Reply To: Do you think justice was done?
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I’m curious if anyone else anticipated something horrible would happen with “Revenge” after Martha named it early on in the book? I noted it but it wasn’t until Martha confronted North in the mill that I thought “uh oh.” Mind you, I was still shocked. Was justice done with the death of Joshua Burgess? Should Sam and Jonathan have paid for what they did to him? I actually liked Sam’s reasoning as to why he felt justified in killing Burgess. I’m not a supporter of capital punishment, yet at the same time the way Lawhon writes about the law and society of the times, it was highly imperfect, and she spells out that there weren’t jails or courts or laws like now. That Sam justifies it as “a duty” and that Burgess was like a predator with a taste for human blood was plausible in my eyes. I think given the fact that Burgess had victimized two women (who they knew of) as well as threatened Hannah, it was logical for the young men to assume he would carry on brutalizing the women in town, and therefore they would want to take justice into their own hands.
Like everyone here, I don’t think there was true justice done with North. He can still do harm to others. He was not only a predator but a swindler too, so what’s to keep him from continuing to be a crook and trying to steal property again? The only thing that would prevent that would be there’s enough gossip and rumour mill going on in town to keep him in check. It’s an imperfect outcome, but I guess it’s better than the true life one where North was never punished in any way (at least not in any of the historical accounts).