From the Publisher
In 1806 an anxious crowd of thousands descended upon Lenox, Massachusetts, for the public hanging of Ephraim Wheeler, condemned for the rape of his thirteen-year-old daughter, Betsy. Not all witnesses believed justice had triumphed. The death penalty had become controversial; no one had been executed for rape in Massachusetts in more than a quarter century. Wheeler maintained his innocence. Over one hundred local citizens petitioned for his pardon—including, most remarkably, Betsy and her mother.
Impoverished, illiterate, a failed farmer who married into a mixed-race family and clashed routinely with his wife, Wheeler existed on the margins of society. Using the trial report to reconstruct the tragic crime and drawing on Wheeler's jailhouse autobiography to unravel his troubled family history, Irene Quenzler Brown and Richard D. Brown illuminate a rarely seen slice of early America. They imaginatively and sensitively explore issues of family violence, poverty, gender, race and class, religion, and capital punishment, revealing similarities between death penalty politics in America today and two hundred years ago.
Beautifully crafted, engagingly written, this unforgettable story probes deeply held beliefs about morality and about the nature of justice.
Michael Kenney
[T]he Browns, both professors at the University of Connecticut, have assembled a richly nuanced account.—The Boston Globe
Publishers Weekly
History's grand narratives-the American Revolution, the Civil War, the Gold Rush-are always crowd pleasers, but microhistory, on the scale of everyday persons and singular events, draws readers seeking a more intimate encounter. The case unfolded here, of a man executed for raping his daughter, offers such an experience, bringing readers face to face with a family torn by domestic violence and civic authorities struggling with questions of justice. Throughout the book, Brown and Brown, both professors at the University of Connecticut, balance a historical perspective on rural Massachusetts in the early 1800s with a sympathetic portrait of each character. After a journalistic reporting of the Wheeler trial, the authors take a psychological approach to the story from the viewpoints of Betsy, the 13-year-old victim; Hannah, the abused wife; and Ephraim, the father, who insisted that he had been framed. The authors also follow the judges, the state councilors and the governor through the decision to uphold capital punishment and, particularly, to deny petitions for Ephraim's life. If the authors go a bit far in transposing modern psychology to these early Americans, they clearly distinguish documented facts from conjectures about the individuals' thoughts and emotions. Wheeler was hanged two centuries ago, yet the authors effectively demonstrate that there were never uncomplicated solutions to the perennial problems of family violence and criminal justice. 14 photos, 1 map. (Apr.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
This story of early American crime and punishment reads like The Crucible meets In Cold Blood. In 1805 Massachusetts, Ephraim Wheeler, an illiterate ne'er-do-well, was charged with the unheard-of crime of raping his own daughter. What followed the accusation is a wrenching tale of law, compassion, and the search for justice. Using an impressive variety of primary and secondary sources, including contemporary accounts, the authors, both historians, have pieced together a compelling narrative peopled by folks who are uncannily familiar. The authors use this episode to explore the very contemporary issue of capital punishment, much as playwright Arthur Miller examined McCarthyism through the prism of the Salem witch trials. The moral controversy over taking a man's life "in cold blood," no matter what his offense, was as real then as it is now, and this work focuses effectively on the spirited public debate over the new nation's attempts to retreat from England's hanging tradition. The insertion, at the end, of the authors' own opinion of the injustice they feel was done to Wheeler seems out of place. That small complaint aside, however, this is a very worthy treatment of an important and timeless topic. Recommended for public and academic libraries.-Michael F. Russo, Louisiana State Univ. Libs., Baton Rouge Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
What People Are Saying
The Hanging of Ephraim Wheeler is at once a stark human drama superbly well told and a work of exceptional scholarship. The setting is that of Ethan Frome, and in all the book casts something of the same haunting spell, except that here the story is true in every detail. My admiration for the skillful and consistently fair-minded way Irene and Richard Brown have rendered the story could not be greater.
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