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Conceptions of Deviancy In Jacksonian America

Eighteenth-century notions of dependency and deviancy did not survive for very long into the nineteenth, nor did its methods of dispensing charity and correction. The social, intellectual, and economic changes that differentiated the states of the new republic from the several colonies prompted a critical reappraisal and revision of the ideas and techniques of social control. Americans felt compelled to rethink inherited procedures and devise new methods to replace old ones. They devoted extraordinary attention to this issue, hoping to establish quickly and effectively alternatives to the colonial system. Between 1790 and 1830, the nation’s population greatly increased and so did the number and density of cities. Even gross figures reveal the dimensions of the change. In these forty years, the population of Massachusetts almost doubled, in Pennsylvania it tripled, and in New York it increased five times; border and midwestern states, practically empty in 1790, now held over three million people. At Washington’s inauguration, only two hundred thousand Americans lived in towns with more than twenty-five hundred people; by Jackson’s accession, the number exceeded one million. In 1790, no American city had more than fifty thousand residents. By 1830, almost half a million people lived in urban centers larger than that. During these same years factories began to dot the New England and mid-Atlantic rivers. The decade of the 1830’s witnessed the first accelerated growth of manufacturing in the nation. At the same time, Enlightenment ideas challenged Calvinist doctrines; the prospect of boundless improvement confronted a grim determinism. But these general trends are not sufficient to explain the very specific reactions to the issue of deviant and dependent behavior. To them must be added Americans’ understanding of these changes. Under the influence of demographic, economic and intellectual develop-