But the "Swamp Angel" had splintered the pews of St. Michael's, demolished the pulpit, and made a record of its doings in the Registry building. At one stroke it opened the entire front of the Sunday-School Depository to the light of heaven. There was also a mass of evidence in the courtroom—several cart-loads of brick and plaster, introduced by General Gillmore—against the right of a State to secede.
I entered the Theological Library building through a window from which General Gillmore had removed the sash by a solid shot. A pile of old rubbish lay upon the floor,—sermons, tracts, magazines, books, papers, musty and mouldy, turning into pulp beneath the rain-drops which came down through the shattered roof.
Amid these surroundings was the Slave-Mart,—a building with a large iron gate in front, above which, in large gilt letters, was the word MART.
The outer iron gate opened into a hall about sixty feet long by twenty broad, flanked on one side by a long table running the entire length of the hall, and on the other by benches. At the farther end a door, opening through a brick wall, gave entrance to a yard. The door was locked. I tried my boot-heel, but it would not yield. I called a freedman to my aid. Unitedly we took up a great stone, and gave a blow. Another, and the door of the Bastile went into splinters. Across the yard was a four-story brick building, with grated windows and iron doors,—a prison. The yard was walled by high buildings. He who entered there left all hope behind. A small room adjoining the hall was the place where women were subjected to the lascivious gaze of brutal men. There were the steps, up which thousands of men, women, and children had walked to their places on the table, to be knocked off to the highest bidder. The thought occurred to me that perhaps Governor Andrew, or Wendell Phillips, or William Lloyd Garrison would like to make a speech from those steps. I determined to secure them. While there a colored woman came into the hall to see the two Yankees.
"I was sold there upon that table two years ago," said she.
"You never will be sold again; you are free now and forever!" I replied.
"Thank God! O the blessed Jesus, he has heard my prayer. I am so glad; only I wish I could see my husband. He was sold at the same time into the country, and has gone I don't know where."
Thus spake Dinah More.
In front of the mart was a gilt star. I climbed the post and wrenched it from its spike to secure it as a trophy. A freedman took down the gilt letters for me, and knocked off the great lock from the outer iron gate, and the smaller lock from the inner door. The key of the French Bastile hangs at Mount Vernon; and as relics of the American prison-house then being broken up, I secured these.
Entering the brokers' offices,—prisons rather,—we walked along the grated corridors, looked into the rooms where the slaves had been kept. In the cellar was the dungeon for the refractory,—bolts and staples in the floors, manacles for the hands and feet, chains to make all sure. There had evidently been a sudden evacuation of the premises. Books, letters, bills of sale, were lying on the floor.