Times in 1887 editorialized in favor of replacing hanging-which it characterized as sheer “barbarity”-with electrocution, which it envisioned as so quick and deadly
as to be a form of “euthanasia”; it urged “the State of New York to be the first community to substitute a civilized for a barbarous method of inflicting capital
punishment, and to set an example which is sure of being followed throughout the world.”(40) When the New York State Commission in January 1888 reported, to
no one’s surprise, in favor of electrocution, the Tribune and Times presented the recommendation as major and welcome news. Besides their news coverage, both
papers had days of lengthy editorials extolling electrocution. The Tribune declared that electrocution would be “a step toward humanity and decency.”(41) In another
editorial the same day, the Tribune evoked the almost universal repugnance against hanging: “The American people are practically unanimous in desiring that the
present cruel and clumsy method of execution shall be relegated among the other barbarisms of punishment.”(42) Both newspapers also approved of the
recommendation that all executions be held within the walls of a prison, with the number of witnesses-all to be selected by prison authorities-limited to twelve. The
only caveats, expressed by both papers, had to do with the Commission’s recommendations that the executed person’s body should “in no case be delivered to any
relative or other person whatsoever” and that any newspaper publishing an account of an execution other than “the statement of the fact that such convict was on the
day in question duly executed according to law at the prison” would be “guilty of a misdemeanor.”(43) The Times commended the intent of these prohibitions, which
was to keep the executed criminal from becoming “a hero” of the masses and prevent “such a display of sympathy with crime as was furnished by the funeral of the
Anarchists in Chicago.” The editorialist argued, however, that to “make a mystery” of an execution such as that of “the Chicago Anarchists” would be “proceeding
too much in the line of a despotic Government to be acceptable here.”(44)
During the next two and a half years New York was embroiled in legal suits and political maneuvering that brought national and worldwide attention to its struggles
with the issue of capital punishment. Lawyers for William Kemmler, the intended victim of the first electrocution, went to court to prevent this “cruel and unusual
punishment.” Edison merged his company into General Electric, partly to fight the legal suits filed by Westinghouse to keep its equipment from being used to
electrocute Kemmler. General Curtis submitted his second Assembly bill to outlaw capital punishment. The Tribune and the Times now began to impugn General
Curtis’s motives, implying that he was acting merely as a bribed agent of Westinghouse (charges refuted by his efforts years later as a member of Congress to abolish
the death penalty for the whole nation). The personal attacks on Curtis got fiercer when his bill to abolish capital punishment was passed by the New York Assembly
on May 1, 1890, by a vote of 74 to 29.(45)
The bill was not, however, approved by the State Senate. All the recommendations of the State Commission-including criminal penalties for publishing descriptions
of executions-now became the unchallenged law of New York State. So on August 6, 1890, William Kemmler became the first victim of the modern, civilized form
of execution by electricity.
The spectacle was hardly the “euthanasia” earlier promised by the Times. Indeed, the front page of the Times the following day violated the very law that had
mandated Kemmler’s electrocution by publishing a description of “the most revolting circumstances” that “placed to the discredit of the State of New York an
execution that was a disgrace to civilization.” The witnesses, “men eminent in science and in medicine,” were so physically “nauseated” by the gory spectacle that
“they almost unanimously say that this single experiment warrants the prompt repeal of the law.” The article ended by noting that the witnesses all acted “as though
they felt that they had taken part in a scene that would be told to the world as a public shame, as a legal crime.”(46)
One of the attending physicians selected to conduct the autopsy on Kemmler published in October 1890 an impassioned appeal to abolish the death penalty,
opening with an evocation of the “world-wide interest” in the execution: “When the harrowing details of the death chamber were tingled along the telegraph wires of
the country, and their impulses were throbbed through the cable, the entire civilized world viewed the scene with astonished horror.”(47) In an influential volume
linking capital punishment to war published in January 1891, Andrew Palm noted that the Kemmler execution was “denounced as horrible, brutal, atrocious, a
disgrace to humanity, etc. English editors were just as much shocked as their brethren on this side of the Atlantic, one London daily declaring that Kemmler’s
execution sent a thrill of horror around the globe.”(48)
It was in this context that Melville composed Billy Budd, which he began in 1886 and concluded in April 1891, eight months after Kemmler’s execution. Although
Melville’s contemporaries, who almost universally abhorred hanging, might have shuddered at Captain Vere’s instantaneous decision that Billy “‘must hang’” (232),
the story is carefully crafted to keep the means of execution from being a significant issue.
When he is hanged, Billy evinces none of the hideous agonies familiar to the crowds at public hangings and described with sickening detail in countless
nineteenth-century essays and books. There is not even the almost invariable muscular spasm or involuntary ejaculation. Chapter 26, obtrusively inserted between
Billy’s transcendent death and the sailors’ reaction, is devoted to a discussion of this perfect lack of motion. The purser suggests that this “’singularity’” must be
attributed to Billy’s “‘will power.’” In the surgeon’s response we can hear a parody of the debate transpiring in Melville’s New York about the most humane and
scientific way to kill a person: “‘In a hanging scientifically conducted-and under special orders I myself directed how Budd’s was to be effected-any movement
following the complete suspension and originating in the body suspended, such movement indicates mechanical spasm in the muscular system. Then the absence of
that is no more attributable to will power, as you call it, than to horsepower’” (321-22). Admitting to the purser that this “‘muscular spasm’” is almost “‘invariable,’” the
surgeon acknowledges “‘I do not, with my present knowledge, pretend to account’” for its absence: “‘Even should we assume the hypothesis that at the first touch of
the halyards the action of Budd’s heart, intensified by extraordinary emotion at its climax, abruptly stopped-much like a watch when in carelessly winding it up you
strain at the finish, thus snapping the chain-even under that hypothesis how account for the phenomenon that followed?’” (323).
The purser then asks, “‘was the man’s death effected by the halter, or was it a species of euthanasia?’” “‘Euthanasia,’” replies the surgeon, has dubious “‘authenticity as
a scientific term’” (324). Though it may outwardly resemble the “euthanasia” the New York Times had erroneously predicted for electrocution, Billy’s death by
hanging clearly transcends not only the surgeon’s scientific understanding but also the debate about the modalities of capital punishment swirling around the
composition of the story.
More profoundly relevant to Billy Budd are the terms of the debate about the fundamental issue of capital punishment itself. Indeed, the essence of the issue
structures the story.
We witness two killings aboard H.M.S. Bellipotent. One comes from the impulsive, involuntary fatal blow Billy Budd strikes to the forehead of Claggart. The blow is
partly in response to Captain Vere’s exhortation to the stammering Billy, “‘Defend yourself!’” Vere recognizes that Claggart has been “‘Struck dead by an angel of
God!’” and he and his drumhead court all acknowledge that Billy acted without malice, forethought, or any murderous intent. The other killing is carried out under
cover of law, after reasoned argumentation, and by the state acting through the agency of Captain Vere and his officers.
Which of these two acts constitutes murder? Budd is not even accused of murder. One question that underlies the twentieth-century discussion of Vere’s act might
be framed this way: Does it conform to the 1794 Pennsylvania definition of murder in the “first degree,” that is, “wilful, deliberate and premeditated killing”?
And this is precisely how the argument against capital punishment was framed during the years Melville was writing. The fact that hangings were conducted by the
state under cover of law did not, to opponents of the death penalty, absolve them from being murders. Indeed, the terms widely used for these killings were “legal
murders,” “legal killing,” and “murder by law.”(49) The following commentaries, published in 1890, could apply directly to the two killings on the Bellipotent:
[W]hen a criminal is judged, all the extenuating circumstances shall be taken into consideration. Were this rule observed, the victim of the law would seldom appear
in so bad a light as the government that passed the sentence. Let me illustrate the thought: a man commits a murder: the government in turn sentences the man to
death. Here we have two parties who have presumed to take a human life. . . . the question now arises, upon the shoulders of which party rests the greatest guilt? A
most solemn thought. There are many extenuating circumstances in the first instance, but what can be said in justification of the government?(50)
[C]apital punishment administered in any form is essentially a relic of a barbarous age. . . . [T]he State always acts with coolness and deliberation, while ninety per
cent. of her children slay their fellowmen in the frenzy of passion.(51)
Although Captain Vere has already decided that Billy “‘must hang’” before he convenes his drumhead court, the three officers he handpicks are quite reluctant to
convict and sentence the Handsome Sailor. In the trial, during which Vere acts as sole witness, prosecutor, and, ultimately, commander of the jury, he finds it
necessary to overwhelm his three subordinates with a deluge of arguments. One is precisely that they must “‘let not warm hearts betray heads that should be cool’”
(270).(52)
Vere makes his first argument while still in his role of witness (though later he tells the officers, “‘Hitherto I have been but the witness, little more’” [265]): “‘Quite aside
from any conceivable motive actuating the master-at-arms, and irrespective of the provocation to the blow, a martial court must needs in the present case confine its
attention to the blow’s consequence, which consequence justly is to be deemed not otherwise than as the striker’s deed’” (256). By arguing, especially in such
legalistic phraseology, that his court is not to consider extenuating circumstances or motive, Vere is underlining for readers in 1891 the fundamental injustice of the
proceedings. The three officers, in fact, are disturbed by this manifestation of “a prejudgment on the speaker’s part” (258). Later Vere reiterates, “‘Budd’s intent or
non-intent is nothing to the purpose’” (274).
As discussed earlier, Vere’s extended argument that the officers owe their allegiance not to “‘Nature,’” their “‘hearts,’” or their “‘private conscience,’” but entirely to
King George III and his “‘code under which alone we officially proceed’” would to any late-nineteenth-century audience be an emphatic reminder of the barbaric
Bloody Code for which Vere is acting as agent. Vere insists, in fact, that he and his officers must act merely as agents and instruments of that law: “‘For the law and
the rigor of it, we are not responsible. Our vowed responsibility is in this: That however pitilessly that law may operate in any instances, we nevertheless adhere to it
and administer it’” (270). To late nineteenth-century readers, this would serve as a conspicuous reminder of the horrors of Georgian justice from which nine decades
of reform had liberated both the United States and Britain. Each of Vere’s arguments, in fact, defends one or more of the most egregious features of the Georgian
code, features that had been repudiated by law in those nine ensuing decades.
Immediately after insisting that his officers may not consider “‘Budd’s intent or non-intent,’” Vere claims that they are taking too much time (a blatantly specious
argument, especially in light of the time