<P> From the efforts at the Walnut Street Jail and Newgate Prison, two competing systems of imprisonment emerged in the United States by the 1820s . The "Auburn" (or "Congregate System") emerged from New York's prison of the same name between 1819 and 1823 . And the "Pennsylvania" (or "Separate System") emerged in that state between 1826 and 1829 . The only material difference between the two systems was whether inmates would ever leave their solitary cells--under the Pennsylvania System, inmates almost never did, but under the Auburn System most inmates labored in congregate workshops by day and slept alone . </P> <P> To advocates of both systems, the promise of institutionalization depended upon isolating the prisoner from the moral contamination of society and establishing discipline in him (or, in rarer cases, her). But the debate as to which system was superior continued into the mid-nineteenth century, pitting some of the period's most prominent reformers against one another . Samuel Gridley Howe promoted the Pennsylvania System in opposition to Matthew Carey, an Auburn proponent; Dorothea Dix took up the Pennsylvania System against Louis Dwight; and Francis Lieber supported Pennsylvania against Francis Wayland . The Auburn system eventually prevailed, however, due largely to its lesser cost . </P> <P> The Pennsylvania system, first implemented in the early 1830s at that state's Eastern State Penitentiary outskirts of Philadelphia and Western State Penitentiary at Pittsburgh, was designed to maintain the complete separation of inmates at all times . Until 1904, prisoners entered the institution with a black hood over their head, so they would never know who their fellow convicts were, before being led to the cell where they would serve the remainder of their sentence in near - constant solitude . The Cherry Hill complex entailed a massive expenditure of state funds; its walls alone cost $200,000, and its final price tag reached $750,000, one of the largest state expenditures of its day . </P> <P> Like its competitor Auburn system, Eastern State's regimen was premised on the inmate's potential for individual rehabilitation . Solitude, not labor, was its hallmark; labor was reserved only for those inmates who affirmatively earned the privilege . All contact with the outside world more or less ceased for Eastern State prisoners . Proponents boasted that a Pennsylvania inmate was "perfectly secluded from the world...hopelessly separated from...family, and from all communication with and knowledge of them for the whole term of imprisonment ." </P>

How did the american political system change during the early years of the nation’s history