Liberty's Prisoners. Jen Manion
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submission from female convicts—two traits central to women’s proper role in society—reformers ensured women would have a greater likelihood of reformation than the men. The rhetorical submission of the petition only further enforced this.
Male petitioners had a host of different issues to navigate. Manliness was measured by independence for men in the early republic. The working poor, servants, slaves, and imprisoned men strove for expressions of independence in place of actual financial independence.24 Male prisoners were eager to reassert themselves as providers for their families, and this idea often shaped the basis and tone of their petitions. They were not looking for handouts but merely the opportunity—both noble and appropriate-to support their wives and children. James Parkins wrote, “Your well known sensibility and the goodness of your heart I flatter myself will be an advocate for a whole family and by your benevolence and kind influence I anxiously wish that a drooping family may once more smile and thank their generous benefactors.”25 Parkins made his case based on the collective needs of his family rather than his individual desires. Other men wrote explicitly about the particular family members who depended on them. Alexander Drian’s petition to the Supreme Executive Council cited the needs of his two-year-old child and wife in critical condition as grounds for leniency and a remission of his fine.26 John McCrum begged to be released so that he could “go work honestly for my bread and my wife as I always did before,” adding that he would rather be dead than to see his “wife suffer as she does.”27 Prisoners worried about their families and believed that the well-being of innocent women and children would inspire the benevolent reformers to help them. This turned out to be true in many cases. For example, the Visiting Committee of PSAMPP advocated the payment of the dollar fine that kept prisoner William Ketsel from being with and supporting his “wife and three children.”28 The idea that men deserved the opportunity for success because their families were dependent on them only became stronger in Philadelphia during this period, as wage labor replaced long-standing terms of servitude or slavery for society’s most vulnerable.
Gendered notions of economic self-sufficiency and independence were less forgiving of men who needed assistance.29 This is precisely why male prisoners framed their requests in more expansive terms. Jacob James could not make the complete bail he was offered and ended up in jail awaiting trial—a common cause of people’s imprisonment. James basically requested a loan from PSAMPP for his bail money and promised to pay the debt back weekly until it was discharged. This was an unusual and creative request. He rooted his appeal, however, in the needs of his family and his desire to take care of them. James wrote, “Hon[ore]d Sir I have a wife and one child in grate distress on the account of my being in this place and can not be any help to them.”30 James entered a dependent relationship with his benefactors based on his desire for freedom. He (and others like him) staked a claim to independence (and therefore manliness) by asserting his relationship to his dependents.31
Patrick Kain claimed to have unknowingly harbored two escaped convicts and ended up in prison as a result. Kain offered several reasons why PSAMPP should assist him, none as powerfully or dramatically stated as his need to provide for his family. Obviously distraught, he proclaimed, “I have a wife and three small children and have myself lost a leg in the service of the country and have sailed since 7 voyages with Capt. Cunningham and if I am detained here and loose the chance of a berth god knows what will become of my wife and children.”32 Men never cited their children alone as those in need of their aid, suggesting they were never expected to be the primary or sole caretakers of children. Men could be providers for families, not caretakers of children. Thus, they referred to their wives and families, in marked contrast to women, who often described themselves as the sole custodians of children.
Despite hints of things to come, including a decrease in use of the language of deference and an increase in the use of petitions for collective political action, the petitions written by prisoners in Walnut Street Jail from 1787 to 1789 are more reflective of the petition’s past than of its future. Even the more assertive and entitled petitions penned by debtors would not have raised the ire of reformers. They were still petitions, after all, a genre of communication that “acknowledged the power of the rulers and the dependence of the aggrieved.”33 Prisoners were nothing if not dependent—and reformers were happy to oblige requests that did not threaten this hierarchy. Still, imprisoned men were placed in an impossible position: they had to practice deference and obedience while demonstrating the markers of citizenship—independence, agency, and strength. The petition only further highlighted this tension, which can be seen in attempts by some men to assert themselves more boldly. Men used the petition in multiple ways, attempting to navigate the paradoxical relationship between submission and self-determination. They did this most persuasively not by rooting their arguments in claims of independence, liberty, democracy, or citizenship, but rather through their own relations of dependency—by framing themselves as providers and caretakers for wives and children.
Prisoners of both sexes wrote desperately, longingly, and mournfully about the plight of their families during their imprisonment. Their only hope was to appeal to the whims, sensibilities, or conscience of those men who positioned themselves as arbiters of justice and suffering. PSAMPP members received significant public recognition for their work. One commentator downplayed the fact that most were economically successfully and politically powerful, stating, “Nothing further need be said, respecting the members who come to their relief, but that they are men, engaged in the noblest office that can employ human nature, that of mitigating the miseries of their fellow creatures.”34 But it was precisely their status that empowered them to advocate the creation of the penitentiary and then to mediate the intimate family relationships of those trapped inside.35 Gendered representations of desire and dependency helped stabilize the heterosexual political economy by assuring reformers that men and women in prison understood and aspired to social and economic roles rooted in sexual difference.36
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Reformers embraced their role in recommending pardons partly because this process deflected attention from the expansion of punishment and its brutal consequences for immigrants and African Americans. Individual pardons provided a counter to concerns that the penal system was a substitute for slavery, an extension of the slave labor economy, or a tool to contain the poor masses. The opportunity to pardon strengthened the belief of benevolent reformers and abolitionists alike that human consideration—and even justice—might be possible for African Americans, immigrants, women, and all of those with no formal say in legal matters. Widespread use of the pardon in the first decade of the penitentiary reflects both optimism and pragmatism. PSAMPP’s first recommendation for pardon was for a black man convicted of arson. In 1787, Barrack Martin along with his wife, Tamar, were charged with arson. It was decided that there was no case against her (ignoramus), but he was convicted of arson and sentenced to death in 1787.37 Martin was said to “voluntarily and maliciously, on the 28th Feb. 1787, set[ting] fire to and burn[ing], in the township of Lower Dublin, one barn, one stable, and one out house, the property of a certain Susannah Morris, containing 10,000 lbs weight of hay.”38 The Supreme Executive Council ordered a pardon for Martin shortly after his conviction. PSAMPP members discovered that despite this order, he was still being held in prison in irons. They recommended him “to the care of the Acting Committee” on May 31, 1787. Two weeks later, the Acting Committee reported that his irons were removed, and they soon received verification of his pardon and noted the council was “ready for his liberation.”39 Martin’s pardon was inspired by the early zeal of humanitarian reformers.
And so the pardons flowed. Reformers and Inspectors would visit prisoners and make recommendations to the governor. Reform proponents argued that pardons were essential to the penitentiary system because they gave jailers and reformers a way to entice convicts to good behavior. Pardons were also “freely granted to make room for new-comers.”40 In 1795 and 1799, roughly half of the women sentenced received early releases. Pardons were more frequent and of greater length (about four months) during 1795 than in 1799, when the average dropped to one month. But politicians and reformers continued to clash over the use of pardons. Many Pennsylvania judges and politicians were convinced that certainty and proportionality of punishment were key to the system’s success. This idea was central