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| Book Review | Indiana Magazine of History, 101.4 | The History Cooperative
101.4  
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December, 2005
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Reviews

Rough Justice
Lynching and American Society, 1874–1947

By Michael J. Pfeifer
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004. Pp. x, 245. Maps, appendix, notes, bibliography, index. $35.00.)

In a short and commendable book, Michael J. Pfeifer examines how Americans defined, clashed, and compromised over the nature of criminal justice from the end of Reconstruction to the middle of the twentieth century. Relying mainly on newspaper accounts and coroners' inquests and using the comparative perspective provided by seven quite disparate states (Iowa, Wisconsin, Wyoming, Washington, California, Louisiana, and New York), he argues for a historical connection between lynching and the death penalty. 1
      Revolutionary-era ideals that allowed violence against enemies, growing alongside faith in popular sovereignty, sustained the idea of lynching as a form of justice. Pfeifer offers strong evidence to argue that mobs—or "rough justice" advocates—were not compensating for an "absence of law," but rather confronting a legal system they considered slow, impersonal, and inefficient. American lynchers acted against due process, writes Pfeifer, as much as against those who challenged white supremacy, transgressed moral codes, or violated interests of class. . . .
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