Private Hangings

By attacking public hangings as cruel death penalty opponents were able to agitate five states to abolish public hangings but fifteen states continued to hold private hangings. In 1853, Wisconsin abolished the death penalty after a gruesome hanging in which the prisoner “struggled for five minutes at the end of the rope, and a full eighteen minutes passed before his heart finally quit.” (Reggio, 1997) We see here that the basis for rejecting capital punishment evolved mid-century from arguing that not only is it morally wrong to kill another human being but also that the manner in which the human life is taken is equally reprehensible.
Electrocution as a method of execution widely replaced hanging with New York performing the first electrocution