Will Mrs. Griffing let Mr. Sumner know what institution or person should disburse the money appropriated?
Senate Chamber,
Tuesday.
LETTERS ON THE FREEDMAN'S RELIEF ASSOCIATION.
Washington, April 8, '71.
To the Mayor and Board of Common Council, City of Washington, District of Columbia:
Messrs.:—I have the honor to state that the aged, sick, crippled, and blind persons, for whom the National Freedman's Relief Association of this District partially provides, are at this time in very great destitution, many of them in extreme suffering for want of food and fuel. The Association has provided clothing. It is now twelve weeks since the Government appropriation for their temporary support for the last year was exhausted. This Association has by soliciting contributions, up to this time, relieved the most extreme cases, that otherwise must have died; but the want of food is so great among at least a thousand of these, not one of whom is able to labor for a support, that it is impossible to provide the absolute relief they must have, by further contributions from the charitable and the humane.
I would therefore most earnestly appeal in their behalf, that the Hon. Council and Mayor will appropriate from the market fund for their temporary relief one thousand dollars, to be disbursed by the above-named association, which sum will enable these destitute persons to subsist until, as is hoped and believed, Congress will make the usual special appropriation for their partial temporary support. This Association to report the use of such money to the Mayor and Common Council of the City of Washington, D. C.
J. S. Griffing,
General Agent N. F. R. Association, D. C.Very respectfully,
Tribune Office, New York, Sept. 7, 1870.Mrs. Griffing:—In my judgment you and others who wish to befriend the blacks crowded into Washington, do them great injury. Had they been told years ago, "You must find work; go out and seek it," they would have been spared much misery. They are an easy, worthless race, taking no thought for the morrow, and liking to lean on those who befriend them. Your course aggravates their weaknesses, when you should raise their ambition and stimulate them to self-reliance. Unless you change your course speedily and signally, the swarming of blacks to the District will increase, and the argument that Slavery is their natural condition will be immeasurably strengthened. So long as they look to others to calculate and provide for them, they are not truly free. If there be any woman capable of earning wages who would rather some one else than herself should pay her passage to the place where she can have work, then she needs reconstruction and awakening to a just and honest self-reliance.
Horace Greeley.
Yours,
Mrs. J. S. Griffing, Washington, D. C.
Sept. 12, 1870.
Horace Greeley:
Dear Sir:—Much as I respect your judgment, and admire your candor, I must express entire dissent with your views in reference to those who are laboring to befriend the Freedmen, and also of your estimate of the character of the black race.
When you condemn my work for the old slaves, who can not labor, and are "crowded into Washington" by force of events uncontrollable, as a "great injury," I am at a loss to perceive your estimate of any and all benevolent action. If, to provide houses, food, clothing, and other physical comforts, to those broken-down aged slaves whom we have liberated in their declining years, when all their strength is gone, and for whom no home, family friendship, or subsistence is furnished; if this is a "great injury," in my judgment there is no call for alms-house, hospital, home, or asylum in human society, and all appropriations of sympathy and material aid are worse than useless, and demand your earnest rebuke and discountenance, and to the unfortunates crowded into these institutions, you should say, "You must find work, go out and seek it." So far as an humble individual can be, I am substituting to these a freedman's (relief) bureau; sanitary commission; church sewing society, to aid the poor; orphan asylum; old people's home; hospital and alms-house for the sick and the blind; minister-at-large, to visit the sick, console the dying, and bury the dead; and wherein I fail, and perhaps you discriminate, is the want of wealthy, popular, and what is called honorable associations. Were these at my command, with the field before me, it would be easy to illustrate the practical use as well as the divine origin of the Golden Rule.
If, in your criticism, you refer to my secondary department in which I have labored to furnish employment to the Freedmen both in the District and out, is it not a direct reflection upon all efforts made for the distribution of labor? Is my course more aggravating to the weakness of destitute unemployed freed people, than emigrant societies, intelligence offices, benevolent ladies' societies, and young men's Christian associations, to give work to the poor of all nations; and lastly the Government Indian department, that has wisely called to its aid the American missionary, and the Quaker societies, to farm out the poor Indians? or, if the measures put forth by these admissible agents can raise the ambition and stimulate to self-reliance their beneficiaries, will you be good enough to show wherein the same means, which I claim to employ, must have the opposite effect upon the freedmen crowded into Washington.
Is it possible that the swarming of the Irish, Swiss, and German poor, to the city of New York, is attributable to the intelligence offices and immigration societies of your city, and not, as we have supposed, to the want of work and bread at home, and is there really a danger, that in providing and calculating for them, we shall strengthen the argument of race, while our institutions of charity are filled with descendants of the Saxon, the Norman, the Goth, and the Vandal? I think not.
Josephine S. Griffing.
Respectfully yours,
From the New National Era.
MRS. JOSEPHINE S. GRIFFING THE ORIGINATOR OF THE FREEDMEN's BUREAU.
This truly excellent and noble woman was fitly spoken of in the New National Era just after her death, but at that early date it was not possible to obtain the facts to prove the statement at the head of this article, which is but simple truth and historic justice.
Mrs. Griffing was engaged in an arduous work for the Loyal League in the Northwest in 1862, and foresaw the need of a comprehensive system of protection, help, and education, for the slaves in the trying transition of freedom. She sought counsel and aid from fit persons in Ohio and Michigan, and came here only in 1863 to begin her work of urging the plan of a Bureau for that purpose. Nothing daunted by coldness or indifference she nobly persisted, until in December, 1863, a bill for a Bureau of Emancipation was introduced in the House of Representatives by Hon T. D. Elliott, of Massachusetts. After some changes in the bill, and a committee of conference of the House and Senate, and the valuable aid of Sumner, Wilson, and other Senators, the bill for the Freedman's Bureau finally passed in March, 1865, and was signed by President Lincoln just before his assassination.
The original idea was Mrs. Griffing's; her untiring efforts gave it life, and it is but just that the colored people, of the South especially, should bear in grateful remembrance this able and gentle woman, whose life and strength were spent for their poor sufferers, and who called into useful existence that great national charity, the Freedman's Bureau.
The following letter from William Lloyd Garrison to Giles B. Stebbins, then in Washington, corroborates the above statements:
Roxbury, Mass., March 4, 1872.
My Dear Friend: ... I was glad to see the well-merited tributes paid by yourself and others to the memory of Mrs. Josephine S. Griffing. She was, for a considerable period, actively engaged in the anti-slavery struggle in Ohio, where by her rare executive ability and persuasiveness as a public lecturer, she aided greatly in keeping the abolition flag flying, enlightening and changing public sentiment, and hastening the year of jubilee. With what unremitting zeal and energy did she espouse the cause of the homeless, penniless, benighted, starving freedmen, driven by stress of circumstances into the national capital in such overwhelming numbers; and what a multitude were befriended and saved through her moving appeals in their behalf! How like an angel of mercy must she have seemed to them all! No doubt the formation of the Freedman's Bureau was mainly due to her representations as to its indispensable necessity; and how much good was done by that instrumentality in giving food, clothing, and protection to those who were so suddenly brought out of the house of bondage, as against the ferocity of the rebel element, it is difficult to compute because of its magnitude. She deserves to be gratefully remembered among "the honorable women not a few," who, in their day and generation, have been
"Those starry lights of virtue that diffuse,
Through the dark depths of time their vital flame,"whose self-abnegation and self-sacrifice in the cause of suffering humanity having been absolute, and who have nobly vindicated every claim made by their sex to full equality with men in all that serves to dignify human nature. Her rightful place is among "the noble army of martyrs," for her life was undoubtedly very much shortened by her many cares and heavy responsibilities and excessive labors in behalf of the pitiable objects of her sympathy and regard.
William Lloyd Garrison.
Very truly yours,
Parker Pillsbury, in a letter to Mrs. Stebbins says: "The anti-slavery conflict could never boast a braver, truer, abler advocate than Josephine Griffing. It was always an honor and inspiration to stand by her side, no matter how fierce the encounter. I have seen her when an infuriated mob assailed our Conventions, and dashed down doors, windows, seats, stoves, tables, everything that would yield to their demoniac rage, stand amid the ruins calm and unmoved, and with her gentle words of remonstrance shame the intruders, until one by one they shrank away, glad to get out of her sight.
Her beautiful home hospitalities; her warm welcome ever extended to the faithful friends of freedom and humanity, were equal to her unshaken courage and self-control in public assemblies. We used to call that humble home in Litchfield, 'The Saint's Rest,' and such it was to many a fugitive slave, as well as soldier in his cause.
To the first demand for the enfranchisement of women in 1848, Mrs. Griffing heartily responded, and in this reform she was ever untiring in effort, wise in counsel, and eminent in public speech. In 1867 she helped to organize the Universal Franchise Association of the District of Columbia, of which she was president for years. She was also Corresponding Secretary of the National Woman Suffrage Association, and was ever considered the organizing power at Washington. She first suggested the importance of annual conventions at the capital, in order to influence Congressional action.