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Book Review
| Irene Quenzler Brown and Richard D. Brown, The Hanging of Ephraim Wheeler: A Story of Rape, Incest and Justice in Early America, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003. Pp. 388. $26.95 (ISBN: 0-674-01020-5).
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| Living on the margins of society, in and out of work, a white man married to a woman of color from whom he was separated, Ephraim Wheeler took his thirteen-year-old daughter, Betsy, into the woods of western Massachusetts and did the unthinkable: he raped her. Betsy claimed it was not the first time he had molested her, but on this day, the third time he had sexually accosted her, she said he penetrated her by force. He was charged with the capital crime of rape, and the jurors found the testimony of his daughter and his wife compelling. They found him guilty, and the judge set the date for his execution, February 20, 1806. |
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Wheeler was an unsympathetic character, a belligerent ne'er-do-well who frequently relied on his wife's family to support him. His case garnered much interest at the time, though not for the reasons it might today. There was little questioning of his daughter's veracity and the incestuous nature of the crime was almost incidental, an aggravating factor rather than the worst part of the crime, when compared to the forcible nature of the act. Betsy's age raised no charges of pedophilia, but was a concern because she was beyond the age of consent. |
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The interest in the case focused primarily on a legal issue. Massachusetts was in the throes of a debate about whether or not to abandon the death the penalty for rape, and in 1802 the governor, Caleb Strong, had granted a stay of execution in a case in which a black man had raped a white girl. As much as Ephraim Wheeler himself, the death penalty was on trial. In this post-American Revolution world, a new evaluation of the laws and a new philosophy of justice were struggling against a Puritan heritage. |
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If the issue at trial was the death penalty, the larger drama was about much more. Wheeler was a husband and father in a patriarchal society, and he was extremely bad at both. He neither supported his wife and family, nor had a conventional life. His interracial marriage to Hannah Odel was illegal but tolerated. The status quo of the time held that Anglo-Americans ought to be models of behavior for African-Americans and Indians, not the other way around. In western Massachusetts, Stockbridge had been an Indian mission that was built on the very ideal that Anglo-American Christians could enlighten the native peoples. Wheeler did nothing to enlighten his family; rather, he seemed to bring them down in the world. His most degrading act was the rape of his daughter. |
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The Browns tell the story from the perspective of the participants in the trial. The book is somewhat repetitive, because the authors have to use the same few documents differently viewed to retell each story. Besides Wheeler's own account protesting his innocence produced on the eve of his execution, there was a petition, signed by townspeople and his wife and daughter, which sought to commute his death sentence. The lawyers for each side had opposing views of the death penalty. The first part of the book lays out the milieu in which the Wheelers lived, the political philosophies and jurisprudential arguments of the time, and the ways in which factors such as race, class, gender and age worked to shape the case. This part of the book is compelling indeed and well crafted. As the book moves into the chapters on each individual, the repetition slows down the pace. It picks up again in the discussion of the execution and its aftermath. |
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The Browns' organization make the book less interesting than it might have been, given their analytical framework. The psychological insights that they bring to bear seem not only reasonable but also well researched, and much less specious than other uses of psychology to develop historical interpretations of complex subjects. The reiteration of the facts helps distinguish known details from their psychological and sociological speculations, but the book could have done as much in 250 pages as nearly 400. |
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Recently we have seen the appearance of historical true crime as a genre. There is usually some mystery about the guilt of the defendant, which gives the story a forensic element popular today in all media. Authors claim the story of a particular case reveals certain truths about the society in which the case takes place. The Browns show us a frontier atmosphere influenced by changing ideals and revolutionary circumstances, not to mention social realities that have been omitted from other histories. It is to their credit that they focus less on the mystery than on the cultural history of the period. One can genuinely learn something from this book that is larger than the question of "Did he do it?" The portrait of society that emerges is surprising in many ways, and it is quite vivid. |
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This book contributes to our understanding of social dynamics and personal struggles in the Early Republic western regions of New England. Its value as legal history, even with the crime drama aspect, is indisputable. Using one case, the Browns expose a legal world fraught with ambitions, ideals, and pressures on the system to respond to public opinion. Like Cornelia Hughes Dayton's book Women Before the Bar published in 1995, the Brown's book reveals a legal presumption about rape and incest and the truthfulness of victims at odds with many modern assumptions. It challenges us in the way good history should to understand the meaning of roads not taken, but roads that should not be forgotten. |
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| Katherine A. Hermes
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| Central Connecticut State University |
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