New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1869-12-16
RELICS or SLAVERY.

Some of our neighbors of the Border States
seen to wake as slowly to the consciousness
of O.. new order of things as ever did Rip,
cor ny down into the newly-built village of
Fa ing Water with his rusty gun in his hand.
Slavery is dead-Of that they can have no
doubt but surely some of its: traces are left,
the pillory or whipping-post-sOme Jacob Stein
or dog Schneider, from whose familiar face they
NAV take courage and know themselves again.
For if Jacob be dead and Schneider be dead,
"tLen who der teufel am If' In Delaware
the whipping post is the cherished souvenir
around which cluster the tender "reminiscences
NJ the past further South, however, in West
Virginia and Kentucky, they preserve another
relic of the old slayehOlding days as sacredly
Is does the Chinaman the CHASTITY bones of his
grandfather. We mean the chain-gang-an
economical mode adopted by certain Southern
towns TO have their public work done, at
me when it was unnecessary to pay for labor
tut by the lash. The plan may need some
planation in regions where its tender mercles
re unknown.
The chain-gang is simply n modification of
he galley-system, the cOnvicts working i'll
lands, chained together; or, in other cases,
ZACH man chained by the ankles TO an iron
TALL which he drags after him as he moves.
there are differences, however, which mark
the superior shrewdness of the Yankee mind,
ven when tempered 10y Southern sun. The
prisoner 90 the gallcys must be convicted of
iome criminal oflense the man on the chain
lang has only broken, most probably, some
,ilng city ordinance, and is condemned to
fba ha
.isoners work apart his dress and name are
ken from each of them; it is not his old
,tter self that is disgraced so far as the
leroy of the Government can prevent it. But
he lad in one of these border towns who takes
81 unaccustomed glass of wine at night, or
rows noisy, as lads will do, on a Summer
'yening, will find himself, in the hot glare of
he next days sun, chained and working side
~ side with the lowest felons in full sight of
lis friends and companions CCriously enough,
40, the knowledge Of tho trivial oflenses
br which this extreme punishment is inflicted
las never lessened the weight of its
,dium aud shame. We have seen
men who had come out undaunted from years
Of service in a .penitentiary sit covering under
the gaze of tile passers-by, trying vainly to
hide their chain under their rags-f0r, now
ever low a man may have fallen before, the
touch of n chain has something in it of
hopeless disgrace. 1t is the one damned spot
that will not out; the man feels himself to be
a brute while he wears it. Yet not day
passes in which some headstrong boy, who
needs perhaps only few kind words to
make a genuine, helpful man of him. is thus
marked as n fclon, and in all human proba-
bity made one, for life.
But what matter7 Our neighbors have their
streets cleaned That is step in the, right
direction, though the wholesale conversion of
men into shameless ruflians might be coEsid-
cred in other places dear price to pay for it,
After while, perhaps, they may perceive that
moral cleansing is a duty also attended to in
civilized communities, and that it is not by
them held wise or economical to foster vice
for the purpose of furnishing it. Unless,