Malicious exhibition in Ohio State Capitol.
In the summer of 1867, I set out for New York, being resolved to live no longer in the South, where negroes were being placed over us by Yankee bayonets, and in their vernacular, “de bottom rail wuz agittina on de top er de fence.” I traveled very leisurely, and stopped in every city of any note on my route, and kept eyes and ears wide open to drink in everything. I visited the Ohio State Capitol at Columbus, and in the museum of curiosities were some small paper boxes carefully preserved in a glass case, containing what purported to have been the exact quality and quantity of rations issued per diem to each prisoner at Andersonville. In one box was about a pint of coarse unbolted meal, and in another about one tablespoonful of rice; and still another box with about two tablespoonsful of black peas; and in a tiny little box was about one-eighth of a teaspoon of salt. Underneath it is all explained, and [166] says, among other things, “When rice was given, the peas were withheld; but when they had no rice, this kind of peas was given instead.” It is needless to tell how my blood boiled at such an atrociously malicious and false exhibition. No wonder the hatred of the North is kept alive, and the bloody chasm continually widened by such wicked and uncharitable displays as this in one of the largest and most enlightened States in the Union.
