Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 2.djvu/908

870 you, I desire to refer to the following facts, which I trust you will present to the meeting of Friends (Quakers) in Philadelphia who sympathize with you.

In the year 1864, when urging upon Senator Sumner and our friends in Congress, the necessity of a bureau that could afford special aid to the emancipated slaves, the great fact that the old people were suddenly turned out of the possibility of a subsistence, was recognized by all. Mr. Sumner, in his first speech putting the bill in passage, urged this as sufficient ground alone, if no other existed, which was not the case. From the time of the organization of the Bureau till now, their special claim has been recognized by Congress, and notwithstanding they received, in common with all the freed people of this District, an allowance made to each in rations, blankets, clothes, fuel, Government buildings, medical treatment, and monthly visitation; they also have each year received from Congress special aid in an appropriation because of their age and infirmity, many of them being helpless as infants, and all too far spent in slavery to labor for a support.

In providing for the able-bodied freed people, only partial support was intended by the Bureau, to bridge over the transition from slavery to freedom. Then education and the ballot, added to their own industrial resources, came in, and furnished them a basis for self-support and citizenship. The Bureau was no longer a necessary department in the Government for this class, and was abolished, without a substitute for the aged and worn-out slaves, though they were now older and more infirm, and had lost in this change houses, food, fuel, clothing, medical treatment, and, excepting myself, visiting agents.

Since the discontinuance of the Bureau, I have acted, as before its creation, as "best friend" and as agent of the National Freedman's Relief Association of this District, in the care of the old, crippled, blind, and broken-down, of whom I have at this time in number eleven hundred, not one of whom is able to earn for himself the necessaries of life. At this moment, at least one hundred and fifty broken-down slaves are at this office, covering all the porches, sitting on all the stairs, forming an almost impassable barrier to the entrances—all with a story of want in their faces; in fact of want, from "the crown of the head to the sole of the half-naked feet," and all eager to say, "We has nobody to go 'pon." An old woman ninety-one, sat on the steps just after the sun rose this morning, so tired, she looked a pitying sight for angels. "Can you let me stay anywhere?" she said. "I'se had no home dis winter; dey let me stay in de wash-room last night, but der wasn't any blanket, and 'pears I got chilled through." Upon investigation I found it was true she had no friend or relative, and had been going on the outskirts of the city begging among the colored people (poor as herself, except in shelter) a lodging, and often doing with almost nothing to eat for two or three days at a time. Perfectly disabled for life by weakness (so common among the old women of slavery) and the infirmities of ninety years of hard life. Through the noble efforts of Rachel W. M. Townsend in behalf of these poor human beings, I was able to give her a bedtick and twenty-five cents for straw to fill it, a comforter, and a place to stay in the house with two others of the same class, for whom we have all winter paid rental. What less than this would the loving Saviour of men have done for one like her? What less would you, who have battled half a century for her freedom, have done in a case like that? She has now a bed and comforter, no pillow, nor bedstead, and not one garment to change with the ragged and filthy ones that have served for day and night apparel, for bed and outdoor wrappings, the last three months. She has no resource for bread, in herself, and none but God to whom she can say, "Give" me "this day" my "daily bread". This woman represents at least two hundred persons in every way as destitute, who look to me for help. Another class of two hundred are in a similar state of destitution, with this exception, they are sheltered by a fellow-servant or distant relative, and sometimes furnished a bed, but nothing more, and none of these can labor.

Two hundred more are equally destitute and as helpless, many of them as young children, needing the personal care that patients in our hospitals do, not excepting medical treatment and bathing. Add to these five hundred, who under the most favorable circumstances may, though do not generally, furnish their bread three months in the summer, by picking up bones and rags in the alleys and gutters, I believe I may safely say that out of the eleven hundred there are not one hundred who can do this, and pay house-