unoffending citizens
belonging to distant States and countries, and guilty of no crime, when
we describe the room and regimen to which they were subjected. The room
was about twenty-six feet long and ten feet wide. The brick walls were
plastered and colored with some kind of blue wash, which, however, was
so nearly obliterated with dirt and the damp of a southern climate, as
to leave but little to show what its original color was. The walls were
covered with the condensed moisture of the atmosphere, spiders hung
their festooned network overhead, and cockroaches and ants, those
domesticated pests of South Carolina, were running about the floor in
swarms, and holding all legal rights to rations in superlative contempt.
Two small apertures in the wall, about fourteen inches square, and
double-barred with heavy flat iron, served to admit light and air. The
reader may thus judge of its gloomy appearance, and what a miserable
unhealthy cell it must have been in which to place men just arrived from
sea. There was not the first vestige of furniture in the room, not;
even a bench to sit upon, for the State, with its gracious hospitality,
forgot that men in jail ever sit down; but it was in keeping with all
other things that the State left to the control of its officials.

"Am I to be punished in this miserable place? Why, I cannot see where
I'm going; and have I nothing to lay down upon but the floor, and that
creeping with live creatures?" inquired Manuel of those who were already
inured to the hardship.

"Nothing! nothing! Bring your mind to realize the worst, and forget the
cruelty while you are suffering it; they let us out a part of the day.
We are locked up to-day because one of the assistants stole my friend's
liquor, and he dared to accuse him of the theft, because he was a white
man," said a tall, fine-looking mulatto man by the name of James Redman,
who was steward on board a Thomastown (Maine) ship, and declared that he
had visited Charleston on a former occasion, and by paying five dollars
to one of the officers, remained on board of the ship unmolested.

"And how long shall I have to suffer in this manner?" inquired Manuel.
"Can I not have my own bed and clothing?"

"Oh, yes," said Redman; "you can have them, but if you bring them here,
they'll not be worth anything when you leave; and the prisoners upon
this floor are so starved and destitute, that necessity forces them
to steal whatever comes in their way; and