and justice-oriented society. The movement came to be labeled the Social Gospel. Its foremost proponents came from a variety of religious backgrounds. For example, Rev. Washington Gladden was a Congregationalist; Rev. Walter Rauschenbusch was a Lutheran; William Dwight Porter Bliss was an Episcopalian.
The Social Gospel was part of a larger political movement, which eventually was called the Progressive movement. Its primary focus was still economic, with a focus on poverty relief, workers’ rights, and taxation, with occasional glances at the issues of criminal justice. At the core of their activity was a belief in the inevitability of progress. From the point of view of the Social Gospel, God could be seen working both from outside and within the created order, enabling all humanity, with its God-given free will, to evolve to a new level. Humans, whether at the top or bottom of the ladder, were capable with the proper assistance of becoming strong, self-conscious co-creators of a better society. The ideas of the Social Gospel and Progressivism were fought tooth and nail by the conservative evangelical Christians and secular conservatives of the day.
Horace Bushnell’s seminal ideas about shaping human development through individualized Christian education were perhaps the most influential religious factors in the formation of prison reform in New England. Bushnell’s theology was translated, as the century ended, into progressive theories of public education and moral training for both children and adults. It was a short step to apply Bushnell’s ideas to the reeducation of youthful delinquents and even adult criminals. It may be that the fittest survive in each generation, but anyone could join the ranks of the fittest with the proper guidance. With these ideas, coupled with the Social Gospel, more and more people began to assume that surviving and thriving were not just natural occurrences within a rigid biological framework. They were within the capacity of everyone.
By the 1870s a unique combination of philosophical penology, scientific discoveries, and Protestant theological liberal thought was an important part of the intellectual landscape, particularly in Connecticut. It gave credibility to the possibilities that all people can change in ways never before imagined in the old Puritan framework. In a much more flexible way, it was now considered feasible that offenders might change for the better. It created an atmosphere of hope for advocates of prison reform and encouraged the move away from society’s dependence on incarceration and discipline to tame the beast of criminality.
In addition to Bushnell, several other connections provide suggestive influences that were probably at work within the Connecticut prison reform movement. For example, Francis Wayland’s tenure as dean of the Yale Law School coincided with the addition of William Graham Sumner (the preeminent social Darwinist of the age) to the Yale faculty in the 1872.40 We also know that both Wayland and Noah Porter (a progressive preacher) were among the founders of the CPA and that Washington Gladden (one of the foremost Social Gospel advocates) was Horace Bushnell’s close friend.41 Bushnell (a strong believer that people can transcend their environment by education) was one of the Hartford leaders who helped to sponsor a major public meeting on prison reform in 1873.
When that background of connections is added to the history outlined earlier, it is clear that the CPA’s founders were immersed in a unique context made up of theology, science, and philosophy. The choices made by those who gathered to create a new prison reform agency represented a perspective shaped by the new penology initiated by John Howard, influenced by evolutionary principles, and at least marginally connected to the forces giving birth to the Social Gospel. We turn now to other social forces, equally powerful in their influences on the cultural context of 1875.
IMMIGRATION, EMANCIPATION, AND URBANIZATION
The impacts of the changes wrought by the American Civil War on America’s regional cultures were enormous. Three factors particularly stand out in connection to criminal justice. They were the end of plantation slavery, unprecedented waves of immigration from Europe, and the subsequent urbanization that took place in every state of the Union—including Connecticut. The America that was hailed as a land of economic opportunity and second chances also became in the twentieth century a nation deeply divided by racism, budding nationalism, and a widespread fear of crime.
The aftermath of the Civil War left Connecticut unscathed in terms of military battles but vastly different in terms of the economic and sociological impact of the war on the region. The two decades following its end were harsh. A new urban situation was developing in those years that caused everyone a good deal of anxiety. As historian Robert Owen Decker writes, “The 1870s were terrible years, as a great depression came in 1873 and six years of hardship followed. Large numbers of unemployed walked. They worried the Hartford police. Men and women took to the roads in large numbers, and many rough gangs were organized. Not until 1880 did the economic upswing come.”42
It was certainly the case that the state and the rest of the Northeast were at the very beginnings of the Industrial Revolution. It was also true that the Civil War had provided an economic platform on which merchants in virtually every industry could transform their wartime factories to produce goods not only for their own states and regions but also for the burgeoning settlements between the Mississippi and the Pacific. Historian Howard Zinn reminds his readers that for the remainder of the century after the Civil War, new sources of energy and power transformed American life and the cultural environment. Human muscles were replaced by steam engines and electricity, wood by iron, and then iron by steel: “Machines could now drive steel tools. Oil could lubricate machines and light homes, streets and factories…. By 1900, America was traversed by 193,000 miles of railroad. The telephone, the typewriter and the adding machine speeded up the work of business.”43
At the same time, city populations in particular were expanding, due primarily to immigration. That brought new issues and opportunities for society to face. Connecticut’s business leaders were priming themselves to participate fully. For example, the manufacture of woolen items and the publishing of books and magazines had been the dominant Connecticut enterprises before the Civil War, along with an industry that most people don’t associate with Connecticut, the making of brandy and gin.
The prevalence of the liquor trade had prompted the formation of the Connecticut Temperance Society in 1829, but despite the plethora of sermons and public outcries about the availability and detriments of alcohol, Hartford still had 114 distilleries in 1845 that produced more than seventy-five thousand gallons of cider brandy and over three hundred thousand gallons of gin. Dealing with the effects of “Demon Rum” would figure prominently in the work of the CPA then and in every succeeding generation.44
After the war other forms of manufacturing were created and rapidly expanded, including silk textiles, firearms, leather works, and machine tools. Eventually, the industry arose that became the icon of Hartford and Connecticut: the insurance industry. The Aetna and the Hartford insurance companies, initiating a brand new fire-insurance concept, rose to prominence in the 1880s and were joined by the end of the century by other companies to provide insurance not only to businesses but to individuals for a variety of potential threats and disasters.
Economically, Connecticut was on an upward curve for the decade of 1865–75. Its prosperity matched the advances of other business tycoons all along the East Coast. While the citizenry at the bottom of the economic ladder were struggling to survive, those at the top were raking in millions of dollars and living in such lavish style that the period merited its nickname as the Gilded Age. Mark Twain used the characterization to his advantage in a play that was very successful despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that it mocked those at the top of the ladder. In particular, the Northeast industrial development exploded. In the words of one historian, “A greedy, grasping, materialistic quality characterized the age…. The democratic process began to falter as the Northeast, with its industry, its cities, and its financial developments caught step with the rest of the modern age…. Economic nationalism had become a fact.”45
Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 generated another massive
