151_Pr00f
All Star
You guys should read up on the violence of the early settlers as they expanded from the colonies to the plantation rich settlements of Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia. Violence was endemic to daily life in those societies and that was apart from the inhumane abuse and murder Africans in bondage. It amazes me how whites demonize the violence in black neighborhoods plagued with urban decay when at one point lawlessness was rampant in their societies. A couple of quotes from the book I'm currently reading "Worse than Slavery"
"The great bulk of whites were rough back country folk, well armed, fiercely democratic, deeply sensitive to insults and signs of disrespect. Whiskey flowed freely in their world, and personal disputes were often settled in the dirt-floor taverns or dueling fields outside town. Most men wore pistols and bowie knife a contemporary recalled, and a row once a day was the rule, not the exception."
"In his remarkable diary of street life in antebellum Natchez, William Johnson chronicled endless shootings and brawls. Men squared off at the slightest provocation, gouging and biting; using their heads as battering rams; cutting out tongues; hurling bricks; swinging swords, canes, and iron bars; stabbing with their dirks; and firing pistols. The diary ended abruptly in 1851, when Johnson himself was shot and killed."
"For these reasons, and perhaps more, fatal duels took a frightful toll among the gentlemen of antebellum Mississippi, and ordinary killings appeared too numerous to count. In a typical month, a Jackson newspaper reported a bloody affair in Port Gibson, a grisly murder in Jefferson County, another murder in Vicksburg, a homicide in Newton, a fatal difficulty in Jackson, an outrageous murder in Sunflower County, a Negro shot dead,two assassination attempts, the ambush of a sheriff, and a domestic squabble in which Mr. Lockhair, a man generally respected by his neighbors while sober, was killed by his own son."
"The great bulk of whites were rough back country folk, well armed, fiercely democratic, deeply sensitive to insults and signs of disrespect. Whiskey flowed freely in their world, and personal disputes were often settled in the dirt-floor taverns or dueling fields outside town. Most men wore pistols and bowie knife a contemporary recalled, and a row once a day was the rule, not the exception."
"In his remarkable diary of street life in antebellum Natchez, William Johnson chronicled endless shootings and brawls. Men squared off at the slightest provocation, gouging and biting; using their heads as battering rams; cutting out tongues; hurling bricks; swinging swords, canes, and iron bars; stabbing with their dirks; and firing pistols. The diary ended abruptly in 1851, when Johnson himself was shot and killed."
"For these reasons, and perhaps more, fatal duels took a frightful toll among the gentlemen of antebellum Mississippi, and ordinary killings appeared too numerous to count. In a typical month, a Jackson newspaper reported a bloody affair in Port Gibson, a grisly murder in Jefferson County, another murder in Vicksburg, a homicide in Newton, a fatal difficulty in Jackson, an outrageous murder in Sunflower County, a Negro shot dead,two assassination attempts, the ambush of a sheriff, and a domestic squabble in which Mr. Lockhair, a man generally respected by his neighbors while sober, was killed by his own son."
