Daily Ohio statesman. [volume] (Columbus, Ohio) 1855-1870, 1864-03-16
THE CITY,
LIFE AMONG THE LowLY.
Am insight ihtO tho Life of the
II Lower CIasses---Our African
r. Brother as nc Is.


England fanaticism certainlyhad some
effect although it is held to be unconstitrl.
tional and void. 1t has had the effect Of
adding hundred per cent? to the colored
population of Columbus, and probably to
every other city in the West, and of in
creasing to an alarming extent that class Of
people who are above all others the most
wretehed that haunt the perlieys or infest
the prisons of a city. A million of people,
such as were the slaves Of the South three
years ago, violently separated from their
homes and friends, and left by the pious
philanthropy of the times to shift for them
selves, were in a much worse condition
than were the children of Israel when they
undertook the celebrated march through
the Wilderness Neither nature nor ne
cessity had taught them to take care of
themselves, and they looked in vain for the
philanthropy which had set them free to
set them up in life. The AK which tumbled
the patriarchial tree upon the mansion Of
the master and crushed tia circumstance
which affords great satisfaction to many of
+ y EaF III L
our -citizens-also crashed through
the humble cabin of the ebondsmar, andboth
became wanderers and yagabonds upon the
face Of thecarth. The negroes drifted North
like leaves upon the bosom of stream, and
stranded here and there, in every nook and
corner of the country; and settled down
wherever circumstances or q previous inn
migration of their kind invited. No en-
ploymcnt sought them out of their dens,
and they are not Of class to seek for labor.
Theft and beggary were their last resorts
and they were reconciled to follow these
pursuits as they are reconciled to almost
anything. The better class of their own
race would have nothing to do with them,
and from the whites they soon learned to
expect nothing but kicks, and cuffs, and
curses. The dogged sullenness of despair
settled over them, and is evinced in every
look and action.
Columbus, owing to the circumstance of
SO many regiments of our own soldiers and
the rebels arriving In and passing through
the city, has received her full share of this
most miserable and unfortunate class, and
occasionally in the police, records of the
city we have glimpses of how such people
live. They live insquads and run together
like geese. There is scarcely Ward in the
city which has not at least one contraband
settlement in it; and we defy the strongest
minded philanthropist in the Capital to
undertake to explore those settlements and
investigate the manner OF their living.
One Of these settlements, trife more
respectable than many others, islocated on
Noble alley, between Sixth and Seventh
streets, and the denizens of this particular
locality, having become involved in gen
eral rumpus on Monday, multitude
of them were before His Honor the Mayor
yesterday morning, when the evidence dis
closed some of the hideous features of the
life among that class of the Lowly to which
Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe never devoted
her attention. In one of these ruined ten
ements, the windows of which are stuffed1
with straw and what rags can be spared
from the bodies of its inmates, the ceiling
of which is tumbling in and the floor of
which is being devoured by the hungry
rats that tinfest the crib-in this den no less
than twenty miserable beings, most OF them
the recipients of Father Abraham's over
flowing philanthropy, live and breathe and
have their being. Here are seen octogena-
rians, who have served two-thirds of a
long life in happy seryitude, moaning out
the few years left to them in the most abb
ject misery and poverty here are little
babes, not so old as the proclamation
which made them free, rolling in
dirt and rollicking in the foulest
rags; here are young women, haggard
with dissipation and hideous with the stamp
of vice, earning bya nameless profession
the means which maintains the beastly man
in sufficient amount of whisky to keep him
here are seen mother and father,
sister and brother, wives and husbands, of
all ages and every shade of color, from the
dirty white vagrant just from the chain
gang to the blacklist contraband fresh from
the front--mixed in one promiscuous heap
the very apotheosis of Miscegenation.
There is nothing here but misery, and
yet that uproarous hilarity which is ex-
tracted from the pig prevails to the
infinite discontinue of the neigh
borhood. When one of the 'little chaps
manages TO steal roll of butter or basket
ofyegetables from market wagon, the pro-
ceeds arising from the sale thereof is de-
voted to replenishing the pig; the children
are whipped to their beds in the corner and
the old ones hold high carnival till the
supply of red-eye is exhausted. At such a
time there arises from the castle Of these
premature freedmen such a roar Of discord
that the blood Of the fat burgher on his
way home is chilled and congealed with
horror, and he hastehs away from the cor
mel, the very atmosphere of which seems
recking with the miasma Of debauchery
and death. ssss Il 81
inone Of these dreadful orgies the case
before the Mayor yesterday originated. All
hands got drunk and the ferocious men fell
the scarcely less ferocious wo-
men, and the aggregate of bloody faces and
bodies which timbled into court
was hideousto look at. Among other things
elected byth examination was the fact