Through General O. O. Howard I learned that mission work was much needed in Charleston, South Carolina, and received from him transportation to that city by way of Washington, District of Columbia.
My health being now restored, on January 29, 1869, I left my sweet home and loved ones at three o'clock P. M., and spent the night in Toledo, with my old friends, William Merritt and wife. I attended with them the prayer-meeting in the new colored church. I arrived at Pittsburg with but little detention. Passing through the mountains, we found the snow deeper than when I left Michigan. At seven A. M. we passed the wreck of three cars which had run off the embankment and were still burning. Among the killed taken from the wreck was a woman partially burnt. I did not learn the number of killed and injured. Among these dead and dying I should probably have been had I not spent the night in Toledo, as this was the train, I would have been on had I remained on the one I left. O, how sad to look upon this smoldering wreck, from which I had so narrowly escaped! This was the third accident of this kind which I had thus providentially missed in my travels by river and rail of three thousand miles. Many are the dangers, seen and unseen, through which I have passed, and the remembrance of this disaster calls forth a renewed song of deliverance and praise for the Guiding Hand that preserves through the vicissitudes of this ever-changing life.
I arrived in Washington early in the morning, and took breakfast with my friend Dr. Glenan. Here I found my brother, Harvey Smith, and his son, who were teaching freedmen's schools, and with them I spent the Sabbath, In the evening I attended the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church, and was invited to address the large meeting. I spoke half an hour, and told the history of Uncle Philip, and how, amidst the persecutions and sorrows to which his slave-life subjected him, he had kept his hand in the hand of his Savior all these ninety-seven years.
While speaking of his being whipped until he fainted, a few wept aloud, and after meeting a number came to tell me of their being whipped for praying. One woman was whipped until she fainted, and one man was kept in the stocks all night after being whipped, and came near dying. His master told him he "would whip the praying devil out of him," using the same words that Uncle Philip's master used to him.
The surgeon-in-chief, Dr. Reynolds, wished me to remain in Washington another day, and thought General Howard would permit me to stay there for a time, to engage in sanitary work. I had an interview with the general, who thought I was most needed in Washington, during the Winter season at least. He gave me authority to visit the free soup-houses, and investigate the sanitary work generally. After reading my commission, I told him I had a request to make, and that was that the authority with which I was vested, might be kept secret. To investigate to the best advantage was my object. I was also appointed to examine, as far as practicable, the condition of applicants for charity, and the manner in which the charity was applied. My office was furnished, and board was allowed me at the head-quarters of the freedmen's hospital in Campbell Camp.
On February eth I called at Josephine Griffin's relief office before 10 o'clock A. M. Between sixty and seventy persons called on her, mostly for work. I followed a number of the applicants for soup-tickets to their homes. In visiting twenty families during the day, I found a number of persona in squalid wretchedness. One man was very sick with a high fever, and unconscious. He had received no help, because unable to make personal application, and he had no family to intercede for him. His bed was a pile of rags in the corner on the floor. I called for the Bureau physician and saw that he had suitable bed-clothing and food. The physician said he must have died within two or three days in that condition. Among the applicants for relief was an Irishwoman, who had a brick house she was renting, except the back room, which she occupied, and had another nearly finished. She and her family for whom she was begging soup, lived in good style.
The fourth day of my investigations revealed great deficiency in properly looking after applicants for aid. The greatest sufferers were often too diffident to ask for help. The soup-houses were generally well managed. I called as one whom curiosity had drawn into the motley crowd, and was treated to a taste of fine soup, even at the "Savage Soup-house," where I saw two caldrons of soup. The one from which I was served might well tempt the palate of an epicure, but the other looked too forbidding for a human stomach. I soon found the good soup was being given to the white applicants, who were first served, while the colored people, standing in the yard, were waiting their time. Policeman Ross told a shivering colored man to go inside and put his pail on the farther block for soup.
"I shall be sent out," he replied.
"I tell you to go in," said the policeman; "I'll see to that."
He obeyed the order, only to receive curses: "You know better than to come yet; another thing you know, this soup is for white folks, the other is for niggers."