he Northern States, than to remain
there, where employment was precarious, and where the excessive number
of workers had reduced the wages of such as could find employment. She
accordingly commenced an extensive correspondence, to obtain from
persons at the North in want of servants, orders for such as could be
supplied from the colored people residing in the District of Columbia.
Having completely systematized the matter, she has been in the habit,
for nearly two years past, of leaving Washington once or twice a week,
with a company of colored persons, for whom she had obtained situations
in Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Pittsburg, Cincinnati, or smaller
cities, paying their fare, providing them with food on the journey, and
at its termination until she could put them into the families who had
engaged them, and then returning to make up another company. The cost of
these expeditions she has provided almost entirely from her own means,
her daughters who have imbibed their mother's spirit, helping as far as
possible in this noble work. In the autumn of 1865 she found that
notwithstanding all for whom she could provide situations, there were
likely to be not less than twenty thousand colored persons, freedmen and
their families, in a state of complete destitution before the 1st of
December, and she published in the Washington and other papers, an
appeal to the benevolent to help. The Freedmen's Bureau at first denied
the truth of her statements, but further investigation convinced them
that she was right, and they were wrong, and Congress was importuned for
an appropriation for their necessities. Twenty-five thousand dollars
were appropriated, and its distribution left to the Freedmen's Bureau.
It would have been more wisely distributed had it been entrusted to Mrs.
Griffin, as she was more thoroughly cognizant of the condition and real
wants of the people than the Bureau could be. Mrs. Griffin has pursued
her work of providing situations for the freedmen, and watching over
their interests to the present time; and so long as life and health
lasts, she is not likely to give it up.
MRS. M. M. HALLOWELL.
The condition of the loyal whites of East Tennessee and Northern Alabama
and Georgia, deservedly excited the sympathy and liberality of the loyal
North. No portion of the people of the United States had proved their
devotion to the Union by more signal sacrifices, more patient endurance,
or more terrible sufferi
|