THE KINGLIEST INSTRUMENT

    “They begin with telling us all mankind are equal, but that is a lie, John; for the children are not equal to the mother, nor the mother to the father; unless where there is petticoat government; and such families never go on well; the children are often spoiled and the husband brought to a gaol. But I say people are not equal……”- Thomas Bull

   As I said, I have my own church. I use the word church, very loosely. More accurately, it’s a social sculpture. But, because I do use the word church (as in Church of the Little Green Man) I sometimes get phone calls from people who think they are calling a traditional Christian Church. They get my number off the sign or the internet. One recent phone call (at 8:30 am) was from a man who started telling me a sad story (without taking a breath) of his trials and tribulations on this mortal plane. I cut him off and asked who he thought he was calling? He said “A church that helps people.” I told him it was not that type of church and hung up. Truth in advertising. I felt a little bad for my abruptness, but not for long. He called right back, preaching to me that if I was not a Christian Church, and that by using the word “Church,” I was, in his words, “…making a mockery of God.” Now he had my attention. 

    The second phone call went on for another five minutes, as I tried to get out of him just what it was he wanted. I asked him repeatedly, “What exactly do you want?” He would not answer the direct question, preferring instead to repeat the charge of “God Mockery!” My advice to the caller (if he would’ve listened) was to ring up a “real” church; and if he expected help, not question whatever their weird theology was. He couldn’t grasp mine, so I hung up again. God mock you muthafucker. Preach on.   

    The first full time prison chaplain in America, (following Newgate’s part-timer Rev. John Stanford) was Auburn’s Rev. Louis Dwight and his Prison Discipline Society of Boston. This is only one of Auburn’s many claimed firsts. The more well known “number one” is the first execution of a condemned man by electric chair. But Rev. Dwight and the chaplaincy was no less crucial to the management at Auburn Prison than the threat of “the chair.” 

     Until the 1820’s the few clergy on the inside of prisons had acted in an ad hoc capacity. With early 19th century penal reform, also came the advent of the full time prison chaplain.The religious functionary was now a paid agent of the state; officially helping with the penitence, repentance, and ultimately the control of the prisoner. It was a brilliant move on the part of the administrators, a collaboration made to order.

    Having credited Revs. Cadle and Fisk, way more than his lawyer Henry G. Wisner, in ordaining his escape from the Goshen gallows, Jack was more than willing to be “converted” once again by Revs. Louis Dwight and his successor Rev. Jared Curtis. In Jack’s words told to Rev. Eddy, “I was stooping down, picking up chips, and I thought by an eye of faith that I could see him as a Lamb. And all at once he appeared as a man, dressed in white, beautiful and glorious.” Jack was on his knees, ready to be saved again by the men in white.The clergy thought they had struck gold. 

     Biographer, Rev. Ansel D. Eddy insisted, that after a lifetime of illiteracy, Jack Hodges magically learned to read the bible with the help of Revs. Dwight and Curtis. Had Jack mastered reading, or had he just memorized a few passages, parroting them back on cue? Rev. Ansel Eddy wasn’t on the level of Joseph Smith, but he was known as a successful proselytizer. According to Alfred Habegger, in his book on theologian Henry James, sr., Ansel Eddy was, if not famous, at least prominent in evangelical circles in western New York at this time. His congregation in nearby Canandaigua was one of the glowing “hot spots” of the burned-over district in the 1820’s. Miraculous, spontaneous literacy, would not be an uncommon theme for Eddy, fitting perfectly within the pseudo-mystical cosmology of the times. 

     “In 1824, a zealous young minister, the Reverend Ansel Eddy, had arrived in the village resolved to set loose the power of the Holy Ghost.” wrote Habegger, ”Emphasizing basic orthodox themes, “man’s lost condition and redemptive power of Jesus Christ,” Eddy had unparalleled success in building up the Congregational Church, adding 122 converts in the revival year of 1826 alone.” 

       While Ansel Eddy was building his flock in Canandaigua, Rev. Louis Dwight was, through his own institutional evangelizing, bringing bibles (and only bibles) into prisons, setting the stage for a conquering of fresh mission ground, and converting a new “captive audience.” Now that the hanging tree and public square had given way to incarceration, a closed society of ready made sinners awaited. Bringing his Yankee Calvinism to the arena, it was the adherence to discipline, order, contemplative silence, and acceptance of punishment (for any straying from these tenets), that would be Dwight’s contribution to Auburn. He looked for men that would convincingly convert; and rewarded them in kind with special privileges. The hard cases were a challenge, but as Austin Reed later put it, “the milk white paw,” was always extended….in grace….hard to resist for the broken man, or shrewd proselyte. Hodges willingly grasped the Reverend’s paw, and held on for dear life.    

      According to Ansel Eddy, Jack Hodges had a complete transformation, a mystical epiphany, finding God in the cracks of the comforting stone walls of his monastic cell. With the help of Dwight, Eddy, and Rev. Jared Curtis, always on the front lines of the “penitence war,” Jack became the sterling example for prisoner reformation, and the Auburn System circa 1828.  For now we will also leave Jack, in his cell in quiet contemplation, chained to the wall, somehow miraculously reading the 51^st Psalm, “Now, when I come to the words..…” Those boys, Reed and Freeman, born in 1823, were just starting to get into trouble, making a mockery of God…and the neighbor’s apple trees.