History of the Antislavery Measures of the Thirty-seventh and Thirty-eighth United States Congresses, 1861-65, by Henry Wilson, 1865.

CHAPTER XIX.

CONFINEMENT OF COLORED PEESONS IN THE WASHINGTON JAIL.

MR. WILSON'S JOINT RESOLUTION. — REMARKS OF MR. WILSON, MR. CLARK, MR. HALE, MR. WILSON, MR. FESSENDEN, MR. SUMNER. MR. CLARK'S RESOLUTION. — MR. GRIMES'S BILL, — REMARKS OF MR. GRIMES. — MR. POWELL'S AMENDMENT. — REMARKS OF MR. PEARCE, MR. POWELL, MR. CARLILE, MR. WILSON, MR. FESSENDEN, MR. LATHAM, MR. COWAN. — PASSAGE OF THE BILL. — MR. WILSON'S BILL. — REMARKS OF MR. WILSON. — MR. GRIMES'S AMENDMENT. — REMARKS OF MR. M'DOUGALL, MR. HALE, MR. WILSON, MR. PEARCE, MR. SUMNER. — MR. BINGHAM'S BILL.

IN the Senate, on the 4th of December, 1861, Mr. Wilson (Rep.) of Massachusetts introduced a joint resolution, that " all persons who may have been arrest ed as fugitives from service or labor, and confined in the county jail in the District of Columbia, shall be dis charged therefrom." Mr. Wilson stated that he had " visited the jail, and each a scene of degradation and inhumanity he had never witnessed. There were per eons almost entirely naked ; some of them without a shirt. Some of those persons were free ; most of them had run away from disloyal masters, or had been sent there by disloyal persons, for safe keeping until the war is over." He read the report of Mr. Allen, a government-officer, in regard to sixty of the persons confined there. Mr. Clark (Rep.) of New Hampshire heartily concurred in the desired object ; but he thought the names should be put in the resolution.

Page 349 "I am very glad," said Mr. Hale (Rep.) of New Hampshire, " that this report has been made and presented here, because it will help to answer a question that was put to me a great many times long and long ago, — what the North had to do with slavery. I think, when the Northern States find out that they are supporting here in jail the slaves of rebels who are fighting against us ; that we are keeping at the public expense their slaves for them until the war is over, — it will have a tendency to enlighten some minds in regard to the proper answer to that question. If there be any duty which this Congress owes to humanity and to itself, it is to look into the administration of justice in this District, and to see to it that those who have been ground to the earth heretofore may not be ground still more under your auspices and your reign." Mr. M'Dougall (Dem.) of California moved to refer the joint resolution to the Judiciary Committee. Mr. Wilson was willing his resolution should go to the Judiciary Committee, or to the Committee on the District of Columbia. " I hope," he said, " that these persons will be dis charged as speedily as possible, and then that a law will be passed punishing anybody for arresting such per sons ; and that all the laws in the District of Columbia, oppressive or degrading to any portion of the people, will be wiped from the statute-book, and that all the ordinances of the city of that character will be annulled ; and then I trust that judicial tribunals -will be established worthy of us, and that a system for selecting jurors will be adopted which will secure the ends of justice ; and then I hope that slavery will be swept away for ever from the District, and the national capital Page 350 freed from its pollution. The prison which stands in this city is a burning shame and a disgrace to our country ; and I hope it will be levelled with the dust, and that a prison fit to keep human beings in will be erected. The other day, the French legation carried to that prison gentlemen who had traversed the world examining prisons, — gentlemen who were investigating the subject of prisons, and their construction and discipline. The jailer told me yesterday, that, after they had gone through this prison, they observed that they had never seen anywhere such a prison, with one exception ; and that was in Austria. If senators will go to the prison ; if they can bear to go there, and contemplate for a few momenta what their eyes will look upon, — I think they will then be disposed, at any rate, to liberate those poor creatures, who are confined there for no offence whatever, and to construct a prison worthy of a Christian people." Mr. Fessenden (Rep.) of Maine saw but one remedy ; and he had been hoping to see the day when Congress would " sweep all the courts of this District out of existence, and remodel the whole affair. . . . But with reference to runaways, men who have escaped from rebel masters, if the abuse which has been brought to our notice exists here, or exists anywhere, I wish now to say before the country, — for this matter has excited some interest, not only in our armies, but elsewhere, — that I am for rendering the most ample justice to them, whenever it can be done legally and constitutionally ; and there are few instances, I trust, in which both these conditions will not be found to agree in reference to that matter." "There is," said Mr. Sumner, "a black code in this Page 351 District, derived from the old legislation of Maryland, which is a shame to the civilization of our age. If any one wishes to know why such abuses exist in our prisons and in our courts here as have been to-day. so eloquently pointed out, I refer him to that black code. You will find in that black code an apology for every outrage that is now complained of. If, therefore, senators are really in earnest ; if they are determined that the national capital shall be purified, that the administration of justice here shall be worthy of a civilized community, — they have got to expunge that black code from the statute-book : but to expunge that black code from the statute-book is to expunge slavery Itself ; and that brings us precisely to the point. Senators will mistake if they undertake to meet this question merely on the threshold, merely at the outside. They have got to meet it in its essence, in its substance. Why is that prison each an offensive place as I know it to be ? — for It has been my fortune to visit it repeatedly. It is on account of slavery : It is the black code which prevails in this District. Why is justice so offensively administered in this District? It is on account of those brutal sentiments generated by slavery, sanctioned by the black code which the courts in this District enforce." Mr. M'Dougall, at the suggestion of Mr. Trumbull, modified his motion so as to refer the joint resolution to the Committee on the District of Columbia ; and it was so referred.

On the 9th, the Senate, on motion of Mr. Clark, adopted a resolution, "That the Marshal of the District of Columbia be directed to inform the Senate by what authority he receives slaves into the jail of the District Page 352 at the request of their masters, and holds them in confinement until discharged by their masters." Mr. Grimes, on the 2d of January, 1862, introduced a bill in regard to the administration of criminal justice in the District of Columbia. It was referred to the District Committee, and reported back by Mr. Grimes, on the 6th, with amendments. The bill provided that all persons not held in final judgment, who were confined prior to the last term of the criminal court, were to be discharged ; and the judge of the criminal court was to cause an order to be entered on the records of the court before the final adjournment of each term, requiring a general delivery of all persons confined in the jail before the grand jury for that term were impaneled, and against whom no indictment was found by them. "I am not," said Mr. Grimes, ''very fresh in my reading of history ; but, from my recollection of the descriptions of prisons I have read of, I think that there never was a place of confinement that would be compared with the Washington Jail as it was at the commencement of the present session, except the French Bastille and the dungeons of Venice. When I visited the jail the other day, I had hardly entered the threshold before a colored boy stepped up to me, and tapped me on the shoulder. He happened to know who I was. Said he, 'I have been here a year and four days.' I asked him for what offence. He said he was confined as a runaway. I asked him if any one claimed him. 'No.' — 'Are you a free boy?' — 'Yes.' Turning around to the jailer, I asked him if that was so. He said it was. I asked him, ' How do you know it to be so ? ' I found that the boy had been confined, not twelve months only, but Page 353 thirteen months and four days, merely on the charge of being a runaway."

On the 14th, the Senate resumed the consideration of the bill ; the pending question being on the motion of Mr. Powell (Dem.) of Kentucky to amend the bill, BO as not to discharge fugitive slaves. Mr. Grimes commented upon the communication just received from Ward H. Lamon, the Marshal of the District, in regard to the rule he had adopted, excluding members of Congress from the jail without a written permission from him. Mr. Pearce (Dem.) of Maryland was opposed to the enactment of the bill. "You cannot," he said, " expect success in restoring the Union, if it be known that your policy is one of emancipation. Mr. Powell thought the Sole object of the bill was the liberation of fugitive slaves. " The effect of the bill," he said, " clearly .will be to release every fugitive slave from jail." Mr. Pomeroy (Rep.) of Kansas, and Mr. Morrill (Rep.) of Maine, advocated the passage of the measure. Mr. Carlile (Dem.) of Virginia would not vote for the bill : but he desired " to act upon it, and get rid of it ; and thus one peg, at least, will be taken from gentlemen, upon which they hang their sympathetic speeches for the negro race." Mr. Morrill sharply replied to the remarks of Mr. Carlile. Mr. Wilson read a letter from Dr. Samuel G. Howe of Massachusetts, stating that the same atrocities were practised in the jail at Alexandria. He pronounced the jail in Washington "a dis honor and a disgrace to the nation, and it should be levelled with the dust." — "I have three sons in the army, out of four," said Mr. Fessenden ; " and I never would have consented that one of them should be there If his Page 354 life was to be perilled, exposed to sickness or other dangers, under the authority of men who ordered him to ar rest fugitive slaves, and return them to their masters.'' He denounced the return of fugitive slaves by officers of the army as " an outrage to which he would not submit, unless he was compelled to submit to it." Mr. Latham (Dem.) of California would vote for the bill without amendment, Mr. Collamer earnestly opposed Mr. Powell's amendment not to discharge persons claimed as fugitive slaves. He protested utterly against con fining a negro until an owner was found for him. The yeas and nays were taken on Mr. Powell's amendment, and it was lost, — yeas 5, nays 35. Mr. Cowan (Rep.) of Pennsylvania inquired if there was " any law in the District which allows slaves to be impounded in the common jail as estrays are impounded in other countries." Mr. Sumner replied, that " it was certainly the practice." — "If it be the law," said Mr. Cowan, "I do not see in what way this bill is going to operate to prevent It." Mr. Clark moved to amend the bill, as that no person could be committed without a warrant ; and the amendment was agreed to. Mr. Powell de manded the yeas and nays on the passage of the bill, — yeas 31, nays 4. So the bill passed the Senate.

On the 12th of February, Mr. Wilson introduced a bill for the appointment of a warden of the jail in the District of Columbia, and it was referred to the Committee on the District of Columbia. He said the jail was " under the control of Mr. .Phillips, the Deputy-Marshal ; and under the superintendency of a negro thief by the name of Wise." This Wise had stolen a negro from a Rhode-Island regiment within a few days, and had tied Page 355 a negro, held as a fugitive slave, for attempting to escape from the jail, over a barrel, and " cobbed " him. " Now, sir, I want it understood in the Senate and in the country, and by the men who, on their bended knees and over their Bibles, prayed, in the year 1860, for an end to these crimes against humanity, that this man Wise, this negro thief, who is the superintendent of the jail, is there to-day by our votes and our influence, and we are responsible for it before the nation and before Almighty God ; and, for one, I wash ray hands of the crime, and I denounce it."

On the 13th, Mr. Grimes reported back the bill with an amendment ; and, on the 14th, the Senate proceeded to its consideration. The committee proposed as an amendment to strike out all of the original bill, and insert a substitute. Mr. M'Dougall opposed the pas sage of the bill, and Mr. Morrill and Mr. Hale advocated it. Mr. Wilson said, " The night after I introduced the bill, our man Wise, our negro thief, whom we keep there, went out into the city, and stole a wo man who declared herself free, and "her mother says she is free." Mr. Pearce opposed the bill. "I am glad," said Mr. Sumner, " this subject has been brought before the Senate. I feel personally obliged to my colleague for the way in which he did it, and also to the committee on the District of Columbia for their prompt report of the bill ; but I hope the chairman of that committee will pardon me if I say that I do not think his committee went far enough. He ought to have reported a bill to abolish the office of marshal. There is an old saying, that ' he gives twice who quickly gives ; ' and surely there is no occasion for the application Page 356 of that saying more pertinent than a case of in justice like this : surely we ought to be prompt, and every moment of delay is a shame upon us." The bill was then passed without a division.

In the House of Representatives, on the 9th of December, 1861, Mr. Bingham (Rep.) introduced a joint resolution " in regard to the commitment of negroes to the jail of the District of Columbia." The resolution declared that all acts, and parts of acts, in force in the District of Columbia, which authorize the commitment, to the jails of said District, of persons as runaways, or suspected or charged with being runaways, and all acta, and parts of acts, which authorize the sale of persona bo committed for charges of commitment or jail fees, be, and the same are, repealed; and so to commit or imprison or sell any person for the causes aforesaid within said District is hereby declared a misdemeanor. This joint resolution was referred to the Judiciary Committee, but no action was taken upon it ; nor were the bills relating to the jail passed by the House of Representatives. But the exposure, in Congress, of the shameful abuses in that prison, brought redress to the victims of " black codes " and dishonest officials. On the 25th of January, 1862, the Hon. William H. Seward, Secretary of State, addressed to Marshal Lamon the following order : —

" The President of the United States being satisfied that the following instructions contravene no law in force in this District, and that they can be executed without waiting for legislation by Congress, I am directed to convey them to you. As Marshal of the District of Columbia, you will not receive into custody any persons claimed to be held to service or Page 357 labor within the District or elsewhere, and not charged with any crime or misdemeanor, unless upon arrest or commitment pursuant to law as fugitives from such service or labor ; and you will not retain any such fugitives in custody beyond a period of thirty days from their arrest and commitment, unless by special order of competent civil authority. You will forthwith cause publication to be made of this order ; and, at the expiration of ten days therefrom, you will apply the same to all persons so claimed to be held to service or labor, and now in your custody. This order has no relation to any arrests made by military authority."

Source: Wilson, Henry. History of the Antislavery Measures of the Thirty-Seventh and Thirty-Eighth United States Congresses, 1861-1865, Boston: Walker, Fuller, & Co., 1865.