Executions through 1865
21The vast majority of America’s mass legal executions occurred during a span of just over two centuries, as the population grew from about a quarter million to nearer forty million persons. Only about one eighth of the subjects of mass executions had been convicted of murder, currently the only crime for which persons are sentenced to death and that even then accounted for 60% of all executions. About one fifth of the mass executions involved crimes related to war (treason, desertion, mutiny, espionage), with about 9% involving piracy. If the small number of legal executions related to Indian uprisings are added to those related to slave revolts, mass executions for those two offenses by oppressed minorities against the ruling authority account for over half of the mass legal executions in those two centuries. Meanwhile, the most famous mass legal executions, resulting from the Salem witch trials, accounted for just 2% of the mass executions of the period prior to the end of 1865.
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