A couple paragraphs that made me ask a lot of questions:
From the Richmond Daily Dispatch April 7, 1862:
A leap for liberty.
–On Saturday a colored individual, named John Williams, was carried before the Mayer for the rather novel offence of jumping from the window of Jno. Hagan’s office in order to escape from working on the batteries. It appears that Williams, as a member of the colored fraternity, had been notified of his liability to contribute a little of his personal exertion towards erecting certain batteries near this city. Failing to respond to the intimation he was taken up and at the time of his attempted escape was in process of being transferred VI et armis to the scene of his future usefulness. The case presenting several model features for constellation, the Mayer continued it in order to discontinue the amount of guilt involved in attempting to escape from work.
There’s no indication that John Williams was a slave. I guess the state has a right to conscript individuals for its protection? Apparently Barney Moore was also free.
From the same Dispatch issue:
Death of a Faithful Negro.
–Our readers in this city will doubtless remember the lean form and meek face of an old negro man who dispensed the Dispatch to its many subscribers in the metropolis for years past; his name was Barnett Moore. We are called upon to record his death, which we do with sincere regret. He died yesterday morning after a brief illness. For more than a quarter of a century he was a carrier of newspapers, to which daily avocation he sometimes united, that of preacher to his colored brethren.–Faithful in all that he undertook, neither summer’s sun or winter’s storm ever deterred him from laying at each door the daily news; and his humility and honesty of heart made a friend of every one that knew him. Poor Barney! He was many a time a weary with his tedious round of duty, but at last, full of infirmity and years, he has been gathered to his fathers, where the weary are at rest. –He fulfilled the term of life alletted to man, being about seventy years of age. Peace to his ashes.
