Unruly Society
For this essay, I chose to look at the end of chapter 21 and beginning of chapter 22 at which point the scene where Huckleberry Finn watches as Sherburn shoots down Boggs in the street for cursing his name. After which the mob forms to lynch Sherburn and he gives his speech on cowardice. I believe this plays a very important role in the Authors main theme of the moral pubescence of the time. Generally speaking during this period in American history there was no law and order, for the most part crime was handled by the general public and it was usually handled by masked man lynching someone at night mainly out of fear for themselves because if they were to do it during the day everyone would see them and they could be killed for doing it, I think Twain is trying to convey to the reader that most people were scared. During this time there was no organized police force to help people; hence a lot of crimes went unpunished. In this passage Sherburn states, “Why don't your juries hang murderers? Because they're afraid the man's friends will shoot them in the back, in the dark” (Twain, 165). Sherburn refers to the lack of law and to the crowds own cowardice.
This time of lawless society was accurately depicted in An Introduction to Policing, by J.S.Dempsey in his first chapter on early policing.

“An 1840 New York newspaper reported:
Destructive rascality stalks at large in our streets and public places, at all times of day and night, with none to make it afraid; mobs assemble deliberately. . . . In a word, lawless violence and fury have full dominion over us” (Dempsey, 10).
Furthermore, the 19th Centuries were well influenced by the Judeo-Christian religion. This idea is reflected in the passage after Boggs is shot, “They laid him on the floor and put one large Bible under his head, and opened another one and spread it on his breast” (Twain,162). This seemed to me as if they were asking God to save his soul. In this same sense, after Boggs had died, The crowd demanded retribution for Sherburn’s act of murder. Their call for a lynching reflects the Biblical teaching of an eye for eye. “Well, by and by somebody said Sherburn ought to be lynched. In about a minute everybody was saying it” (Twain, 163). However this act ever taking place shows how infantile societies were, and how quickly moralities decayed when faced with these sorts of situations. This example is shown in the scene “So away they went, mad and yelling, and snatching down every clothes-line they come to do the hanging with. They swarmed up towards Sherburn's house, a-whooping and raging like Injuns” (Twain p.163-164). It could have easily been avoided if there was a strong judicial system to look out for the general welfare of the community’s. Another example of how the passage played into the theme on the early 19th century was when one of the town’s men began to reenact the shooting and how the crowd cheered and even poured him drinks before Boggs blood had even dried, an obvious exhibition of the lack of moral development.
In final analysis Mark Twain places this passage in Huckleberry Finn in a society that is poor, underprivileged, uneducated with a very rudimentary form of government. I believe this gave aid to Huckleberry’s own personal development from a boy to a man which played an important role in decisions he made and his outlook on society as a whole. Moreover, Twain bases this passage as well the rest of the book on society during the middle of the 19th century to display how unforgiving and fragile America was preceding the Civil war.

Works Cited
Twain, Mark. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. P.
Dempsey, J.S. An Introduction to Policing. 2005 p.10