ABSTRACT
The sturdy walls of the insane asylum became familiar landmarks in pre-Civil War America. Before 1810, only a few eastern-seaboard states had incorporated private institutions to care for the mentally ill, and Virginia alone had established a public asylum. By 1850, almost every northeastern and midwestern legislature supported an asylum; by 1860, twenty-eight of the thirty-three states had public institutions for the insane. With an almost complete absence of dissenting opinion, the belief in the curative powers of the asylum spread through many layers of American society. The asylum would also exemplify for the public the correct principles of organization. The appropriate arrangement of the asylum, its physical dimensions and daily routine, monopolized their thinking. The postulate of the asylum program was the prompt removal of the insane from the community. Practice often fell below the standards, but despite the lapses, the world of the antebellum asylum was a universe apart from local jails and almshouses.
