Synopses & Reviews
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.
Review
Richard Bell takes us among the inner demons early Americans encountered, and offers as reliable a picture of this fractured reality as we are likely to get. His book is engagingly written, as visceral a cultural history as you will find. Andrew Burstein, coauthor of < i=""> Madison and Jefferson <>
Review
A thoughtful and provocative look at the cultural politics of suicide in the early American Republic. After reading We Shall Be No More, it will be impossible to look at suicide and not recognize the deep political issues it evokes. Michael Meranze, author of < i=""> Laboratories of Virtue: Punishment, Revolution, and Authority in Philadelphia, 1760-1835 <>
Review
The conflict between individual liberty and mutual obligation was at the heart of republican society and government, and in Bell's capable hands suicide is revealed as a crucial battleground in that struggle. A remarkable book. Simon Newman, author of < i=""> Embodied History: The Lives of the Poor in Early America <>
Review
In We Shall Be No More: Suicide and Self-Government in the Newly United States, Richard Bell movingly emphasizes the sometimes clumsy efforts of American asylums and humanitarian societies to care for those who tried to kill themselves, but who lived on for days, weeks, or years afterwards. Bell never forgets that suicide is about individuals and the persistence or recovery of their stories. His arresting, involving work on the young American republic brings out the farcical and tragic aspects of suicide. It also reveals a healthy suspicion of commentators in all periods who lament the helter-skelter decline of manners and morals, whether due to changes in legislation or reading habits. Freya Johnston
Review
andldquo;The Power to Die is the first book-length study of the subject of slave suicide. Drawing upon a robust and diverse body of sources, Snyder powerfully argues that it exposed significant rifts and tensions in early modern American society. Ambitious in scope and original in framing, her analysis is careful, trenchant, and insightful. Snyderandrsquo;s ingenious analysis exposes the ways in which slave suicide reflected the duality of slaves as both people and property.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;The Power to Die is an important, innovative, and exceedingly well-researched book. Snyder has done some breathtaking archival work and the sheer variety of sources is astoundingandmdash; drawing on newspapers, antislavery propaganda, ship log books, plantation diaries, account books, and slave narratives, to name a few. This book will be of great interest to many different scholars, including those who work on slavery and early America, but also those eager to know more about law, gender, technology, and early American print culture.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;Snyder attends to her subject with great intelligence, care, and sensitivity. Drawing together an impressive variety of sources, she probes the connection between the public interest in slavery and the forbidden private will of the enslaved. This excellent study of mortuary politics confirms that the power to die can be as historically consequential as the power to hold, punish, and kill.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;In this moving and provocative work, Snyder compels us to rethink slavery and suicide and, in the process, greatly expands our comprehension of both phenomena.and#160;Snyderandrsquo;s beautifully written and thoughtful study makes important and unique contributions to the histories of slavery, early America, and medicine. Snyder argues that our current understanding of suicide is profoundly shaped by twentieth century notions of illness, stress, depression, and hopelessness and offers us instead a deeply historicized exploration of suicide and slavery.andrdquo;
Synopsis
Though suicide is an individual act, Richard Bell reveals its broad social implications in early America. From Revolution to Reconstruction, everyone--parents, newspapermen, ministers and abolitionists alike--debated the meaning of suicide as a portent of danger or of possibility in a new nation struggling to define itself and its power.
Synopsis
and#147;Suicide,and#8221; writes Terri Snyder, and#147;is central to the history of slavery in early America,and#8221; and slave suicide is itself central to the history of suicide. Snyder digs deep into horrifying contemporary accounts, exploring when and why captured Africans chose suicide, how their captors chose to respond, and the roles of class and status in early American suicides more generally. Over the course of the slavery era, Snyder finds, American society developed a new ambivalence about suicide. The harsh treatment of suicides lessened in the white populationand#151;bodies were no longer desecrated, forfeiture was not enforcedand#151;while on plantations the question of whether dead slaves were primarily property or people heightened awareness of slaveryand#8217;s contradictions and cruelties. Snyder shows how slave suicide pressured slave society to change not only its attitudes toward slaves but its approach toward suicide in all its forms.
Synopsis
The history of slavery in early America is a history of suicide. On ships crossing the Atlantic, enslaved men and women refused to eat or leaped into the ocean. They strangled or hanged themselves. They tore open their own throats. In America, they jumped into rivers or out of windows, or even ran into burning buildings. Faced with the reality of enslavement, countless Africans chose death instead.
In The Power to Die, Terri L. Snyder excavates the history of slave suicide, returning it to its central place in early American history. How did peopleandmdash;traders, plantation owners, and, most importantly, enslaved men and women themselvesandmdash;view and understand these deaths, and how did they affect understandings of the institution of slavery then and now? Snyder draws on shipsandrsquo; logs, surgeonsand#39; journals, judicial and legislative records, newspaper accounts, abolitionist propaganda and slave narratives, and many other sources to build a grim picture of slaveryandrsquo;s toll and detail the ways in which suicide exposed the contradictions of slavery, serving as a powerful indictment that resonated throughout the Anglo-Atlantic world and continues to speak to historians today.
About the Author
Terri L. Snyder is professor of American studies at California State University, Fullerton, and the author of Brabbling Women: Disorderly Speech and the Law in Early Virginia. She lives in Pasadena.