David Grimsted

Though sometimes bogging down in anecdotal detail, this account of public group violence in Antebellum America comes together in Grimsted's account of "Bleeding" Kansas. This is where the author examines how the Northern sense of rough (but mostly constrained) electoral behavior collided with the Southern tradition of eliminationist violence against those who would question the legitimacy of slavery. In examining how these two traditions came to be embedded in their respective regions Grimsted also helps to show the process by which civil war came.… (mer)