Liberty’s Prisoners: Carceral Culture in Early America

Abstract

In this social history, Jen Manion, an associate professor of history at Connecticut College, lucidly describes and analyzes how between 1785 and 1835 the prison system, especially in Pennsylvania, is a lens into the construction of culture in early America. Prisons served a purpose. Created and maintained by the state, prisons were places of incarceration for individuals who had been convicted of crimes against society. In the new but conflicted society, prisons were also indicators of cultural and social tensions. The ideals and words of individual liberty clashed with notions and deeds of social hierarchy. Not all persons were equal. Persons of property—citizens—were members of the political community; persons of deprived status—workers, women, indentured servants, immigrants, and slaves—struggled on the margins of society. The vicissitudes of the market economy often brought these persons from the opposite ends of the social structure into contact in the criminal system. Virtuous, and sometimes reforming, citizens administered the prison system while the prisons disciplined marginalized, and often desperate, malcontents who were vulnerable to society’s vices.