He would argue that poverty, race, or broken families had nothing to do with crime. He goes on the record for saying that "The high homicide rates that characterize the United States really have a geographical origin in the white, rural pre-Civil War South" (Booknotes, 1989). Butterfield uses the Bosket's family as a case study to illustrate his thesis about the transmission of violence from the South. .
Summary.
The blacks in the south had adapted the Scott-Irish culture in which was the key for slaves to survive. The slaves called this the honor code; this represented the respect and prized personal good somebody can have. The honor code was used by the slaves in a way to keep them alive due to the absence of personal property and or possessions. The honor culture that Butterfield argues was internalized by African slaves in the South Carolina and exacerbated by the fact that violence was used to keep slaves obedient. Fox Butterfield showed that where the Bosket family's existence began is around the same time that violence was at an all-time high as well as slavery. So the book starts off in South Carolina in the Edgefield County where the American Revolution just ended. Whites and blacks are not getting along due to slavery. The constant fighting in Edgefield left people feeling numb toward violence from the 1760s to the 1780s. It soon gained a reputation as "Bloody Edgefield" due to its high number of murders (Butterfield, F.,2008). The first character that Butterfield introduces us to is Aaron Bosket whom is a slave at the time. Aaron Bosket was born a slave, and purchased and sold at a young age. Aaron and his family were sold about three or four times until they were purchased by a slave owner by the name of Bosket, that's when they received their surname Bosket. .
Aaron Bosket wanted his own land and to become a share cropper with a white planner in Mount Willing. Here the share cropper system reduced the African Americans to peons but then in 1867 the Southern states were forced to give African Americans to vote (Butterfield, F.
