The Naval Reform Campaign Against Flogging: A Case Study in Changing Attitudes Toward Corporal Punishment, 1830-1850

Abstract

Not surprisingly, Melville concluded that the awful admonitions of justice and humanity demanded the immediate abolition of flogging in the United States Navy.' Public opinion in the northern, especially northeastern, United States increasingly shared Melville's views on naval flogging. During the 1830s and 1840s editorials in leading northern newspapers and periodicals denounced this punishment as degrading, barbaric, and despotic.2 Public criticism of naval flogging gained momentum in the late 1840s when Congress began a series of debates over naval discipline. These debates culminated in the congressional prohibition of naval flogging on September 28, 1850.3

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 8 citations exist upstream.