On Du Bois' Move to Africa

Mass legal executions in America up to 1865

“…Executions through 1865 21 The vast majority of America's mass legal executions occurred during a span of just over two centuries, as the population grew from about a quarter million to nearer forty million persons. Only about one eighth of the subjects of mass executions had been convicted of murder, currently the only crime for which persons are sentenced to death and that even then accounted for 60% of all executions.…”

“…Through the eighteenth century, only three-eighths of those executed were convicted of murder; it accounted for an increasing percentage of those executed in the nineteenth century, over 90% of those executed during the first two-thirds of the twentieth century, and, for several decades now, the only crime for which criminals are executed. But murder was the primary offense for only 8% of those executed in groups of four or more through the eighteenth century 7 . There were three general types of behavior that led to mass executions.…”

“…For some of those offenders, mass legal executions sometimes had benefits for the victim beyond the perfunctory shriving time allowed condemned slaves. The most offensive actions by slaves were punished by hideous tortures without pretense of trials 9 . For this type of offense, just as criminologists often prefer to study homicide because that crime is more consistently reported than other offenses, so legal executions may provide the best hard data on matters of such concern to society as to be thought worthy of the ultimate sanction.…”

“…At the time of his initial research, the Communist Party, in which he was an active member, was tying itself to civil rights issues, and finding slave revolts helped both to show that blacks were not so docile as southerners pretended, and to encourage the idea of nascent revolutionary activity against an oppressive capitalist system. Similarly, the prominent Samuel Sewall's diary described killings by Indians in the Massachusetts Bay colony, followed by an execution of several of them 27 . The Indians were involved in King Philip's war, but the colonists viewed many Indian conflicts as crimes, with trial and execution 28 .…”

“…The Indians were involved in King Philip's war, but the colonists viewed many Indian conflicts as crimes, with trial and execution 28 . 18 Espy's data are by no means definitive, and some other data sources have different numbers of persons executed at the same time and place for the same offense. In addition to incompleteness, inconsistencies, and coding errors, there are two minor problems with the Espy data, making them suggestive but insufficient.…”