e 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 R