The national Republican., 1867-05-08
NEWS FROM RICHMOND, VA.
Meeting ofthe u. y. District Court.
ooLoRED MEN ON TnE GRAND JURY.
Jude. undss,yood,s ohsrre.

grand jury was empanheled, and Is consti-
tuted Of the following.named gentlemen:
John Minor Bolts, Joseph Segar, Lewis
Mckenzie, ]. P. Baldwin, Rozier Dulaney
Beckley, (colored,) David Luton, Peter
Couse, George Seaton, (colored,) Cornelius
Ligon Harris, (colored,) John Hawxhurst,
Thomas Davy, T. s. Tennis, VIM. Bartlett,
George W. Simms, (colored, Fields Cook,
(colored,) John Oliver, (colored,) Gilbert
+. Watson, Michael Umbarger, Jacob N.
Troth, John W. Gregg, Joseph T. Janney,
John Wissler, II. g. Bond, VIM. l.. Mans.
field. sr, ~.
We have space only for portions ofJudge
UsDERwooD's charge, who proceeded to
say:
"GEsTLENEs OF THE GRAND JuRY: The
circumstances surrounding us demand de-
yout thanksgiving TO Almighty God that
we, the friends and representatives Of the
Government Of the United States, who last
year were threatened with destruction and
hunted by assassins in this city, for at
tempting to execute the laws Of our coun-
try, can now meet in conscious security
uader the wings Of the starry banner which
our patriotic Congress has raised for our
projections; that we ure permitted " meet
In this building Of everlasting granite, so
emblematic Of the power and strength of
our Government, standing alone and un-
harmed amid the great conhagration that
swept as with bosom Of destruction all
around it.
"And what solemn associations are sug-
gested by rejecting that in the very rooms
we now occupy dwelt the fiery soul of
treason, rebellion and civil war, and hence
issued that fell spirit which starved, by
wholesale, prisoners for the crime of de-
Tending the flag of our common country;
assassinated colored soldiers for their noble
and trusting labors in behalf OF Govern.
ment that had. as yet, only promised them
protection; burned towns and cities with q
barbarity unknown to Christian countries;
scattered yellow fever and smallpox
among the poor and helpless, and finally
struck down one Of earth's nobest martyrs
to freedom ann humanity.
Another subject Of thanksgiving is
presented in the very constitution Of your
body, furnishing ocular evidence that the
age Of caste and class cruelty is defeated,
and the new era OF justice and equality,
breaking through the clouds Of persecution
and prejudice, is now dawning upon us.
And strangest of all, this city of Richmond
should be the spot of earth TO furnish this
gracious manifestation. Richmond the
beautiful and abandoned scat Of the rebel
lion, looking as comely and specious as a
goodly apple or gilded sepulchre; where
bloody treason aourished its whips Of
scorpions. Richmond, where the slave
trade so long held high carnival; where the
press has found the lowest depths Of profit
gacy; where licentiousness had ruled until
probably a majority Of births were ilegiti-
mate or without the forms of law; where
the fashionable and popular pulpit had
been SO prosttuted that its fuli-fed minis.
tering gay Lotharios generally recon-
mended the worship of what they most re-
Spected-pleasure, property and power"
The Judge proceeds TO say:
1--WE so often hear, from reasonable
sources around us, charges of cruel acts
passed by Congress aipce the beginning of
the war facts which we are called upon to
enforce) that it is well, perhaps, for one
moment to consider the utter falsehood Of
such charges, and to find, on examination,
the unparalleled clemency and forbearance
Of the victorious Government which, but
for the cost of the rebellion, would now be
felt only in its protection and its blessings.
While it has heretofore been the common
law Of oil nations, our own included, to
punish treason by death, it was reserved
for the American Congress, in the midst
Of a gigantic rebellion, on the 18th Of July,
1862 to reduce that punishment, il courts
| should see fit, to fine and imprisonment.
again, it has been the usage of all ma
tions, in peace as well as war, to make the
wrong-doer, even in the most trivial tres.
pass, respond out Of his property to the
full amount Of the damages he has CON-
mitted-a practice and usage also of VIC
torlous governments in oil ordinary wars
and yet we have seen O patriot statesmen,
venerable alike for his age and for the
blessings OF education, culture and i'm
provement he had conferred upon his State
and country, q statesman greatly eminent
among his fellow-legislators and by COM
mon consent of successive Congresses
acknowledged as q leader and a father
with a difference that neither Clay, Fox,
the Pitts, nor even Cicero, had ever known.
This noble man we have seen assailed with
q bitterness and falsehood peculiar to
the authors and leaders of the rebellion,
its pinps and apologists, and for what
"Why, for proposing that few of those
who had been chiefly instrumental in ILL
ing the land with woe, and mourning, and
debt, and taxation, and who, like the late
Secretary Of the rebel finances, had made
millions by blockade-running and by spec.
ulating upon, the general distress, should,
out Of their princely estates, contribute
one tenth Of the damages they had done,
and at the same time exemptng from
penalty all the great masses of those who
had been drawn into the late war. This
humane statesman also proposes not to
punish any with that extreme vigor usual
in civil wars, and not even to the extent
exacted by every European nation in ord-
nary foreign wars. Was such moderation
and clemency ever before so abused and
insulted?"
The conclusion of Judge UEDERwooD's
charge is as follows:
Your attention is particularly called to
an abuse which had assumed an alarming
aspect in this city, as relic of the old bar.
barism Of slavery. mean the brutal re-
lection Of great laboring and useful class
of the people from the street cars. Under
the act of Congress commonly called the
Civil Rights Bill there is an undoubted
remedy for such outrages. Chartered
transportation companies owe impartial
duties to the public, and the gross wrongs
complained Of deserve your Indignant re-