Excerpt from United States Criminal History: Being a True Account of the Most Horrid Murders, Piracies, High-Way Robberies, &C., Together With the Lives, Trials, Confessions and Executions of the Criminals; Compiled From the Criminal Records of the Counties

There is a propensity in man to take pleasure in the sight or relation of human sin and suflbring. Thousands flock to the execution of a criminal, and the history of his life, however dull and interesting, is sought and read with avidity. No part of anewspaper excites so much attention as the record of crime and calamity; some have pronounced this curiosity a depraved appetite, I hold the contrary; it is almost universal, and therefore natural. It is the object of this work to gratify this feeling in a manner the most ad lagoons to the public. The pamphlets purporting to give accounts of noted malefactors, are usually ill written, unworthy of credit, and of bad moral tendency. They exhibit the convict in the most unfavorable light, enlarge upon the good qualities he may possess, and rather solicit sympathy for his fate, than abhorrence for his crimes. The compiler of this work proposes a difl'erent plan; he gives the history only of such Murders, Piracies, Rob beries, etc., as have been eminent in their professions. Of those whose lives and deeds have little interest, he has nothing to say. In each case he has carefully compiled his work from the criminal records of the difl'erent counties, that the criminals were executed in. He believes he speaks of each of his subjects, as the persons deserve; neither ag granting nor extenuating his ofl'enoes, or doing injustice to the criminals, or the public. He hes been told that a wr rk of this kind will be a public injury, but does not believe it. It cannot be that holding sin up to abhorrence will corrupt any one. I am' confident that people will indulge in reading each matter; therefore it is certainly bottom that it should be, presented in the least exceptionable form possible, and it is the desire of the Author to present a work to the public, thatjwill be beneficial to the rising generation, that will show them thsuntimely end that sin will lead them to. And by picturing to them the true lives of such criminals as have been executed within the United States, will, I am confident, save many from an untimely end.

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