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590 DOUGLASS' MONTHLY. JANUARY, 186 [[line]] [[3 columns]] [[column 1]] THE NEGROES IN THE WASHINGTON JAIL. [[short line]] The fact that colored men, who have been abandoned by their rebel masters who claim their services and labor, have been put in the Washington Jail, has, as will be seen by referring to our Congressional summary, aroused a good deal of feeling, and hopes are entertained that the nuisance will soon be broken up. Several Congressmen have visited this vile place, and witnessed the sufferings of the poor victims, some of whom having been confined therein for over eight months. A correspondent of the Chicago Tribune, in company with Senator Grimes, of Iowa, on a recent visit to the Jail, says : We then went to the negro quarters, female department. If the sight of an insane soldier had been a surprise to us, the first object we now encountered was something more. "Who are you——what are you here for?" asked the Senator from Iowa, addressing a mulatto girl who sat on the floor sewing her apron. "You know who Mary Hall is. I b'longs to Mary Hall," she replied. "What are you here for?" was the next query. "For safe keepin, I s'pose." "We turned to the jailor for an explanation. He told us that it was true. The woman was the slave of Mary Hall, who had sent her to jail for safe keeping. Mary herself keeps the largest house of ill-fame in Washington, and the Government keeps a boarding-house for her negroes. An intelligent and comparatively neat looking colored woman next attracted our attention, when the following conversation ensued : Q.——What are you here for ? A.——Don't know. Q——Who sent you here? A.——An officer. Q——Are you a fugitive ? Did you run away ? A——Not 'zactly. My master lived near Alexandria. When the soldiers came he wanted to move to the Junction and so I came away——me and my little boy——he's up stairs. Q——What was your master's name? A——Triplett. Q——What did they bring you here for ? A——Don't know. When the man took me I wanted to go and see Gen. Mansfield. He said he would take me to Gen. Mansfield, but he brought me here. I haven't seen Gen. Mansfield yet more'n six months. We asked the jailor how many fugitives he had. He replied, forty-five. The average attendance was somewhat larger, but a gang of males had been taken out lately to work on the Capitol grounds. We went up stairs where the woman said her little boy was, and where, it was plain, her own heart was. In the main corridor were twenty or thirty male negroes, of all ages, from six to sixty. We should not have recognized the son of the woman below, but for the help of the jailor, he was so much whiter than his mother. These negroes had, of course, committed no crime except that of being born.——The army came among them, their rebel masters fled, and we put them in the third story of the Washington jail, where we fed them in a trough, on Fourierite principles, where no one has any better chance than his neighbors, unless he gets into it lengthwise. Four of them were playing a game of old sledge with a mutilated pack of cards, and a dozen others were looking on; one was dancing the double-shuffle, and the remainder were singing or talking and laughing. We went into the quarters of the free blacks. Most of them are confined for petty offences, such as thieving and vagrancy.——One, bright-eyed, intelligent-looking fellow, about twenty tears of age, being asked why he was there, replied: "For walking in the streets with a slave girl." The hardened ruffian ! It was true. The laws of this district prohibit such laxity of walking. The theory or philosophy, of the case is, that the girl might fall in love with him, and eventually run away for his sake. [[/column 1]] [[column 2]] We came down and went out. "We must have a new jail," remarked Senator G "What," I asked, "would you do with the old one?" "Put a barrel of powder into it and blow it up," he replied. The Washington Republican, in alluding to the order of the President forbidding the imprisonment of fugitive slaves in the District of Columbia, says : "The probable effect of this order of the President will be to prevent the interference by our city police with any slaves escaping from the Virginia rebels, whether coming within the confiscation act or not. This is a most desirable result, and will be made a permanent one, by the impending abrogation by Congress of all the infamous laws in force here, whether inherited from Maryland or of our own municipal making, which debase our police into bum-baliffs and blood-hounds, for the benefit of Virginia slaveholders, or which establish the hideous presumption that a man is not free because he is not white, when all presumptions ought always to be in favor of life and liberty. "This order of the President indicates the necessity of making the Confiscation act effective, by prescribing the proofs which shall establish the fact that slaves have been employed in the military service of the rebels, and by furnishing an easy method of preserving such proofs. That act was a most inestimable one. The number of slaves freed by its provisions is to be reckoned, not by tens of thousands but by hundreds of thousands, and the number will increase just so long as this war continues. All that is needed to make this grant of freedom effective is to provide summary modes of establishing the fact upon which the grant of freedom is made to depend. "In making use of this act the friends of emancipation have the great advantage of not being obliged to ask for the recognition of any new principle. They have only the easy task of insisting that a principle, already established, shall be carried out in practice." [[line]] EMANCIPATION IN RUSSIA. [[short line]] The results of Alexander's efforts for the abolition of serfdom have been involved in so much obscurity that evidence is still wanting, at least in this country, to reconcile conflicting opinions as to the success of the measure. We have recently conversed with an intelligent American who has spent a portion of the year in Russia, and are indebted to him for the substance of the following statements. It is well known that the provision of the decree by which a term of years was interposed in favor of the proprietor before the extinction of his relation to the serf,was widely misunderstood. The serfs, especially those more remote from the capital, buried in the recesses of the Empire, received the news of the decree much as the negroes of Tennessee heard of the election of Lincoln. Some event, more or less immediately affecting their condition, had certainly happened. Its importance was magnified by uncertainty, and the hour of its fruition anticipated by hope. Emancipation had been declared. In the narrow brain of the serf, there was room for no other idea. Delay, postponement, transition periods, were a juggle of the owner.——The Czar had decreed liberty to his children. The inferior despot who tyrannized over them was thwarting the will of his Imperial master, and cheating the subject of his newly-granted rights. No other theory is needed to account for the disturbances which took place on some estates, chiefly those of the interior. The probabilities of the case make the theory plausible, and the example of the British West Indies supplies a similar instance. Supported as it is by ascertained facts, it gives another proof how delicate a business is an attempt at partial emancipation, how liable are ignorant millions to misapprehension of qualified efforts in their behalf, and what sort of trouble may be expected to follow. Dissatisfaction on the part of the nobles had been anticipated. Why the serfs should also have rebelled has been ill understood. In dealing with our own problem, it concerns us to consider [[/column 2]] [[column 3]] alike the encouragement and the warning of such an example. To those who affect to believe that the slaves of the South are happy in servitude, devoted to their masters, averse to freedom, and hostile or indifferent to all efforts at meliorating their condition, a similar state of mind in the Russian serfs will need no explanation. But thoughtful observers will be satisfied that the policy of the Emperor was not directly responsible for the trouble ; that not the decree but the supposed interference with its operation created discontent and stimulated revolt. In many cases, however, a greater degree of intelligence or readier access to information produced very different results. The commutation in money of this period of delay, according to the provisions of the decree, has been more generally availed of than could have been expected. The class of serfs who resided by permission away from the estates of their masters, nearly free from restraint, and often possessing great wealth, would readily purchase their immediate freedom. But the practice has not been confined to them.——A single instance may be cited. On an estate not far from St. Petersburg, seventy thousand roubles were paid to the steward by the serfs for this commutation, and eighty thousand roubles for the land itself, which also might have become theirs by a longer term of service. The whole amount was in silver, much of it so old that the coinage had long been out of circulation. For a hundred years, it had been hoarded, till the day came when the painful savings of former generations gave liberty to this. Aside from all other considerations, the unlocking of these long-hidden stores of coin throughout the empire must have no unimportant effect on its currency, and give no little relief to embarrassed finance.——N. Y. Tribune. [[line]] TO JOHN C. FREMONT. [[short line]] BY JOHN G. WHITTIER. [[short line]] Thy error, Fremont, simply was to act A plain man's part, without the statesman's tact, And, taking counsel but of common sense, To strike at cause, as well as consequence. So take thou courage! God has spoken through thee, Irrevocable, the mighty word, Be Free ! The land shakes with them, and the slave's dull ear Turns from the rice-field stealthily to hear. Who would recall them now must first arrest The winds that blow down from the free North-west, Ruffling the Gulf ; or, like a scroll, roll back The Mississippi to his upper springs. Such words fulfill their prophecy, and lack But the full time to harden into things. [Boston Transcript. [[short line]] [From the N. Y. Tribune.] Thy voice, Fremont, hath broke the fatal spell Now all the wizards may, with busy hand, Wave, to renew it, each his ancient wand, Potent erewhile to thrall in bondage fell The faith that in the Nation's soul doth dwell—— Potent no more forever——we are free ! Questioned by one heroic touch from thee, The Nation's heart rings out——as if a bell In heaven, by some archangel smitten now, Did, as a signal, through the azure say, 'A damning stain from Earth is washed away, And she henceforth shall ware a whiter brow Joyous among the stars.' And, Hero, thou Art as a star precluding light of day. O eye, thou canst discern the light and flame ! O eagle spirit, fit for high career ! True thou continuest to thine early fame, And art, as erst, the People's Pioneer, Across the desert teaching it to steer ; Mid all the terrors of our time, the same As when through mountain cloud-rack, void of fear, Thou held'st toward lands of gold high-hearted aim. O'er darker desert now and craggier peak, Stormed on, alas, with a more blinding snow, And buffeted by winds more bitter bleak, Thine eye, thy footsteps must before us go To lands with joy of justice all aglow—— To lands of which all hopes and prophets speak. [[/column 3]]
Transcription Notes:
Neat-looking or neat looking? North-west or Northwest?
