The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its ExperiencesQuinby, Hosea
Religion
The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences
Quinby, Hosea
Prison chaplains; Prisoners -- Religious life; Prisons -- New Hampshire
The chaplain was one of those officers. What, then, shall we believe?
Who tells the truth? What has become of straightforward dealing? Where
is that trait once called honor among men? The reader, having fully
informed himself of the real facts, will pronounce the above charge
against the chaplain as unqualifiedly untrue from beginning to end.
But one says, "That first assertion must be true. The warden could not
have shared your sympathy in his acts." No, that first assertion is not
true. It is equally false with all the rest, that is, in the sense of
the writer, which evidently is that the chaplain did not sympathize with
the warden in his desires for order, and labor with him to that end.
Order is the first thing to be sought in prison as everywhere else. It
has my fullest sympathy and for the very purpose of helping towards it,
under this warden, I voluntarily undertook what I did.
"The warden has not had that assistance from the chaplain," &c. The
reader has seen the chaplain putting in a pacific word here and there,
doing all he could to interest the mind in its privations, helping men
keep down their angry passions, robbing the solitary of its occupants,
excusing, entreating, helping to order in every way possible, and is
held up in that light.
"Not acted in harmony." Not a discordant word or step is the truth.
"Manifested peculiarities of his own." Peculiarities! What were they?
Honest devotion to duty and not an eye to personal popularity; most
arduous toils engaged in for helping to the best interest of the
prison; patient efforts for reforming and elevating the fallen. All I
said or did there would come within some of these points. Were those
peculiarities? What then must be the character of the prison management?
If the chaplain's moves were held as peculiarities it could have been
only from contrasting the animus and acts of those who ruled with his.
They would hold the prisoners as so many "dumb, driven cattle;" he, as
human beings, with instincts of reason to be addressed and emotions of
right to be stirred; they, in all cases, would move their brute fears,
threaten, scold, drive; he, a part of the time at least, would appeal to
the manhood sentiments, persuade, entreat, expostulate; they would
regard them as morally hopeless, to be cruelly treated, and made money
of; he, as those for whom hope lives, and on whom redeeming influences
should be used, and efforts made for coining from them gold purer than
earth affords.
Nor are these moves of the chaplain peculiarities in many other States,
if in N. H. Nor are they original with him. Other minds had brought out
such ideas and pushed them somewhat widely into public acceptance, and
he was only attempting to introduce something of their benign influence
here.
"Detrimental to discipline." What gross darkness!
"Made it more difficult for the warden." Change "difficult" to "easy"
and the truth would be told.
"Causing punishment." What an idea!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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