Love Your Enemy

Ammon Hennacy was imprisoned in the Atlanta Penitentiary for two years following his refusal to serve in World War I. He spent a substantial part of that time in solitary confinement for organizing a prison protest and refusing to disclose who had smuggled his letters out of the prison. During this period, he came close to suicide but read the Bible and experienced a profound conversion to Christian nonviolence. This essay is excerpted from The Book of Ammon (Fortkamp/Rose Hill, 1994) and is reproduced with permission from the publisher.

That night I was nervous and tore off the buttons from my clothing in order to have something to do to sew them on again. I paced my eight and a half steps back and forth for hours and finally flung myself on the bunk. It must have been the middle of the night when I awoke. I had not had a note from anyone for a month. Were my friends forgetting me? I felt weak, lonesome, and alone in the world. Here I had been singing defiance at the whole capitalistic world but a few hours before and had boasted to the warden how I would bravely do my time; now I wondered if anyone really cared. Perhaps by this time Selma might be married to someone else with a real future ahead of him instead of being lost in a jail. The last letter I had received from her was rather formal. Would she understand why I did not write; and could I be sure that some of the letters I had sent her had been received, with the officials opening the mail I had sent to my sister Lola? How could one end it all? The sharp spoon with which I had carved poems and my calendar on the wall could cut my wrist and I could bleed to death before a guard arrived. But then that would be such a messy death. Then the warden would be sorry for the lies he had told me and the tricks he had tried to play. The last thing I could remember before falling asleep was the long wailing whistle of the freight train as it echoed in the woods nearby.

The next day the deputy came to my cell and said that I was looking very pale, that number 7440, a man just two numbers from me who had come in the same day with me, had died of the flu, and that thirty others were buried that week. If I did not get out and breathe the fresh air it was likely that I would die sooner than the others, he said. Why should I not tell what I knew and get out? In reply I asked the deputy to talk about the weather, as I was not interested in achieving the reputation of a rat. He asked me if it was a prisoner or a guard who had sent out my letters. I walked up to him closely and in a confidential tone said, "It was a prisoner or a guard."

I did not know the nature of the flu but thought that this might be a good way to die if I could only get it. Fate seemed to seal me up in a place where I could not get any germs. (Now that I think of it my "Celestial Bulldozer," guardian angel, or whatever the name may be must have been in charge of events. In those days I believed in germs and doctors, and out in the prison I might have absorbed their fears and succumbed. I was saved until I could emancipate my mind from medical as well as other kinds of slavery.) Late that afternoon I was called across the hall to take a bath. The guard accidentally left my wooden door open when he was called to answer a telephone. I could not see anywhere except across the hall to the solid door of another cell, but I could hear Popoff in the next cell groaning and calling for water. He was still hanging from his hands for the eight hours a day as he had been for months. As the guard came down the hall he opened Popoff's door, dipping his tin cup in the toilet and threw the dirty water in Popoff's face. Then he came and slammed my door shut and locked it. How soon would I be strung to the bars? How long could a fellow stand such treatment?

As soon as it was dark, I sharpened my spoon again and tried it gently on my wrist. The skin seemed to be quite tough, but then I could press harder. If I cut my wrist at midnight, I could be dead by morning. I thought I ought to write a note to Selma and to my mother and I couldn't see to do it until morning. Well, I had waited that long, I could wait a day longer. That night my dreams were a mixture of Victor Hugo's stories of men hiding in the sewers of Paris, I.W.W. songs, blood flowing from the pigs that had been butchered on the farm when I was a boy, and the groans of Popoff.

The sun shone brightly in my cell the next morning for the first time in weeks. I crouched again by the door and saw Berkman [Alexander Berkman, a famous anarchist]'s bald head. Tears came into my eyes, and I felt ashamed of myself for my cowardly idea of suicide just because I had had a few reverses. Here was Berkman who had passed through much more than I would ever have to endure if I stayed two more years in solitary. How was the world to know more about the continued torture of Popoff and others if I gave up? The last two verses of the I.W.W. Prison Song now had a real meaning to me as I sang them again. I was through with despair. I wanted to live to make the world better. Just because most prisoners and, for all that, most people on the outside did not understand and know what solitary meant was all the more reason why I should be strong. I sang cheerfully:

By all the graves of Labor's dead,
By Labor's deathless flag of red,
We make a solemn vow to you,
We'll keep the faith, we will be true.
For freedom laughs at prison bars,
Her voice reechoes from the stars;
Proclaiming with the tempest's breath
A Cause beyond the reach of death.

Two months later I heard the whistles blow and shouts resound throughout the prison. the war was over. The Armistice had been signed. It was not until then that I was informed in a note from Berkman that November 11 was also an anarchist anniversary: The date of the hanging of the Chicago anarchists of the Haymarket in 1887. I had ceased by this time my nervous running back and forth like a squirrel in my cell and was now taking steady walks in my cell each day and also hours of physical exercise. I was going to build myself up and not get sick and die. I would show my persecutors that I would be a credit to my ideals.

I had painted the ceiling of the Catholic chapel in flat work before I got in solitary and had left no brush marks. The priest appreciated my good work. He knew I was an Irishman who was not a Catholic, but he never tried to convert me. Now, as I studied the Bible, I was not thinking of any church but just wanted to see what might be worthwhile in it. I had now read it through four times and had read the New Testament many times and the Sermon on the Mount scores of times. I had made up games with pages and chapters and names of characters in the Bible to pass away the time. I had memorized certain chapters that I like. As I read of Isaiah, Ezekiel, Micah and other prophets and of Jesus, I could see that they had opposed tyranny. I had also spent many days reviewing all of the historical knowledge that I could remember and in trying to think through a philosophy of life. I had passed through the idea of killing myself. This was an escape, not any solution to life. The remainder of my two years in solitary must result in a clear-cut plan whereby I could go forth and be a force in the world. I could not take any halfway measures.

If assassination, violence, and revolution were the better way, then military tactics must be studied and a group of fearless rebels organized. I remembered again what Slim, the Robin Hood Wobblie who was in on some larceny charge, had told me once to the effect that one could not be a good rebel unless he became angry and vengeful. Then I heard Popoff curse the guards, and I heard them beat him. I remembered the Negro who had sworn at the guard in the tailor shop and was killed. I had read of riots in prison over food, and I remembered the peaceful victory that we had in our strike against the spoiled fish. I also remembered what Berkman had said about being firm, but quiet. He had tried violence but did not believe in it as a wholesale method. I read of the wars and hatred in the Old Testament. I also read of the courage of Daniel and the Hebrew children who would not worship the golden image, of Peter who chose to obey God rather than the properly constituted authorities who placed him in jail, and of the victory of these men by courage and peaceful methods. I read of Jesus, who was confronted with a whole world empire of tyranny and chose not to overturn the tyrant and make Himself king but to change the hatred in the hearts of men to love and understanding -- to overcome evil with goodwill.

I had called loudly for the sword and mentally listed those whom I desired to kill when I was free. Was this really the universal method that should be used? I would read the Sermon on the Mount again. When a child I had been frightened by hell fire into proclaiming a change of life. Now I spent months making a decision; there was no sudden change. I had all the time in the world and no one could talk to me or influence me. I was deciding this idea for myself. Gradually, I came to gain a glimpse of what Jesus meant when He said, "The Kingdom of God is within you." In my heart now after six months I could love everybody in the world but the warden, but if I did not love him then the Sermon on the Mount meant nothing at all. I really saw this and felt it in my heart, but I was too stubborn to admit it in my mind. One day I was walking back and forth in my cell when, in turning, my head hit the wall. Then the thought came to me: "Here I am locked up in a cell. The warden was never locked up in any cell, and he never had a chance to know what Jesus meant. Neither did I until yesterday. So I must not blame him. I must love him." Now the whole thing was clear. This Kingdom of God must be in everyone: in the deputy, the warden, the rat, and the pervert -- and now I came to know it -- in myself. I read and reread the Sermon on the Mount: the fifth, sixth, and seventh chapters of Matthew thus became a living thing to me. I tried to take every sentence and apply it to my present problems. The warden had said that he did not understand political prisoners. He and the deputy, in plain words, didn't know any better; they had put on the false face of sternness and tyranny because this was the only method they knew. It was my job to teach them another method: that of goodwill overcoming their evil intentions or, rather, habits. The opposite of the Sermon on the Mount was what the whole world had been practicing, in prison and out of prison; and hate piled on hate had brought hate and revenge. It was plain that this system did not work. I would never have a better opportunity than to try out the Sermon on the Mount right now in my cell. Here was deceit, hatred, lust, murder, and every kind of evil in this prison. I reread slowly and pondered each verse: "Ye have heard that it hath been said; An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth...Whoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also...Take therefore no thought for the morrow...Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them..."