Liberty's Prisoners. Jen Manion
Liberty’s Prisoners
EARLY AMERICAN STUDIES
Series editors:
Daniel K. Richter, Kathleen M. Brown,
Max Cavitch, and David Waldstreicher
Exploring neglected aspects of our colonial,
revolutionary, and early national history and culture,
Early American Studies reinterprets familiar themes
and events in fresh ways. Interdisciplinary in character,
and with a special emphasis on the period from about
1600 to 1850, the series is published in partnership with
the McNeil Center for Early American Studies.
A complete list of books in the series
is available from the publisher.
Liberty’s Prisoners
Carceral Culture in Early America
Jen Manion
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PRESS
PHILADELPHIA
Copyright © 2015 University of Pennsylvania Press
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used
for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this
book may be reproduced in any form by any means without
written permission from the publisher.
Published by
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
ISBN 978-0-8122-4757-2
For my teachers
CONTENTS
Chapter 2. Sentimental Families
Illustrations
ABBREVIATIONS
| BOI | Inspectors of the Jail and Penitentiary House, Philadelphia Prisons System, PCA |
| HSP | Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia |
| MAG | Magdalen Society of Philadelphia, HSP |
| MCD | Mayor’s Court Docket, PCA |
| PCA | Philadelphia City Archives |
| PFT | Prisoners for Trial Docket, Philadelphia Prisons System, PCA |
| PG | Pennsylvania Gazette |
| PMHB | Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography |
| PPS | Pennsylvania Prison Society, HSP |
| PSA | Pennsylvania State Archives, Harrisburg |
| PSAMPP | Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons, HSP |
| PSD | Prison Sentence Docket, Philadelphia Prisons System, PCA |
| Statutes | The Statutes at Large of Pennsylvania from 1681 to 1801, ed. James T. Mitchell, Henry Flanders, et al. (Harrisburg: Clarence M. Busch, State Printer of Pennsylvania, 1896) |
| VAG | Vagrancy Docket, Philadelphia Prisons System, PCA |
Introduction
WHEN THE WAR with Great Britain finally came to an end, Pennsylvania’s legislature moved quickly to enact what it had first approved in the state constitution of 1776: major revisions to the penal code to reduce the number of capital crimes and put an end to harsh punishment.1 Under the newly democratic government, more men than ever before gained importance in the body politic.2 But the Revolutionary promises—life, liberty, happiness—were quickly foreclosed by a revised penal system that disguised its violence under the rubric of humanitarianism, replaced slavery as the disciplinary authority in African American lives, and prized the property rights of the few over the human rights of the many. A diverse class of white men, from ruling elites to middling artisans, cast their lot with the penitentiary system, hoping it would make them better men, bring back the gender roles of old, cultivate industrious habits, contain the threat of free blacks and immigrants, and regulate illicit sex. It was a tall order, made more challenging by the resistance of lower-class men working as watchmen, keepers, and guards who refused their orders, African Americans who fought back against unjust laws and people who claimed possession of them, Irish immigrants who stole items of small value to survive after serving out or abandoning their indentures, and working women who refused to give up their jobs and retreat from public life into the domestic fantasy of republicanism. When economic depression struck and crime rates spiked,