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The Police and the Sabbath

About This Item

  • Title: The Police and the Sabbath
  • Date: 9 April 1858
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: per.01306
  • Source: Brooklyn Daily Times, 9 April 1858: 2. Our transcription is based on a digital image of a microfilm scan of the original issue. Microfilm of original issue held at Pennsylvania State University Libraries. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the journalism, see our statement of editorial policy.
  • Editorial note: This piece is unsigned, as was the case for most of Whitman's journalism. However, this editorial is part of a series of texts that deal with a coherent theme that has been identified by the Whitman Archive journalism team as likely authored by Whitman. This decision is based on a combination of historical and (auto)biographical accounts, similarity to contemporary Whitman writings, a history of scholarly attribution, extant clippings retained by Whitman, computational stylometric analysis, and, in some cases, manuscript evidence in Whitman’s hand.
  • Contributors to digital file: Kaylen Michaelis Jamie DeRousse Jason Stacy Stephanie Blalock Karie Cobb
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "The Police and the Sabbath." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 16 July 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: per.01306.xml (TEI)
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THE POLICE AND THE SABBATH.—

Superintendent Tallmadge,1 of the Metropolitan Police, is a strict Sabbatarian. Recently he avowed in a public meeting his determination to suppress the crying of newspapers on Sundays, and all other noisy violations of the decency of the day. He has applied to the Counsel of the Police Board for a compendium of all the ordinances of the two cities relative to the observance of the Sabbath, and has supplied every policeman in New York with a small book containing this collection, so far as relates to that city. The Counsel’s report relative to this city is that “there are no ordinance of the city of Brooklyn particularly applicable to the observance of Sunday.” Of course not. Laws are needed for evil doers, not for good people. In this “City of Churches” we are a law into ourselves; we have (in most parts of the city, if not in all) a public opinion which forbids all glaring violations of the quiet of the Sunday, as firmly as it defies all bigotted assumptions and uncalled-for restrictions.

Notes:

1. Frederick Augustus Tallmadge (1792–1869) was a lawyer, military leader, and politician who served as the first Superintendent of the newly formed Metropolitan Police, from 1857 to 1862. [back]

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