VIOLENCE is the primal problem of American history, the dark reverse of its coin of freedom and abundance. American society, or a conspicuous part of it, has been tumultuous since the beginnings of European colonization. But while seventeenth-century Virginia was a disorderly place, the Massachusetts Bay Colony was not, and though the South and the frontier and the black ghetto have known especially high levels of violence and disorder, rural New England and Mormon Utah have almost always been tranquil.

DO THESE DIFFERENCES SIMPLY reflect American pluralism? Perhaps New England was less violent because the godly Pilgrims and Puritans settled there. Perhaps Southern and Western communities were more violent because the presence of slaves and Indians aroused fear and encouraged people to carry guns. Such explanations go a long way toward accounting for the regional peculiarities of American violence, but they are not the whole story.

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