We Shall Be No More : Suicide and Self-Government in the Newly United States / Richard Bell.
2012
HV6548.U5
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Title
We Shall Be No More : Suicide and Self-Government in the Newly United States / Richard Bell.
Author
Bell, Richard, author.
ISBN
9780674064799
Published
Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, [2012]
Copyright
©2012
Language
English
Language Note
In English.
Description
1 online resource : 20 halftones
Other Standard Identifiers
10.4159/harvard.9780674064799 doi
Call Number
HV6548.U5
Dewey Decimal Classification
362.280973
Summary
Suicide is a quintessentially individual act, yet one with unexpectedly broad social implications. Though seen today as a private phenomenon, in the uncertain aftermath of the American Revolution this personal act seemed to many to be a public threat that held no less than the fate of the fledgling Republic in its grip.Salacious novelists and eager newspapermen broadcast images of a young nation rapidly destroying itself. Parents, physicians, ministers, and magistrates debated the meaning of self-destruction and whether it could (or should) be prevented. Jailers and justice officials rushed to thwart condemned prisoners who made halters from bedsheets, while abolitionists used slave suicides as testimony to both the ravages of the peculiar institution and the humanity of its victims. Struggling to create a viable political community out of extraordinary national turmoil, these interest groups invoked self-murder as a means to confront the most consequential questions facing the newly united states: What is the appropriate balance between individual liberty and social order? Who owns the self? And how far should the control of the state (or the church, or a husband, or a master) extend over the individual?With visceral prose and an abundance of evocative primary sources, Richard Bell lays bare the ways in which self-destruction in early America was perceived as a transgressive challenge to embodied authority, a portent of both danger and possibility. His unique study of suicide between the Revolution and Reconstruction uncovers what was at stake-personally and politically-in the nation's fraught first decades.
Access Note
Access limited to authorized users.
System Details Note
Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
Digital File Characteristics
text file PDF
Source of Description
Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 08. Jul 2019)
In
E-BOOK GESAMTPAKET / COMPLETE PACKAGE 2012
E-BOOK PACKAGE HISTORY; POLITICAL SCIENCE, SOCIOLOGY 2012
E-BOOK PAKET GESCHICHTE, POLITIKWISS., SOZIOLOGIE 2012
HUP Complete eBook Package 2011-2014
HUP eBook Package 2012
HUP eBook Package Backlist 2000-2013
HUP eBook Package Backlist 2000-2014
HUP eBook Package Backlist 2000-2015
E-BOOK PACKAGE HISTORY; POLITICAL SCIENCE, SOCIOLOGY 2012
E-BOOK PAKET GESCHICHTE, POLITIKWISS., SOZIOLOGIE 2012
HUP Complete eBook Package 2011-2014
HUP eBook Package 2012
HUP eBook Package Backlist 2000-2013
HUP eBook Package Backlist 2000-2014
HUP eBook Package Backlist 2000-2015
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Table of Contents
Frontmatter
Contents
Introduction: Alarming Progress
1. Suicide and the State of the Union
2. The Sorrows of Young Readers
3. Saving Sinking Strangers
4. Wounds in the Belly of the State
5. The Threshold of Heaven
6. The Problem of Slave Resistance
Conclusion: Martyrs on the Altar of the Nation
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index
Contents
Introduction: Alarming Progress
1. Suicide and the State of the Union
2. The Sorrows of Young Readers
3. Saving Sinking Strangers
4. Wounds in the Belly of the State
5. The Threshold of Heaven
6. The Problem of Slave Resistance
Conclusion: Martyrs on the Altar of the Nation
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index