philanthropists wanted … now!
Last week Seven Score and Ten presented three different takes on General William T. Sherman’s Meridian Campaign. Here’s a fourth, from a Seneca County, New York newspaper in 1864:
LO! THE POOR NEGRO. – A Vicksburg (Miss.) Correspondent of the Tribune, under date of March 4th. writes:
“Some 2,000 slaves of all ages and colors reached here yesterday. It was one of the saddest spectacles witnessed for a long time in Vicksburg. Women and children were almost starved and half naked. Such a terrible picture of abject want and squalid misery can neither be imagined or portrayed with pen. Many of the women and children were sick with fevers, brought on by the great fatigue and exposure of the long march from Meridian, Enterprise, Quitman and other places. Will not the friends of freedom and the humane philanthropists of the North come forward at once, and with their generous hands rescue those liberated slaves from a premature grave. Shoes and clothing for both sexes are needed immediately.”
“Liberated slaves.” Liberated, – to beg, to starve, to die.
