Search

Description of the Colored School, under direction of Lewis Overton. Tuition 50 cents per month. Most students multiracial. Recapture of former slaves in free territory. Black men enlist as Union soldiers. Needs of the school. On printed stationery: "Kansas Emancipation League; to the Friends of Impartial Freedom."

Train ride to D.C.; fellow passenger daughter-in-law of Simon Cameron (1799-1889), Cabinet member, is interested in fugitive slave work. Colonel Doran, 13th Virginia Infantry, argues for emancipation. Other people in contraband work. Appalling contraband living conditions. Freedmans Relief Association: she meets treasurer G. E. Baker, president Mr. Hamlin, and secretary J. Van Santvoord. Meets General James Samuel Wadsworth (1807-1864). Southern-sympathizing woman. Military hospitals.

Homesickness and depression. "Woman's presence" important in contraband work. Description of fellow boarders: some of them in relief work, and some phonies. Reverend Gladwin "wants to be made Superintendent of the whole concern." A schoolhouse converted into contraband quarters; deaths there. Plight of a negro woman. U.S. army convalescent camp. A case tried in D.C. under Fugitive Slave Law.

White man's treatment of black woman. Reverend Gladwin's duties; his association with Baptist Free Mission Society. Living conditions in the "slave pen" "I am the only white woman in Alexandria…who goes among the colored people…" Questionable source of Alexandria drinking water. Tensions between Union and Confederate sympathizers. Colored church service.

Receipt to G. W. Gardiner for Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society donation to Colored School. Mention of W. Silas Cornell; possible relation to Sarah M. Cornell?

Colored School, Lewis Overton, teacher. Thanks for books and supplies sent by the Society. War reveals the moral cowards. If war is to have meaning, emancipation must be declared. "Poor old John Brown…" State politics: Kansas, Missouri, New York.

Frederick Douglass. Ugent need for winter women's clothing, need for bedding. Smallpox. Poor sanitation and water supply. Two southern women turn down a plea for contraband assistance. Donation box from Philadelphia contains books: "What an absurdity." Reverend Gladwin's policies and ideas of charity. Description of men's contraband camp. Heavy ratio, blacks to whites, Alexandria. Black girl's funeral. Northern and Southern sympathies clash. Northern soldier regrets enlisting and sympathizes with South.

Smallpox, smallpox mortality. Commodore French Forrest's (1796-1866) elegant mansion becomes the pesthouse; "Justice is sometimes meted out to a rebel." Goods for distribution. New York Friends Committee visits. Enclosed: draft letter to the "Friends of the African Race in Great Britain and Ireland" (8 pages) from the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society, an appeal for aid, describing the plight of contrabands in Alexandria with excellent capsule descriptions of the work and the destitute living situation.

Financial arrangement for her living. Cost of living in Alexandria.

"There is not a woman in Alexandria now who sympathizes with me in my work…" Talks with wounded soldier; his reaction to injury. Contraband and soldier housing. Contraband tenement burns. Relations with army personnel. Description of a contraband barracks; she contemplates an appeal to Lincoln about them. Mr. Burge: executive in contraband work who is usually drunk. Dr. Ripley: a quack and a thief. Contrabands' Christmas. She secures a place for contrabands to live. Ambulance shortage. Commentary on Reverend Gladwin. Smallpox. She sees a wounded soldier she knows from New York.