Washington jails and negroes

The Washington correspondent of the New York Evening Post makes the following statement.  From other sources we learn that there were never so many alleged fugitives in the jail at Washington as there have been been in the last six months, and what is more, they are arrested and imprisoned without the slightest legal process, and given up without examination to any body who claims then:   “Our district jail is used at present as a receptacle for “contraband” negroes.  A friend who was over it yesterday was astonished to find in it so many unclaimed fugitives from slaveholding  injustice.  …………..Every suspicious negro is instantly put into jail, as if he were guilty of treason, instead of being a slave.  Why these arrests are made, no one can tell.  The jail-keepers seem to know nothing about it, and to care nothing about t he matter, as nearly all of them are bitterly pro-slavery.”

(Liberator, Oct 18, 1861, pg 3)