to crime rates - even today they are artifically high. The drug war automatically criminalizes millions who do no crime except in the eyes of money hungry politicos.
I confess that I sometimes forget to add in the stats for places like Mass. and NY. They seem so foriegn to me I guess because they are so different from the south.
cheers
Reb
As to crime rates - even today they are artifically high. The drug war automatically criminalizes millions who do no crime except in the eyes of money hungry politicos.
I confess that I sometimes forget to add in the stats for places like Mass. and NY. They seem so foriegn to me I guess because they are so different from the south.
cheers
Reb
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sid guttridge
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Sid
Stats exists but I must confess I haven't looked at this stuff since I was doing my LEO training years ago. Learned all about history of police and sheriffs (shire-reeve) etc but not sure I have the energy to go back and look all that junk up again.
I will admit that the south in those days and post ACV as well could be a violent place. I have a book of Biographies of GA Generals and IRRC something like 8 of them who survived the war with no more than wounds were subsequently killed in duels / shootouts.
On the other hand the desperado type stuff was absent until post ACW and then it existed in a brief flurry of several years - with ex-Reb partisans like the James Boys adding heat to that fire.
Ultimately settled down fast as vets from North and South moved west and were too busy to tolerate that sort of thing anymore.
I'd be curious as to your thoughts on dueling? plusses, minuses?
cheers
Reb
Stats exists but I must confess I haven't looked at this stuff since I was doing my LEO training years ago. Learned all about history of police and sheriffs (shire-reeve) etc but not sure I have the energy to go back and look all that junk up again.
I will admit that the south in those days and post ACV as well could be a violent place. I have a book of Biographies of GA Generals and IRRC something like 8 of them who survived the war with no more than wounds were subsequently killed in duels / shootouts.
On the other hand the desperado type stuff was absent until post ACW and then it existed in a brief flurry of several years - with ex-Reb partisans like the James Boys adding heat to that fire.
Ultimately settled down fast as vets from North and South moved west and were too busy to tolerate that sort of thing anymore.
I'd be curious as to your thoughts on dueling? plusses, minuses?
cheers
Reb
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sid guttridge
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Hi Reb,
I hate posturing, bravado and the misuse of calls to honour and I can't see any pluses to duelling.
The fact that one man may be better at fencing or as a shot than another man wouldn't resolve who was actually right or more honourable. It just establishes who is the better shot or swordsman. Anyone unskilled in either, who accepts a challenge from someone who is so skilled, is an idiot, and anyone who challenges someone knowing full well they are themselves superior is something of a coward.
Any Southern gentleman who was silly enough to get killed in a duel in the 1840s or 1850s, or killed a fellow Southern gentleman in a duel during the same period, was simply depriving their society of somebody valuable in the coming struggle for something really worth fighting for - that society's survival on the field of battle. They are group candidates for the Darwin Awards!
Cheers,
Sid.
I hate posturing, bravado and the misuse of calls to honour and I can't see any pluses to duelling.
The fact that one man may be better at fencing or as a shot than another man wouldn't resolve who was actually right or more honourable. It just establishes who is the better shot or swordsman. Anyone unskilled in either, who accepts a challenge from someone who is so skilled, is an idiot, and anyone who challenges someone knowing full well they are themselves superior is something of a coward.
Any Southern gentleman who was silly enough to get killed in a duel in the 1840s or 1850s, or killed a fellow Southern gentleman in a duel during the same period, was simply depriving their society of somebody valuable in the coming struggle for something really worth fighting for - that society's survival on the field of battle. They are group candidates for the Darwin Awards!
Cheers,
Sid.
Sid
The plus was a general trend towards good manners. Southern gentlemen read a lot of Scott - perhaps too much.
That said, I don't think dueling should be illegal - but I do think its sort of stupid - for all the reasons you noted.
Wellington frowned upon it as well. But it was always or mostly, a young man's thing. Pride and honour are easily offended at the younger ages and brawling was frowned upon as undignified.
Fortunately for the gene pool - most duels ended with a drop of blood or a shot for honour.
One thinks of Evander Law (Law's Alabama Brigade of Gettysburg fame). He and an officer from another brigade fought a duel that I certainly would want no part of. They both entered a woods- at several hundreds of years from each other, each with a Miss. Long Rifle. Ambush was the rules.
Fortunately a young officer rode into the woods at the last minute having brokered an agreement between the seconds that was acceptable to all.
I guess you had to be there but that sounds pretty crazy to me.
cheers
Reb
The plus was a general trend towards good manners. Southern gentlemen read a lot of Scott - perhaps too much.
That said, I don't think dueling should be illegal - but I do think its sort of stupid - for all the reasons you noted.
Wellington frowned upon it as well. But it was always or mostly, a young man's thing. Pride and honour are easily offended at the younger ages and brawling was frowned upon as undignified.
Fortunately for the gene pool - most duels ended with a drop of blood or a shot for honour.
One thinks of Evander Law (Law's Alabama Brigade of Gettysburg fame). He and an officer from another brigade fought a duel that I certainly would want no part of. They both entered a woods- at several hundreds of years from each other, each with a Miss. Long Rifle. Ambush was the rules.
Fortunately a young officer rode into the woods at the last minute having brokered an agreement between the seconds that was acceptable to all.
I guess you had to be there but that sounds pretty crazy to me.
cheers
Reb
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sid guttridge
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Hi Reb,
Yup. I guess you had to be there.
That could have been a heck of a long duel. Lee and Grant lost entire army corps in the Wilderness for days. What chance of two guys determined not to be found being seen by each other in a wood?
Yup, I guess the South had the consolation of supplying the best mannered corpses to your civil war. Pehaps that was why it was called the "civil" war?
Cheers,
Sid.
Yup. I guess you had to be there.
That could have been a heck of a long duel. Lee and Grant lost entire army corps in the Wilderness for days. What chance of two guys determined not to be found being seen by each other in a wood?
Yup, I guess the South had the consolation of supplying the best mannered corpses to your civil war. Pehaps that was why it was called the "civil" war?
Cheers,
Sid.
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phylo_roadking
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He and an officer from another brigade fought a duel that I certainly would want no part of. They both entered a woods- at several hundreds of years from each other, each with a Miss. Long Rifle. Ambush was the rules.
I've read it described as a "Soldier's Duel" before now. Certainly duelling - being an affair of honour - is naturally done with archaic weapns; even sabres in the German "trad" style was a highly styllised affair - there's nothing faster that a fencing duel to draw blood/score points. I once read it took an average of SIX SECONDS to win or lose - in a pistol affair they wouldn't have stopped pacing!
But the Law affair was to be as much a test of a soldier's skills one-on-one. Maybe a more "pure" contest given that they were both officers as well as gentlemen (alledgedly! LOL)...I suppose they had to learn those skills sometime LMAO!
"Well, my days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle." - Malcolm Reynolds