The Furnace of Affliction: Prisons and Religion in Antebellum America

CHAPTER 3. The Furnace at Auburn, 1816–1827

73 3 The Furnace at Auburn, 1816–1827 In October 1826 a young minister sat in on a conversation between Auburn Prison’s resident chaplain, the Reverend Jared Curtis, and an African American inmate, Jack Hodges. Hodges was serving a ten-year sentence for his role in a murder plot. According to the visitor’s account, Hodges considered himself a sinner and an unbeliever upon his arrival at Auburn. After many visits from Chaplain Curtis and a long period of spiritual suffering , however, Hodges experienced conversion. The visitor listened to Hodges recount his movement from repentance toward belief and moral living. “In the providence of God, you have a long sentence,” Chaplain Curtis observed. “Can you say, Thy will be done?” Hodges answered, “That is my prayer.” Moved by this exchange, the visiting minister asked Hodges again to reflect on his prison experience. “Yes sir,” Hodges began, “I feel grateful that I was brought here.”1 The visitor’s account of Hodges’s testimony became a favorite among Protestant reformers. It affirmed that the prison allowed God’s will to be done and that at least some inmates embraced the institution’s reformative discipline. In the 1840s the American Sunday-School Union printed a book on Hodges’s conversion, Black Jacob: A Monument of Grace. The publication testified to the popularity of the new discipline established at Auburn Prison. It also spoke to widespread acceptance of the furnace of affliction 74 The Furnace at Auburn theology advocated by a new set of Protestant prison reformers. The Reverend Louis Dwight, a Congregationalist minister and reformer from Massachusetts , worked with Auburn officials to create a partnership between administrators and prison chaplains. For years, chaplains sponsored by Dwight’s organization walked Auburn’s halls, counseled inmates, preached the word, and kept notebooks full of statistics on prisoners’ backgrounds and habits. His chaplains worked in tandem with the institution’s keepers and their lashes. According to Dwight, the Auburn system of prison discipline maintained order, stayed under budget, and prompted inmate reformation. In this way, it promised to fulfill America’s destiny to create regimented, solvent, and Christian prisons. Auburn became the perfect furnace of affliction.2 As it emerged in the 1820s, the Auburn system of prison discipline featured a new level of cooperation between prison officials and Protestant reformers. Under the administration of Auburn’s agent, Gershom Powers, prison staff and Protestant activists saw particular benefits to this arrangement . For reformers, the advantages seemed clear. More than any time since Thomas Eddy’s early years at Newgate, Protestant prison activists had a voice in New York’s disciplinary regime. They watched over—and therefore sanctified—daily prison routines. Prison officials appreciated their presence. They recognized the institutional and public value of resident chaplains, religious services, and a broad reformative program. Specifically, they approved of the reformers’ message about suffering and redemption that produced the obedient inmates they desired. The Protestant reformers’ presence inside the institutions, along with the rhetoric about inmate reformation , also protected Auburn from public disapproval when scandals threatened the prison’s viability. Even though the public registered some dissatisfaction with new prison practices, these religious specialists helped the institution secure widespread approval. Despite the partnership that was welcomed on both sides, some tensions appeared even in Auburn’s earliest years. One particular prison official scoffed at ministers’ reformative goal and argued for stricter corporal punishments. Even one of the chaplains displayed moments of incredulity at the prospect of widespread inmate reformation. Despite these countervailing voices, the new partnership between prison officials and Louis Dwight prevailed. Religion bolstered prison discipline, and prison discipline bolstered religion. The furnace of affliction garnered wide acceptance and praise.3 The Furnace at Auburn 75 Finding Auburn The Auburn—or congregate—prison discipline developed over several years as New York officials responded to both failures at Newgate and new issues upstate. Eventually, it organized prison life around silent, communal labor by day and solitary confinement by night. This was not the original plan. Starting in 1816, officials planned for a replica of Newgate Prison, primarily to relieve the city institution’s overcrowding. In Auburn’s early years, prisoners slept in large common rooms and labored in collective workshops. A host of problems—the same ones faced at Newgate—quickly emerged. Raucous common rooms seemed to do more harm than good. Keepers struggled to enforce inmate labor. In the early 1820s, Auburn administrators tried...