Concealed Weapon Laws of the Early Republic: Dueling, Southern Violence, and Moral Reform.

Concealed Weapon Laws of the Early Republic: Dueling, Southern Violence, and Moral Reform. By Clayton E. Cramer. (Westport, Conn., and London: Praeger, 1999. Pp. x, 180. $55.00, ISBN 0-275-96615-1.)

Why did the slave states take an early lead in enacting laws governing the carrying of concealed weapons? In Concealed Weapon Laws of the Early Republic Clayton E. Cramer purports to answer this question. He examines a number of theories, beginning with the obvious contention that the white population in the southern states used concealed weapon laws to maintain social control over free blacks. The author discards this proposition on the grounds that many of the concealed weapon statutes used race-neutral language. "In the absence of any contradictory evidence ... and if it fits the historical context," he writes, "a historian should accept the stated legislative intent as the most likely motivation" (p. 15).

The proximate cause of concealed weapon laws, according to Cramer, was the unusually violent nature of the people living in these states. Cramer does not think that this violent streak was engendered by slavery alone. Instead he adopts the thesis, similar to ideas David Hackett Fischer developed in Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (New York, 1989), that blames much of the frontier violence on cultural values brought to America by Scots-Irish settlers. Cramer rejects Elliott J. Gorn's argument that frontier violence was more a matter of class than it was of culture. He also does not believe that liquor was to blame for violent behavior in the seven slave states he studies here. Cramer declares rather weakly that "[w]hether the cause of back country violence was cheap and available whiskey, Scots-Irish culture, or slavery, this is undisputed: the back country culture was violent, and often over the most trivial of matters" (p. 45).

In the next eleven chapters Cramer details the movement in each of eight states (he includes Indiana, noting that southern culture predominated in the southern portion of this free state) to enact laws controlling concealed weapons. He attempts in this state-by-state survey to prove that the reformers' cause reflected an effort to overcome popular opposition to dueling prohibitions. Cramer admits, however, that "dueling apparently was not a factor" in Louisiana (p. 69). He also writes that in Arkansas, "[u]nfortunately, we do not have enough information to draw any conclusions" (p. 96). In Georgia, Cramer finds that "there is no direct connection between anti-dueling efforts and the concealed weapon law, ..." (p. 104). And he states that in Tennessee, "there was no direct connection between this law and attempts to control dueling" (p. 112). Cramer does find "some evidence that reformers tried to lead the population away from the practice of dueling" (p. 116) prior to passing concealed weapon laws in Virginia, but his argument overall is not compelling.

Cramer devotes another chapter to other theories that he characterizes with the expression "That Dog Won't Hunt" (p. 127). One such argument is that concealed weapon laws came about due to the technological advances in handguns, namely Samuel Colt's 1838 revolver. Another idea stresses that at the time handguns were considered the weapons of criminals. Still another theory is that the laws were designed to protect abolitionists from mob attacks. Cramer dismisses all of these explanations. He maintains that only dueling, popular in the violent and honor-bound South, could have spawned the widespread concern that made necessary such "reform from the top" (p. 139).

Throughout Concealed Weapon Laws of the Early Republic, the reader is expected to accept the legislative intent of the laws (which Cramer includes in a brief appendix) as the basis of their motivation. Yet Cramer seems to overlook the fact that these laws were crafted by men and women who left a great body of literature to explain their particular reform impulse. Who were the advocates of reform? Were they also leaders of the temperance movement, or participants in the Second Great Awakening? Were they native southerners? Were they, in fact, also Scots-Irish? Cramer has revealed to us a mystery, but, unfortunately, the answer remains unclear.

ROBERT E. IRELAND Hillsborough, North Carolina