The Lessons of a School Shootingin 1853

[Sherman A1]

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/03/24/first-us-school-shooting-gun-debate-217704

This weekend, thousands of people are expected to gather in cities and towns across America for the “March for Our Lives,” a national response to the horrifying school shooting in Parkland, Florida. Will it change policy? Skeptics doubt it, having watched time and again how previous shootings vanish from the headlines with no change to our national debate over guns. But there’s actually precedent, deep in American history, for school shootings to shift the gun debate.

Though little remembered now, the first high-profile school shooting in the U.S. was more than 150 years ago, in Louisville, Kentucky. The 1853 murder of William Butler by Matthews F. Ward was a news sensation, prompting national outrage over the slave South’s libertarian gun rights vision and its deadly consequences. At a time when there wasn’t yet a national media, this case prompted a legal conversation that might be worth resurrecting today.

The deadly encounter between the two men was triggered by a trivial matter: eating a bunch of chestnuts during class. William Butler was a 28-year-old teacher, a Yankee immigrant to Kentucky who had helped found the Louisville School, an institution that attracted students from some of the best families in town. One of those was William Ward, the son of a prominent cotton merchant. Butler, a stern teacher, confronted the young Ward about eating in the classroom. Ward denied it. His teacher called him a liar and administered a whipping. This was a severe form of punishment, but not unusual in the mid-19th century, an age when corporal punishment in schools was the norm in many places.

The punishment did not go over well in the Ward household. The next day the boy’s older brother, Matthews Ward, purchased two small pistols and returned to the school with William and another brother, Bob. Butler had no inkling that his actions had incensed the elder Ward brother, and he greeted all three brothers cordially. Matthews confronted the teacher, calling him a “damned scoundrel” and a “coward.” Matthews and William Butler scuffled, and in the course of the altercation, Ward pulled out his pistol and shot his opponent. The Ward boys fled the building; students rushed to Butler’s aid, carrying him to his house, where a doctor attended him. But to no avail. Butler died within days of the incident.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

1. Gosh, I thought that these things never happened

until very recently.

Actually, anyone who has ever read the first chapter of "Farmer Boy", Lauga Ingalls Wilder's account of her husband's childhood, will learn that violence in schools has more or less always happened.

[Aristus]

2. I'm confused.

How could this possibly have happened if there were no video games or violent movies back then?

[sarisataka]

3. I don't really see the shift

that actually caused any change after this incident.

I believe the premise that the right enumerated in the 2nd Amendment does not include permission to arbitrarily shoot someone is supported by >99% of the people. That attitude may have existed in pre-Civil War South but I do not think it is prevalent anywhere today.

One thing this article does relate to today's debate in the role of accessibility of "military" weapons in society at large. Today's argument that such weapons do not belong in society and are not protected by the 2nd is contradicted by the article. Indeed not only were military quality weapons available at that time but that individuals were required to purchase them with their own money. The article does not indicate tat such weapons were kept in any sort of armory or anywhere but in the owner's dwelling. It does indicate that limitations on where they could be carried were widely considered acceptable.