Introduction: the hanging of George Woods
"The right type of case": capital punishment, prisoners without capital, and public support for executions
The worst of the worst: Puritans, punishment and political power
"A vast circle of people": authority, public execution, and crowd control
"Darkness, threatening, ruins, terror": the penitentiary and capital punishment
The will of the people: early reactions against capital punishment
Legacy of conquest: Civil War, slavery and the first Ku Klux Klan
Shivaree: punishment by mob
"Let each man be his own executioner": rise of San Francisco vigilantes
Takeover: return of the San Francisco vigilantes
Boots, bullets, and big bucks: the vigilante myth
"Beaten all to smash": labor, the Robber Barons, and the law
"Death and destruction of the system": labor on trial
White on white terrorism after the Civil War
"Serving your racial needs": Colonel Simmons's Ku Klux Klan
"Foreigners and Negroes": discrimination, lynching, and the penalty of death
A clean, well-lighted place: death penalty reform in the Progressive Era
"Evolving standards of decency": civil rights and abolition of the death penalty
The endless end of capital punishment.