Richard Maxwell Brown

Bleeding Kansas" has earned its name. A state already scarred from the violence wrought by the likes of John Brown and William Quantrill, Kansas witnessed further episodes of wanton bloodshed in the late nineteenth century when settlers poured into a supposedly peaceful frontier.Focusing on the tumultuous years 1885–1892, Robert K. DeArment's compelling narrative is the first to reveal the complete story of the county seat wars that raged in Kansas—controversial episodes that made national news in the late 1900s but are largely unknown today.With a story populated by some of the most notorious characters of the West—including Sam Wood, Theodosius Botkin, Bat Masterson, and Bill Tilghman—Ballots and Bullets relives the violence that only avarice can breed. Ordinary, decent citizens were drawn into bitter conflicts to advance their own communities and block the fortunes of other towns, even if it meant using hired gunmen.Gripping and historically accurate, DeArment's account reveals a shocking chapter in the history of the West.

Bleeding Kansas"" has earned its name. A state already scarred from the violence wrought by the likes of John Brown and William Quantrill, Kansas witnessed further episodes of wanton bloodshed in the late nineteenth century when settlers poured into a supposedly peaceful frontier.Focusing on the tumultuous years 1885-1892, Robert K. DeArment's compelling narrative is the first to reveal the complete story of the county seat wars that raged in Kansas - controversial episodes that made national news in the late 1900s but are largely unknown today.With a story populated by some of the most notorious characters of the West - including Sam Wood, Theodosius Botkin, Bat Masterson, and Bill Tilghman - Ballots and Bullets relives the violence that only avarice can breed. Ordinary, decent citizens were drawn into bitter conflicts to advance their own communities and block the fortunes of other towns, even if it meant using hired gunmen.Gripping and historically accurate, DeArment's account reveals a shocking chapter in the history of the West.

When faced with a deadly threat, Americans have the right to stand their ground and fight - that is, they have no duty to retreat. This study of violence and American values examines violence not only on the American frontier and in American society at large, but in American jurisprudence as well.

No Duty to Retreat takes as its starting-point the increased popularity in American society of the old English common-law concept that a person under physical attack has the right to stand his ground, defend himself, and even kill his assailant in self-defence in certain circumstances. This doctrine came to public awareness recently when Berhard Goetz took the law into his own hands when assaulted by four youths in a New York City subway train. There is a chapter on the American as gunfighter, another on a famous vigilante case in California in the 1870s, when farmers retaliated against the Southern Pacific Railroad trying to move them off their lands , and a long chapter discussing `crime, law, and society in America since 1930', in which Brown shows that the crime surge since the 1950s has occurred with the emergence of the Post-Industrial Society, which has left many people alienated and looking for quick solutions.

The organized gangs of robbers and killers who roamed the Midwest and Southwest from the 1860s to the 1930s went to the same school and were succored by each other's notoriety. So Paul I. Wellman makes a case for "the contagious nature of crime." William Quantrill and his guerrillas established a criminal tradition that was to link the James, Dalton, Doolin, Jennings, and Cook gangs; Belle and Henry Starr; Pretty Boy Floyd; and others in "a long and crooked train of unbroken personal connections."