Research. This interview is about 20 minutes. We are joined by randolph roth. Here to talk with us about Mass Violence and Domestic Violence. Mass violence has a certain connotation today. How would it have been different in the 1850s . Prof. Roth it was very different, because in our past, mass killings were very common. It was a group activity. You just did not have the technology to kill as many people as an individual can kill today. When you are talking about violence, knives or swords, or muzzleloading firearms you know, it takes a while to reload. Even if you are skilled, it takes 30 seconds to reload one of those things. By the time you pour in the powder, put on the percussion cap, and get ready, the person you are trying to kill should be half a mile away. It is very difficult. These were mass murderers where a lot of people got together to do these things. We can get examples very early in our history. The pequot war, we talk about that as a war, but what happened at the end was the pequots surrendered. They were hiding out in a swamp with over 700 children, women and men. The new englanders surrounded them, burned the swap, and anyone who was alive they shot. They killed over 700 people. It took a lot to kill 700 people back then. You look at things like when the mormons, fearing inroads of gentiles into their territory, and fearing the hostility by gentiles. You remember, there were mass murders of mormons by gentiles in missouri. They essentially killed a wagon train of nonmormon settlers coming through. You see these kinds of things, the draft riots of 1863, in new york city. The thing is, these kinds of things, you had to get a group together and this is true when you take a look at matt turners rebellion in 1831, or john browns attempted us insurgency at harbor surrey, which was intended to be a mass murder of a number of slave owners and their sympathizers. The thing is, when you look back at those two, something i would like to add is every time we have looked at them, we see many of them are led by the most respected, prominent people in the community. These are not things that were done idly or spontaneously. Very rare for something to happen spontaneously. They were organized by political elites, military elites, spiritual elites. Even when you have something that is an insurgency mass murderer like that turners, he is one of the most respected clergyman among the Africanamerican Community in southampton county, virginia. Quantity in the abolition john brown was not an unknown quantity in the abolition movement. He was very admired and respected, although they knew he was a violent man, for his activities in trying to prevent kansas from free soil. We see this going on in reconstruction. Modern firearms today even in the 1870s, most people dont have a modern firearm. You will see these mass murders going on during reconstruction, and usually they are led by former confederate soldiers, former confederate elites attacking whites who became republicans or africanamericans. Bill you think mob violence was unique to the United States . Prof. Roth absolutely not. When i gave my talk to the Historical Society yesterday about this, i said, every single one of us knows that through one of us knows that through most of human history, mass murder has been a group activity. It is not something a lone individual could do. What is different today is not that groupled Mass Violence has gone from the world. We can see it in all kinds of genocidal activity around the world, but what we do see now in the United States and much of the world is a single him individual, or small group of individuals, who have the capacity to kill a large number of people in a very short time. This depends very much on technology. You need to be able to concentrate force. Bill and we are talking the day after a shooter at Fort Lauderdale airport killed numbers of people. They believe at least one single gunman. Prof. Roth thats right. And what you will see it is not just semiautomatic weapons, though they play a role. We can do it with an airplane, you can do it with fertilizer, you can do it with a truck. These are all modern inventions. Arent they . Whenever you have these modern inventions that have been used for such good purposes, generally speaking airplanes have been wonderful for humanity in many ways, but they have a dark side. They have a dark potential. Its like with accidents, wherever you can concentrate energy and build something more powerful with more mass and more velocity, the chances of having an accident increase. That is the same thing were looking at here, the chance of using this to deliberately kill somebody is out there. Bill it seems like in modern times, after many of these incidents, and outrage, but also changes in weather it may be firearm law or immigration or whatever. In historical terms, after some of the incidents you have mentioned, was there public outcry . Prof. Roth there is definitely public outcry. When you take a look at the mass murders that were happening in reconstruction, Congress Passed the ku klux klan act. Bill what you was that . Prof. Roth this was 1870 and 1871. President grant was forcefully behind them. He was very angry with what happened. He was very much a person who wanted to build a different america, and he knew the confederates were resisting. He really forcefully sent down the federal army. We know now that he was more forceful than his immediate response. In those couple of years, he really did a great deal with that federal presence, and certainly the confederacy was terrified of president grant for good reasons. He had a reputation, and they knew he meant business. For a while, while they were actively trying to use the union army to suppress these groups, they were fairly successful, but they gave up. Congress gave up and moved on to other things. After the election of 1872, where the dynamics of politics changed and the north started to withdraw, it just came back. When we look at other kinds another incident i like to talk about we had a great deal of anarchist violence in the early 20th century. Bill over what sort of issues . Prof. Roth the anarchists really were against all kinds of government, but they were targeting particular people. They tried to blow up wall street, as you know. They tried to assassinate attorney general mitchell palmer. They were using dynamite to try to assassinate public officials. We know that organized crime was using dynamite and other kinds of explosive devices, and they were using a thompson automatic machine gun. They were using silencers to sneak up on people and kill them. It was not a mass murderer, it was a sequential mass murder. We are going to liquidate this other group, but do it one at a time, in other words. With a silencer, you can shoot them and disappear. What congress did in 1934 was pass the National Firearms act. It did not confiscate anybodys firearm. He did not confiscate anybodys dynamite. But what congress did was say, ok, we are going to tax this heavily. We are not going to let this be a cheap thing you can do, buy dynamite, a silencer, or a fully automatic weapon. If you are going to possess those in the future or purchase one, you need a license. What we have is a society in which, can people get access to dynamite . Absolutely, but they have to be licensed, they have to pay a tax. If we have people who want to buy a silencer, as gun collectors can have fully automatic weapons but you have to have a legitimate reason. You have to pay a tax. This is expensive. We talk about, what is the application of that . When we think about it, how many of us were killed with a silencer last year . How many of us were killed with dynamite . How many of us were killed with a fully automatic weapon . The thing is, it did not take them out of circulation where they were there, but those things become collectors items, museum pieces, and gradually they come out, they are not a weapon of choice. What i would say to amplify upon this entry come down to the present in the way, when upon this, and we come down to the present in this way, when planes were used, what did we do . We reinforced the cockpit doors. Our faa said you must have two people in the cockpit. German airways went cheap. You only need one person in the cockpit. It cost 150 people their lives. Now they are going to have two. When we had a fertilizer bomb with someone who was not a farmer, now you have to be a farmer to buy five tons of fertilizer. What we have done always is we have responded. When we see these technologies used for the various purposes, we try to make it to people have a legitimate reason to use these has full access and people who do not have legitimate reasons to have access, do not have them. Bill but you argue that people circumvent and find ways to commit mob violence. Prof. Roth what we are doing now is working with rental truck agencies, the fbi. They are working with all trucking firms. Immediately when a truck goes missing now, the fbi wants to know. Immediately when someone suspicious wants to get a truck, the fbi wants to know. You are going to have the same kind of network of information that we now have with the sales of fertilizer. Again, people will always find a new way. There is no question. There is always a dynamic between Law Enforcement and criminal behavior. It goes back. There is a wonderful book about philadelphia policing. Every time the Philadelphia Police figured out how to stop the burglars or the bank robbers, five years later, criminals are smart. They figure out another way, and they come up with a new strategy, and it goes on and on throughout human history. Bill what are some of the societal factors that you see that influenced the rise and fall of Mass Violence . Prof. Roth when you look at Mass Violence over the long duration, from the 17th century down into the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, what you will see is that a lot of it has to do with peoples feelings towards government and society. It has to do with, do we have a stable political system . You will see there is a lot of Mass Violence uncontested frontiers. There is a lot of Mass Violence during revelations, during civil wars. What we see is that it is not just the Mass Violence that goes up in these periods, it turns out it correlates perfectly with individual violence among unrelated people. You will see more deadly property feuds, more robbery murders, Sexual Assault murders, feud murders, honor murders. I have mapped this out. If you look at the deaths in last violence or political protest and you map it out against everyday murders, they go up and down in sequence. Also, we think it has to do until recently, it maps out over 450 years to the degree to which people feel included and empowered by their government. Am i included . You can see. 7 10 british patriot you can see periods of intense patriotism. What you will find is so many people in the north and south believed in our government, believed in their kinship with other americans, and we had widespread selfemployment. Africanamericans were being freed in the north. Even though we see tremendous discrimination, they are doing better. We see the homicide rate was probably the lowest in the western world in those areas. What you see is there are riots, but they are not deadly. Americans have been protesting and rioting a long time, but it we whether we killed people. It is whether we kill people. That is the issue. When we are divided politically, that is when the murder rate goes up. That is when Mass Violence goes up. It looks like it is about labor issues or religion, the killings of catholics in louisville. These kinds of things happen, and it looks all piecemeal, but when you are a historian and look at it across time and space, you can see these huge patterns build up. People are not aware that the big reason is really about our feelings towards government and society. Bill in tracking these trends, what about the scope of Domestic Violence . That seems a more recent issue that we have been able to at least quantify, issues like spousal abuse, rape, murder between men and women . Prof. Roth Domestic Violence follows a different pattern. Bill why . Prof. Roth it is a very different relationship, and it has to do not with general feelings about society and government. It has to do with the way gender roles are played out, the balance of power between men and women. In the colonial era, there is a great deal of Domestic Violence. If you look at the court records, people are being battered and beaten. You will see a case of a wife abusing a husband, and you will see another case of mutual combat. But what is interesting is that it almost always stops before killing. When you see these tight partnerships, the shops and farms that we had, it is so much dependent on that partnership. If you were upset or angry with your spouse, you beat them to try to come around to what you want, or to express your anger, but you stop short of killing them. Most of the fatal injuries that we see our manslaughters. In other words, i meant to beat you, but i did not mean to kill you. When they suddenly realize you are not getting awake, they go for medical help. You are supposed to plow the field tomorrow, you are supposed to make breakfast tomorrow. I did not mean to kill you, i meant to brutalize you. And so you see this. What happens in the 1830s and 1840s, is what i think happens in the 1960s and 1970s again, you see a shift in the balance of power towards women. We do not live in that promise land of gender equality. But as we move towards this, every time we move towards it, i think we see the typical relationship gets healthier. The typical relationship becomes less violent in a physical way. But the minority of men who cant make that change or wont make that change become more violent. You will see a surge in lethal violence in the 1840s, to 1860s, against romantic partners and spouses. You will see that again burgeoning again in the 1960s and 1970s. It can be misleading because it looks worse, but the general relationship was probably getting better. It is tragic. When we look at revolutions, in the short term, the American Revolution raised the murder rate. In the short term, the civil war raised the murder rate. The sad thing is gender revolutions, where we make progress towards female equality, and empowerment, employment, and ask men to meet a higher emotional standard, a higher behavioral standard in marriage and relationships, we see in the short term, there is more violence. It is not the kind of set piece peace value we see in the revolution. It looks like random violence. In fact, it is really conditioned, i believe, by these shifts in relationships. But those dont map out with the other ones we are talking about, because this increase in homicide its not huge, but the male homicides, its the revolution, the sexual crisis. This is the 1830s and 1840s. They happened to coincide inside the 1960s and 1970s, when political upheaval meshed with gender changes. You get the sense they are happening at the same time. When you look at a lot of places and times, you see these dynamics in gender relationship are somewhat independent of other things. Bill you are the author of the book american homicide. What is that about, and how did you get into this field in general . Prof. Roth it is interregional longterm study of homicides among adults from colonial times to the present. I deal with Domestic Violence, i deal with Mass Violence, bar fights, everything like that, and how they played out over time. The companion volume i am working on right now is child murder in america from colonial times to present, which is on murders of children to the ages of 15. Children follow a different pattern having to do with the circumstances of young parents. But the pattern of nondomestic murders of children follows the nondomestic patterns among adults. I got into it totally for specific reasons. I dont think violence is a nice thing. I understand that sometimes violence has been necessary. I am not a pacifist, i guess, and i see times in which you have to stand up and fight, but really most violence is just dysfunctional, it is counterproductive, if it is supposedly for a cause, and it is just something i want to get rid of. The original book was going to be on why new englanders seldom commit murder, but i found out that when the murder rate went up in the 1850s and 1860s, they were more violent than people in manchester, england, so i thought id got to study america. Thats how it grew from a small study of how americans avoid violence into a broader study of the ups and downs of violence in america, and how we can get back, i hope some day, to where we were in the early republic, when we believed in our country, we had a sense of solidarity, we believed in the justice of our social hierarchy, and we had progress towards equality. I think those are the things that when you set up a democracy and dont realize that democracy in a real, genuine way, you create violence. Bill randolph roth, history professor at ohio state university. Thanks for being with us. Prof. Roth thank you very much. Join us tomorrow for a ceremony marking the Centennial Commission from the National World war i museum and memorial in kansas city, missouri. The ceremony includes a retelling of the american debate over whether or not to join the world war i conflict. President Woodrow Wilson signed a declaration of war against germany in 1917. More than 400 million american men and women joined. That is tomorrow on American History tv on cspan3. Searcys ministering cities across the country exploring American History. Visit towill cap chico, california. Agriculture in california in general is extremely important. It is the number one industry in numbernia, we are the one state in the nation in terms of agriculture