Taming lust : crimes against nature in the early republic / Doron S. Ben-Atar and Richard D. Brown ; authors.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ben-Atar, Doron S.

Contributor:

Brown, Richard D.

Series:

Early American studies.

Early American Studies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Bestiality--United States--Case studies.

Bestiality.

Bestiality--United States--History--18th century.

Criminal justice, Administration of--United States--History--18th century.

Criminal justice, Administration of.

United States--Civilization--18th century.

United States.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (216 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania : University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In 1796, as revolutionary fervor waned and the Age of Reason took hold, an eighty-five-year-old Massachusetts doctor was convicted of bestiality and sentenced to hang. Three years later and seventy miles away, an eighty-three-year-old Connecticut farmer was convicted of the same crime and sentenced to the same punishment. Prior to these criminal trials, neither Massachusetts nor Connecticut had executed anyone for bestiality in over a century. Though there are no overt connections between the two episodes, the similarities of their particulars are strange and striking. Historians Doron S. Ben-Atar and Richard D. Brown delve into the specifics to determine what larger social, political, or religious forces could have compelled New England courts to condemn two octogenarians for sexual misbehavior typically associated with much younger men. The stories of John Farrell and Gideon Washburn are less about the two old men than New England officials who, riding the rough waves of modernity, returned to the severity of their ancestors. The political upheaval of the Revolution and the new republic created new kinds of cultural experience—both exciting and frightening—at a moment when New England farmers and village elites were contesting long-standing assumptions about divine creation and the social order. Ben-Atar and Brown offer a rare and vivid perspective on anxieties about sexual and social deviance in the early republic.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Introduction: Crimes Against Nature

Chapter 1. The Sisyphean Battle Against Bestiality

Chapter 2. The Unlikely Prosecutions of John Farrell and Gideon Washburn

Chapter 3. Sexual Crisis in the Age of Revolution

Chapter 4. Fearful Rulers in Anxious Times

Chapter 5. Puritan Twilight in the New England Republics

Notes

Index

Acknowledgments

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780812223750

0812223756

9780812209259

0812209257

OCLC:

870097665