Doron S. Ben-Atar and Richard D. Brown's Taming Lust: Crimes Against Nature in the Early Republic is a highly readable microhistorical study of two startlingly unusual legal prosecutions. John Farrell of Leverett, Massachusetts, in 1796 and Gideon Washburn of Litchfield, Connecticut, in 1799 were each condemned to hang for having sexual intercourse with domestic animals. Neither of the jurisdictions involved had convicted anyone of bestiality for more than a century, but the convictions were more than merely anachronistic. Both men were in their 80s. Neither Connecticut nor Massachusetts had ever sentenced to death anyone of such an advanced age for any crime, much less for bestiality, which had always been associated with youthful, male offenders. Furthermore, the nation as a whole was in the midst of rethinking both the death penalty itself and the list of crimes that might justify its use, and the states were becoming increasingly unwilling to prosecute “victimless” sex crimes at all. Neither man was actually executed. Farrell was saved by petitions, and Washburn died in jail. Nevertheless, that not one but two old men in the same region should be convicted of bestiality and sentenced to hang within 3 years of one another in the 1790s is downright bizarre. What are we to make of these cases?

Unfortunately for the authors, precious few sources survive that would allow for a direct approach to that question. If written depositions or trial transcripts were ever produced, neither survives. Ben-Atar and Brown, however, argue that the context of the trials is more important than the facts of the cases. The available literature on bestiality suggests that it was and is endemic in rural communities that rely on animal husbandry. Presumably, the neighbors who lodged complaints against Farrell and Washburn had encountered men having inappropriate sexual contact with domestic animals before. Why, then, did they choose to register complaints against these particular men (who, in light of their advanced years, may not even have had the capacity to commit the crimes with which they were charged)? Why did the local magistrates forward the complaint and the grand jury hand down indictments?

Ben-Atar and Brown were able to reconstruct biographies for the defendants that showed that each was in his own way an outsider, and, therefore, vulnerable to prosecution, but something more than the fates of two old men must have been at stake. Each trial drew politically prominent men as judges and lawyers for both the prosecution and defense. Ben-Atar and Brown argue that the cases became proxies for larger political and religious debates about the future of New England in the new republic. On one side (prosecution) stood Federalism, Congregationalism, and a longing for old-style Puritan values. On the other side (defense) stood Jeffersonianism, religious tolerance, and individual liberty. Each had its adherents, but in the conservative New England interior, the former was bound to win out. New Englanders felt threatened by the political and religious changes happening around them. (Almost) executing Farrell and Washburn allowed them to revive a comforting “Puritan flashback” (150) and reassure themselves that they were still on the side of God and their ancestors.

Certainly, the fact that two such similar, but apparently unrelated, cases occurred in such a brief period of time in the same region does suggest a larger cultural force at work. Ben-Atar and Brown's argument makes intuitive sense, but it is hard to refrain from wondering how a more complete court record might have changed their conclusions. All interesting history necessarily involves some degree of speculation. The almost complete lack of records at the very center of these cases means that their interpretation requires more speculation than most. It would also be helpful to know more about how late eighteenth century New Englanders understood “the Puritans.” Ben-Atar and Brown carefully take the reader through the history of seventeenth century bestiality cases (periodically with brief, and not always entirely accurate, asides about witchcraft). We know how, why, and how often New England authorities prosecuted and executed people for having sex with animals, but is not clear that those who were involved in the Farrell and Washburn cases were similarly aware of their ancestors' actions and attitudes. We tend to associate executions for bestiality with the Puritans, but did their late eighteenth-century ancestors? The authors are quite clear that eighteenth-century New Englanders did not want to return to the spartan material culture of the 1630s, initiate witch hunts, or hang Quakers. A better sense of which aspects of these imagined Puritans they did want to revive (however briefly) would give the reader a better sense of precisely what this “Puritan flashback” entailed.

Nevertheless, Taming Lust makes a valuable contribution to the histories of both sexuality and the early republic. Historians have long interpreted the 1790s as the beginning of a period of retrenchment and relative conservatism compared with the Revolutionary years, but rarely has that interpretation been extended to the policing of sexual morality. Historians have noted the general trend toward effective decriminalization of fornication in the eighteenth century. Some, such as Richard Godbeer (Sexual Revolution in Early America, [Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002]) have written about the development of a sexualized pleasure culture in urban areas, such as Philadelphia, in the years following the Revolution. Ben-Atar and Brown dispute neither of these findings. They do remind us, however, that the prosecution of those seen as sexual deviants was a common response to threatening political developments, and that people in rural areas were as likely to define themselves in opposition to urban culture as they were to be led by it. Litchfield and Leverett's flashback may have been brief, but it demonstrates quite viscerally the depth of the anxiety with which many in the New England interior responded to the political and cultural turmoil of the post-Revolutionary years.