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,