The official end of slavery is generally considered to be his greatest moral legacy to the nation, and it affected every part of the nation. The declaration of emancipation brought about a political realignment that led to a division between slave and free states, which in turn precipitated a retributive political Reconstruction effort that did more harm than good. An exodus of former slaves was set in motion to the northern states, primarily to the urban centers.
Connecticut abolished slavery by law in 1849, the last of the New England states to do so. Racist attitudes were as deeply engrained in the northern states as in the South, despite the persuasive power of the abolitionist movement. The linkage in the nineteenth century between the slave trade and Connecticut’s own burgeoning economy and institutions of higher education has been firmly established. Indeed, much of the philanthropy of the twentieth century was made possible by the profits derived in the preceding centuries from slavery. The sweat and blood of black men and women and their children made the industrial as well as the agricultural revolution possible. Their release from their enslavement gave them only a brief period to celebrate.
According to John von Rohr, in Connecticut, as in much of New England, the ownership model used to hold and treat slaves was based on Old Testament scripture. In it, a person who in most of the South was called and treated as a “slave” was euphemistically and legally treated as a member of the family and called a “servant” in the North. The change in terminology also led to an ambiguous status. Servants lived in a limbo somewhere between the conditions faced by a plantation slave and those faced by an indentured servant. Although usually freed after a specified time, freedom proved to be no favor in reality, as northern cultural prejudices against black people found more subtle ways to hold them down financially and socially. “Paradoxically,” claims von Rohr, emancipation in New England was more oppressive than bondage, pointing toward later discriminatory practices.46
The data available in annual reports throughout the early years of the CPA does not include any breakdown of offender populations in the county jails and the state prison in terms of race. There is evidence, however, that people of color were already disproportionately represented in the jails and prison and resented by many in the general population, especially after the Civil War.47
To complete our survey of the years after the Civil War, a singular cultural shock to the nation was caused by the successive waves of immigrants that moved into the country. Between 1840 and 1860, according to census reports, over 4.3 million persons of all ages from overseas took up residence in the United States. With the influx large cities became huge, and small towns became cities. All told, between 1820 and 1900, over 19 million immigrants settled across the land, and by 1880 one quarter of the total population in the nation lived in cities of over 8,000 people.48
Connecticut’s census increased by over 150,000 people in the thirty years prior to 1860, and the urban population of the state went up by 197 percent between 1820 and 1860. The percentage of foreign born in the state increased from 21 percent in 1870 to 30 percent by 1910. The result was a steep rise in pressure on the immigrant population to learn the language, find jobs and housing, and fit into the new culture. Conversely, the cities were hard-pressed to provide work and places for immigrants to live and to keep law and order in the streets. The time was ripe for all kinds of discrimination.
After the Civil War, coincident and interrelated with all these changes, crime increased. Especially in the cities, crime grew both in the varieties of offenses and in the breadth of ages of the offenders. The most prominent criminal offenses requiring imprisonment were drunkenness, pauperism, and vagrancy, with a few cases of assault and battery and an occasional murder. There was also a growing interest in how to handle the number of people being processed by the state courts and ending up in jail or prison. Legislators, consequently, gave more time to crafting new laws to define and control both the individual criminal and the sense of disorder being created by crime.
In view of all these factors, conditions were good in 1875 for a response such as the formation of the Prisoners’ Friend Corporation. In its alliance with the state, led by participants in or supporters of state government, the corporation became a part of a complex industry that would develop gradually around the burgeoning criminal justice system. The religious compassion that was undoubtedly behind the agency was mixed with the civic desire to give Connecticut the best possible prison and jail system, using the most modern concepts of penology and giving the released offenders the best possible chance to be constructive citizens.
THE PROLIFERATION OF VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS
The formation of voluntary associations in the United States has a long history and has received intense study in the twentieth century. It was during the nineteenth century, however, that the formation of voluntary associations became a veritable art form, filling almost every niche in American society in which contrary opinions had been raised or in which some injustice was perceived. Listen to William Ellery Channing, an esteemed Unitarian preacher and poet (1780–1842), preaching about the situation: “You can scarcely name an objective for which some institution has not been formed. Would men spread one opinion, or crush another? They make a society. Would they improve the penal code, or relieve poor debtors? They make societies. Would they encourage, argue or manufacture a science? They make societies. Would one class encourage horse racing and another discourage travel on Sundays? They form societies.”49
The process by which people band together, formally or informally, to achieve a common goal is probably as old as the emergence of Homo sapiens and may even go back as far as the Neanderthal culture. It seems to have been one of the ways in which humans moved beyond simply surviving in hostile environments as individuals to thriving in communities. Some students of the subject hold that it is the primary way. James Hunt, an authority on the subject, goes so far as to state that “man as a historical being is to be understood in terms of the types of associations (voluntary and involuntary) under which or in the face of which he lives or in which he participates.”50
In the nineteenth century there were in the United States so many voluntary associations that Alexis de Tocqueville concluded, “In no country in the world has the principle of association been more successfully used, or applied to a greater multitude of objects, than in America.” Tocqueville went on to distinguish three permanent associations: the State, the Church (by which he meant the established churches), and the Corporation. He recognized other associations of a less permanent nature and wrote with amazement about the number of these small, often very transitory, groups he found in America.51 What has become especially clear since Tocqueville wrote is that many associations display a surprising and unpredictable durability. For example, the Women’s Relief Corps, the Union of Home Work, and the Widow’s Society, all typical voluntary associations in Hartford, came into being in the same era as the Connecticut Prison Association. All had a relatively short existence, often terminated within fifty years of their inception, but left behind an important impact on society as a whole. Among them were state associations to improve the way crime was processed and criminals were treated during incarceration. Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Delaware, and Maryland led the way in America. By 1875 the time was ripe for the same reaction to criminal justice in Connecticut.
David Knoke and James Wood identify four categories of social influence associations in the American experience: legal-justice, health, civic action, and neighborhood-community. The categories are interrelated and defy strictly interpreted boundaries. The CPA has exemplified elements of all four. From its inception the CPA functioned as a legal-justice association, drafting bills and advocating for them in the state legislature. It has also demonstrated elements of the civic action type, organizing volunteer programs and working with municipal governments to change or implement public policies.52
In the health field, from 1875 to about 1940 the CPA had legislatively mandated responsibilities for offenders deemed “insane” and has continued to mount programs to deal with all manner of health-related concerns of offenders. Finally, it has worked in and helped
