Mercy and Diversity
Mercy and Diversity
The Pardon Power in the Early National Period
This chapter shows how mercy regularly modified punishment, albeit in ways that reinforced racial and social hierarchies in the early national period. As the state abolished slavery by increments, the use of pardons to banish slaves who had been found guilty of crimes allowed their sale to persist. Incursions into Indian territory were accompanied by efforts to impose state criminal law, and the use of pardons for non-treaty and treaty Indians gutted Native American sovereignty. The establishment of Newgate and Auburn state prisons created a new category of New Yorker: the inmate, sentenced to unprecedented periods of incarceration, whose hope of an early release depended on the governor’s prerogative to pardon.
Keywords: mercy, pardon, slavery, race, penitentiaries, Native Americans, discrimination, New York
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