Report on the Expediency of Abolishing Public Executions

Harrisburg, [Pennsylvania]: Printed by Henry Welsh, 1833. Good. Some toning and spotting, short tears to a couple leaves, sewing loosening.. An 1833 report calling for the abolishment of public executions in Pennsylvania, first read in the House of Representatives by Chauncey Pettibone Holcomb (1803-1855). In the report, Holcomb decries the practice, calling it a "spectacle at once revolting and injurious to society; and attended with equally bad effects as regards the culprit himself, who often becomes the hero or the martyr of the scene" (p.4). He and his peers were successful, and Pennsylvania became the first state to eradicate public hangings in 1834. Single vol. (8.75" by 5"), pp. 8, unbound as issued (or perhaps sometime sympathetically disbound).

5 copies located on WorldCat (August 2023).