The Culture of Violence in the American West: Myth versus Reality
By Thomas J. DiLorenzo

The Not-So-Wild, Wild West

In a thorough review of the “West was violent” literature, Bruce Benson (1998) discovered that many historians simply assume that violence was pervasive—even more so than in modern-day America—and then theorize about its likely causes. In addition, some authors assume that the West was very violent and then assert, as Joe Franz does, that “American violence today reflects our frontier heritage” (Franz 1969, qtd. in Benson 1998, 98). Thus, an allegedly violent and stateless society of the nineteenth century is blamed for at least some of the violence in the United States today.

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The mining camps hired “enforcement specialists”—justices of the peace and arbitrators—and developed an extensive body of property and criminal law. As a result, there was very little violence and theft. The fact that the miners were usually armed also helps to explain why crime was relatively infrequent. Benson concludes, “The contractual system of law effectively generated cooperation rather than conflict, and on those occasions when conflict arose it was, by and large, effectively quelled through nonviolent means” (1998, 105)....emphasis added

When government bureaucrats failed to police cattle rustling effectively, ranchers established cattlemen’s associations that drew up their own constitutions and hired private “protection agencies” that were often staffed by expert gunmen. This action deterred cattle rustling. Some of these “gunmen” did “drift in and out of a life of crime,” write Anderson and Hill (1979, 18), but they were usually dealt with by the cattlemen’s associations and never created any kind of large-scale criminal organization, as some have predicted would occur under a regime of private law enforcement.

In sum, this work by Benson, Anderson and Hill, Umbeck, and others challenges with solid historical research the claims made by the “West was violent” authors. The civil society of the American West in the nineteenth century was much more peaceful than American cities are today, and the evidence suggests that in fact the Old West was not a very violent place at all. History also reveals that the expanded presence of the U.S. government was the real cause of a culture of violence in the American West. If there is anything to the idea that a nineteenth-century culture of violence on the American frontier is the genesis of much of the violence in the United States today, the main source of that culture is therefore government, not civil society.
http://www.independent.org/publications/tir/article.asp?a=803

June 4, 2013
7 Infamous Gangs of New York
By Evan Andrews

During the Victorian era of the mid-to-late 1800s, New York City was rocked by an epidemic of gang violence. Crime was especially rampant in Manhattan neighborhoods like Five Points, Hell’s Kitchen, the Fourth Ward and the Bowery, where back alleys and tenements became infested with thieves, hustlers and street thugs. These groups trafficked in everything from robbery and prostitution to murder, and their names could strike fear into the hearts of even the most crime-hardened city dwellers. From river pirates to knife-wielding adolescents, get the facts on seven of 19th century New York’s most notorious street gangs.
http://www.history.com/news/history-lists/7-infamous-gangs-of-new-york