Bøker av Shawn Francis Peters

"When Bad Men Combine is the first full-length scholarly work to examine the notorious Star Route scandal, which roiled American politics in the 1870s and 1880s. With its dramatic twists and turns, the scandal captured the nation's attention for the better part of a decade. Newspaper headlines throughout the country bore headlines decrying "Fraud at Its Finest" and the "Slickest of Swindles." The scandal itself centered on manipulating Western postal delivery contracts by cunning entrepreneurs and their accomplices within what was then known as the Post Office Department. It reached its height with two sensational criminal trials, during which evidence implicated some of the most prominent men in America, including two presidents, several current and former members of Congress, a handful of cabinet members, and small armies of federal prosecutors and defense attorneys. The scandal also involved an assassination, the bribing of juries, the possible theft-by government attorneys, no less - of important documents, and witnesses fleeing to other countries to avoid subpoenas. Based on a wide variety of primary and secondary source materials, including trial transcripts, congressional testimony, and private correspondence, Shawn Peters's "When Bad Men Combine" provides a first-ever glimpse into a uniquely tumultuous period in American political history. Comprehensively tracking the trajectory of the Star Route scandal, he reveals how modern politics emerged, in fits and starts, from the enormous upheaval wrought by the Civil War and Reconstruction. One crucial change came occurred in government itself. A dizzying and seemingly nonstop succession of scandals plagued American politics in the 1870s. The "era of good stealings," as one historian has dubbed it, featured numerous infamous examples of federal officials abusing their positions to enrich themselves and their allies. The Star Route case was, in some respects, the final straw for those who believed that the time had come for a system grounded in avarice and political patronage to be replaced by one based on merit, competence, and a commitment to the core principles of good government. As Peters shows, it was no coincidence that President Arthur signed the landmark Pendleton Civil Service Act into law in the middle of the second Star Route trial"--

A fascinating tale of seduction, murder, fraud, coercion—and the trial of the “Minneapolis Monster” On a winter night in 1894, a young woman’s body was found in the middle of a road near Lake Calhoun on the outskirts of Minneapolis. She had been shot through the head. The murder of Kittie Ging, a twenty-nine-year-old dressmaker, was the final act in a melodrama of seduction and betrayal, petty crimes and monstrous deeds that would obsess reporters and their readers across the nation when the man who likely arranged her killing came to trial the following spring. Shawn Francis Peters unravels that sordid, spellbinding story in his account of the trial of Harry Hayward, a serial seducer and schemer whom some deemed a “Svengali,” others a “Machiavelli,” and others a “lunatic” and “man without a soul.”Dubbed “one of the greatest criminals the world has ever seen” by the famed detective William Pinkerton, Harry Hayward was an inveterate and cunning plotter of crimes large and small, dabbling in arson, insurance fraud, counterfeiting, and illegal gambling. His life story, told in full for the first time here, takes us into shadowy corners of the nineteenth century, including mesmerism, psychopathy, spiritualism, yellow journalism, and capital punishment. From the horrible fate of an independent young businesswoman who challenged Victorian mores to the shocking confession of Hayward on the eve of his execution (which, if true, would have made him a serial killer), The Infamous Harry Hayward unfolds a transfixing tale of one of the most notorious criminals in America during the Gilded Age.