3 - Local Justice, Transatlantic Justice

Summary

Through storytelling offenders refashioned themselves. Beyond the rhetorical strategies employed by felons in narratives, apologetics, narrative lacunae, and justification lie larger narratives – those tales whose meanings place political culture in a context for the reader. For eighteenth-century Americans, grappling with the legal consequences of a struggle for independence, these tales underscore the permeability of transatlantic culture. This chapter, a case study, explores how the tale of two offenders captured the problems of their day: religion and race, credit and bondage, and, most of all, the problem of insiders and outsiders at the very moment republican rhetoric posited a brotherhood of citizens.

The first offender, Joseph Mountain, was a mulatto ex-slave executed in 1790 for the rape of a young white girl. Earlier, however, Mountain ran away from his master. He fled to London and pursued a life of crime. In a remarkable execution narrative telling of his experiences as a highwayman in England, Mountain provides a rare glimpse of transatlantic themes mediated through the particular experiences of an African-American felon. Mountain's autobiographical narrative, as well as his pardon petition, raises a number of issues: slavery and liberty, a comparison of English and American treatment of African Americans, debates over capital punishment, and the question of how to construct a republican form of criminal justice. No doubt Mountain was unusually articulate. His own words will be read in intertextual fashion against texts crafted by authoritative figures, including sermons and a charge to the jury.