Pilgrim's Letters. Bits of current history picked up in the West and the South, during the last thirty years, for the Independent [Newspaper], etc

Front matter

PILGRIM'S LETTERS 23itg os Current Wtorp PICKED UP IN THE WEST AND THE SOUTH, DURING THE LAST THIRTY YEARS, FOR THE INDEPENDENT, THE CONGREGATIONALIST, AND THE ADVANCE, BY JOSEPH E. ROY. BOSTON AND CHICAGO: ffiongugational £urtBag»Scl)ODl ano $ubltsi)mg $ottrfg. Copyright, 1888, By Congregational Sunday-School and Publishing Society. Electrotyped and Printed By Stanley &• Usher, 171 Devonshire Street, Boston, Mass. AND To Mrs. Pilgrim, WHO, DURING ALL THE YEARS OF THIS PILGRIMAGE, HAS TARRIED BY THE STUFF, BEARING THE DOUBLE BURDEN OF THE HOME, REARING THE FAMILY, PRESERVING IN GROWING VOLUMES THESE ORIGINAL LETTERS, THIS BOOK, THE SUBSTANCE OF THEM, is gratefully inscribed By Pilgrim.

Preface

. How did I come to take the name Pilgrim ? Of Huguenot and New Jersey lineage, a son of the west, all the Pilgrim blood in me comes from a Yankee step-mother ; but they which are of faith the same are the children of Abraham. Then my mode of life for these twenty seven years, as superintendent of missions in the west and in the south, calling me to all parts of the country, has been that of a pilgrim. Mov ing about during this epoch-making period I have sought to catch some of its peculiar features by a sort of instantaneous photography ; and for all of this time the press of The Lndependent, or of The Congregation alist, or of The Advance has been printing them. Out of these letters, seven hundred of them, I have sifted material which seemed to have a permanent interest. As they cover the period of the Kansas Struggle, the War of the Rebellion, the process of civil and moral reconstruction, and of the phenomenal development of our new territories, they afford glimpses of the real life of those times in which history was rapidly made — a history big with destiny.

These are not war letters, but Sketches, rather, showing what the men and the women were doing at home during the war to give material and moral support to the government and the army, and what they have since been doing for our country in supplementing the war and in maturing the national life. It is a royal hospitality which Pilgrim has enjoyed every-where these many years. This title has often made ready for him a welcome where he had supposed himself a stranger. For all of this he once more expresses thanks, as he invites these and other friends to tread again with him some of the paths of this Pilgrim's progress. CONTENTS. PERIOD I. BEFORE THE WAR, 1857-60. PAGE. "Bleeding Kansas." — A State with a History.- The Missouri Plan in North Carolina and in Kentucky 11 PERIOD II. DURING THE WAR, 1861-63.

The South Pushing at the North. — Emancipation Memorial. — Soldiers from Western Colleges. — Trip to the Army. — United States Sanitary Disbursements. — Surgery in the Army. — Emancipation Meeting. — Boston Tract Society in the Army. — A May Anniversary in New York. — The Morgan Raid. — First Sanitary Fair 23 PERIOD III. DURING THE WAR (Continued), 1864-65. The Virginia Union Flag. — Death of Owen Lovejoy. — Triennial Convention on the State of the Country. — Deaths of Colonels Mulligan and John A. Bross. — Tour Among the Bushwhackers. — Quantrell's Raid. — Lincoln's Second Election. — Plot to Release Rebel Prisoners at Chicago. — Illinois Responds to the Call for Five Hundred Thousand More. — Blatchford's Sanitary Report. — Revolutionary Incident. — Turner and Pratt go to Missouri. — Rebel Prisoners in Camp Douglas. — Richmond Fallen. — Lee's Surrender. — Lincoln Assassinated. — The National Pageant. — Chicago's National Fair. — " Little Tad." — Boston National Council. — American Missionary Association Accepts the Trust Proffered by the Boston Council CONTENTS.

ISI PERIOD IV. AT THE END OF THE WAR. — TOUR THROUGH THE SOUTH, 1865, Mammoth Cave. — Freedmen's Bureau and Bank. — Knoxville. — Chattanooga. — Battle-fields. — Mississippi Legislature. — Natchez. — New Orleans. — Sea Island Negroes. — Alabama Legislature. — Black Heroes. — Charleston Shelled and Burned. — Emancipation Celebration in Charleston. — Virginia Legislature. — Generals Thomas and Fisk 81 PERIOD V. AFTER THE WAR. — TO THE FIRE, 1866-71. Soldiers from Congregational Churches in the West. — "Blue Laws" of South Carolina. — Iowa Quarter-Centennial. — Chicago Christian Commission. — Roll of Boston Council : Analysis of it. — Illinois Responds to President Johnson. — Four Western War Books. — Abraham Lincoln, "Surveyor." — Grinnell. — Quarter-Millennial of Plymouth Rock .... 109 PERIOD VI.

FROM THE FIRE TO THE CENTENNIAL, 1871-76. The Chicago Fire. — National Council. — Tour in Connecticut. — The Ohio an Ancient Highway. — An Exploration of Colorado. — Among the Dakotas. — The Boston Fire. — Philo Carpenter. — Lake Superior. — Lone Star State. — The Woods of Northern Michigan I2q PERIOD VII. AN INTERVAL OF SILENCE. The Centennial. — The Gilded Dead-fall. — Transfer South PERIOD VIII. IN THE SOUTH, 1878-79. Atlanta. — Emancipation Day. — Talladega, Ala. — Chattanooga. — Mardi Gras and Washington's Birthday in New Orleans. The Acadians in Louisiana. — San Antonio. — Corpus Christi. — Alabama Anniversary Week. — Hampton, Va. — Fisk University • • • • CONTENTS. 9 PERIOD IX. IN THE SOUTH, 1880-82. Berea. — National Cemeteries at the South. — Prohibition in North Carolina. — East Tennessee. — Anniston. — Memphis. — The Congregational Methodists. — A July Vacation. — Atlanta Cotton Exposition. — Crossing Boston Mountain. — Confederate Memorial Day in New Orleans. — Presbyterian Missions in the South. — North and South: Some Things in Common. — Colored Work of Southern Churches 181 PERIOD X. IN THE SOUTH, 1883-84.

Miss Willard in the South. — Secretary Dunning. — The New Birmingham. — Canon Farrar. — Concord Council. — Mountain Work. — Wesleyans and German Reformed in North Carolina. — The Georgia Association in Charleston, S. C 217 PERIOD XI. IN THE SOUTH, 1885. Itinerary from Austin to Corpus Christi. — Black Men and Big Pastures in Texas. — Negroes in the New Orleans Exposition. — Grant's Canal Caving in 239 PERIOD XII BACK IN THE WEST, 1885-87. Transition. — Woman's Work for Woman at the South. — Methodist Episcopal Work Among the Freedmen. — Dakota Indian Conference. — In Colorado. — New West Commission. — Slater Fund. — Centennial of Territory of the North-west and of Louisiana Purchase. — Georgia's Prison and Chain Gang for Missionaries and Teachers. — An Old Experiment in Indian Land Several ty. — The Martyrdom of Elijah P. Lovejoy . . PERIOD I. BEFORE THE WAR, 1857-60. "Bleeding Kansas." — A State with a History. — The Missouri Plan in North Carolina and Kentucky.

Letter I

" BLEEDING KANSAS." Lawrence, Kansas, September 28, 1857. Here I am on the soil of "Bleeding Kansas." I came on to arrange the affairs of my deceased brother, Aaron D. Roy, who had settled in this country that he might have a hand in the free state cause. He was soon enlisted among the Kansas defenders, and was in several encounters under General Lane. He was in the company that was captured at Hickory Point and thrust into prison at Lecompton by the United States troops, who are now made to serve the "border ruffians." After some weeks in this vile place, he dug out and escaped to the woods, afterwards finding harborage in the home of S. Y. Lum, that earnest patriot, who was the first minister from the east to reach the territory. The exposure of that impris onment had so worn upon my brother's health that when attacked by fever he soon succumbed.

They tell me that his funeral, directed by the Oread Guards, was the largest the town of Lawrence has ever seen. Repairing to his grave, was it any wonder that I should kneel upon its fresh earth and renewedly devote myself to the cause of the slave ? I became an abolitionist when a little child, through a mob. William T. Allen, son of a slave-holding minister in Huntsville, Alabama, one of the Lane Seminary " rebels," out from Oberlin on a lecturing tour, had come to our town of Mount Gilead, Ohio, to be entertained at my father's house. There a mob broke up his lecturing, and as he was returning with my mother and her little boy to our house, egg-shells filled with tar were thrown upon them. Before his lectures I had never heard of the slave, and had never seen a black person, but there and then I date the birth of my abolitionism.

As it has been proposed to abrogate that old landmark of freedom, the Missouri Compromise, and let slavery into these new territories, I had to preach in my Plymouth pulpit : " Cursed be he that removeth his neighbor's landmark." When Chief Justice Taney, in the Dred Scott decision, claimed as the sentiment of the fathers of the republic that " black men had no rights which white men were bound to respect," I had to preach : " Cursed be he that per verteth the judgment of the stranger." And when this town of Lawrence was sacked and Charles Sumner was assassinated, I had to preach on " Kansas : Her Struggle and Her Defence." The text was Daniel 1 1 : 1 1, 40 : " And the king of the south shall be moved with choler, and shall come forth and fight with him, even with the king of the north : . . .

And at the time of the end shall the king of the south push at him : and the king of the north shall come against him like a whirlwind, with chariots, and with horse men, and with many ships ; and he shall enter into the countries, and shall overflow and pass over." The sermon predicted : " If the south still persists in rushing this nation on to civil war, ' at the time of the end ' of for bearance, the north will come 'like a whirlwind, with chariots, and with horsemen, and with many ships,' and will sweep from Mason and Dixon's line to Florida, from New York all around the coast to the Gulf." After preaching in Mr. Lum's church on national affairs, Governor Robinson said that I must go out with him on a political canvass among the settlements. The free state men who had heretofore repudiated the bogus territorial government had now decided to vote.

The election would come in a month. The treasurer of the state of Massachusetts, T. J. Marsh, Esq., who was also the treasurer of the Emigrant Aid Society, was present and was going along. It was important to lay before the peo ple the true issue. So I joined their company ; and for three weeks, with printed placards ahead, we went lecturing day by day, the statesmen talking politics and the churchman preaching abolitionism. We had no disturb ance along the way except when going to our appointment at Fort Scott, when we had to turn back upon learning that the border ruffians had possession of that strong hold. Striking off in another way, we got lost and were driving on far into the night. At last, following the bark ing of dogs, we came upon a settler's cabin. All the family were in bed, and nearly all were sick.

After a repast of slapjacks and pork, we were allowed to lie down on our own buffalo robes with our feet to the fire. In the morning, giving the woman a five-dollar gold piece, we started on to our next appointment. The friends there finding where we had been lodged, told us that the man was one of the biggest border ruffians in all the region, and that if he had not been sick, and had known what game he had within reach, he certainly would have routed out the neighbors and bagged it all. Getting back to Lawrence, the people must needs give us a reception. It was an open-air meeting, with Jim Lane for presiding officer. Coming to introduce the young Chicago pastor, he said : " He 's the fighting preacher ; them 's the sort we love." I have had ample opportunity to see the people and to learn their spirit.

They are united in the policy of voting at the October election. Keeping aloof from the sham government, they have made it appear the farcical thing it is. Its taxes could not be collected ; its laws could not be enforced. When their ballot boxes were stolen and carried over into Missouri, they declared that they would not vote again until those boxes were brought back and a fair election secured. Nobly have they stood these two years for self-government. They have suffered in their personal interests rather than resort to the bogus authorities for their rights. They have lived here without jus tices of the peace, without constables and sheriffs, without courts, without registers. That a heterogeneous popula tion scattered over a vast region have not only been a law unto themselves, but have successfully resisted a merciless tyranny, is a new proof of the inherent capacity of the people to govern themselves.

And now when the Presi dent and the governor have promised to restore the ballot box and to assure a fair election, when the test oath of obedience to the fugitive slave law is abolished, and when the tax-paying qualification for voting is removed, the peo ple resolve to try these fair offers and to assume the gov ernment which had been wrested from them, or make a new one in its stead. But this was the last thing that the administration had desired. Supposing that the free state men would not vote at all, it had thus thrown the doors wide open so that it might be said that they were factious and hypocritical in their clamor for freedom. The population of Kansas is estimated here at one hun dred thousand, and the immigration of this season at forty thousand, the most of which is free state, and will be cut off from voting by the six months' stipulation.

Every where they are confident of success, if not in the October election, yet in a final victory for freedom. It has not been in vain that the cause of Kansas was espoused in the east. It has been that general movement that has saved this territory for freedom. The Emigrant Aid Society, which invested thousands of dollars in mills, the first want of a new country, and in school-houses ; and also the National Kansas Committee, which sent seven hundred and fifty boxes of clothing, arms, and provisions to the value of several hundred thousand dollars ; the thundering of the press and the pulpit and the platform ; the general burst of sympathy that could not be cut off by the block ade of the national highways, — all these have conspired to save Kansas from the doom of slavery. It has been pleasant to hear the people express such views and tell how much good this aid has done.

It was but our duty, for their cause was ours. But you ask me about the sufferings of the Kansas people. Were the reports exaggerations, abolition lies ? I have taken great pains in this matter, and am con strained to say that scarcely the half has been told. In the distant settlements along the streams there were enough such incidents unpublished to fill a volume. Every cabin we entered would tell us some new tale of house PILGRLM'S LETTERS. robbing and burning, of stealing horses and cattle, of destruction of crops, of personal insult and injury, of con stant fear and alarm. Many had been driven out of the country after their all had been taken from them. In the wake of the invading guerrillas followed the pro-slavery settlers, appropriating their neighbors' chickens, cattle, hogs, and grain.

As I have stood upon the ashes of hun dreds of homes ; as I have stood by the graves of the martyrs, Phillips, Roberts, Dow, Hoyt, Barber, and Shom ber, the last of whom died saying, " I give myself a cheerful sacrifice on the altar of Kansas freedom " ; as I have heard the tales of outrage from men and women, my realization of these facts has made my indignation burn, and I have wondered how the freemen here could have the moral courage to stand as they did only on the defensive, and not to annihilate their savage invaders as they might have done. It is a strange feeling I have had in passing over these prairies to have the driver or my traveling com panion saying, " On this spot Roberts was murdered, and here is the pile of stones at his grave ; at this spot another was butchered ; here that woman at the home of Mr. Hyatt was seized, gagged, kicked, and left for dead ; here this house was burned, there that ; here the presses of the Herald, the Free State, and the Times were destroyed."

We stopped two nights with the family of Ottawa Jones, an Indian who, having received a college education, married a white woman who had come as a missionary to his tribe twenty years ago. He has a farm of two hundred and fifty acres under the best of cultivation. He had a house two stories high, twenty by fifty feet, well finished and furnished. He sympathized with the free state cause but took no part. A company of eighty cow ardly brutes came to his house one night and aroused him by breaking in the windows. Mr. Jones fled through a shower of bullets out of the back door into the cornfield, and his wife was robbed of eight hundred dollars in gold which she was bringing out of the house, which was burned to the ground. A sick man in the house was dragged down-stairs, had his throat cut, and his body thrown into the stream near by, though he still survives the horrid gashes.

The large stone chimney still stands upon the ruins, a monument of barbarism more savage, as the family said, than they had ever known in savage life. And the leader of this gang was Captain H., of Mis souri, who boasted of the hospitality he had shared in that house ! It was refreshing to enjoy the family devotions of Mr. Jones. He had just returned from Washington, where a treaty was made by which his tribe, numbering two hun dred and thirty, is received into citizenship, each one taking two hundred and forty acres of land. They will vote the free state ticket. I was present at the opening and adjourning of the Constitutional Convention at Lecompton. The printer was chosen because he had distinguished himself in the Kansas war, and so it was publicly avowed. But this is only one section of that gigantic crime to be incorporated into that constitution.

Taking the ayes and nays upon adjournment to Leavenworth or Lecompton, Randolph arose at the call of his name to explain his vote, and said : "Yesterday I was strongly in favor of adjourning to Leavenworth, for the whiskey was getting tolerably weak ; but since we began to talk about leaving, the whiskey is getting quite decent ; now I am in favor of staying here." That, you may take for the spirit of the convention.

Letter II

A STATE WITH A HISTORY. Saint Joseph, Mo., October i, 1857. Kansas will be a state with a history. Probably the history of no state in the Union, since the founding of Massachusetts upon Plymouth Rock, has had so much of stirring incident. Almost every other state has had in its early history a chapter upon its warfare with the savages of the forest. In Kansas the conflict has been with white savages, the Indians having given them no trouble. This new state has been the scene of our first civil war, a war in which the Federal army, stationed here to protect the frontier, has been used to sustain invasion and usurpation, to crush out liberty. The history of Kansas will bristle with reminiscences of heroism and of martyrdom. It has its Bunker Hill and its Lexington ; its Warrens and its Putnams.

The chapter upon the early legislation of Kan sas will hardly be believed by the future reader of history. It will seem to him like a burlesque upon all jurisprudence, upon all right and justice The early history of Kansas will be marked by the rapid transitions in its government. Within four years, two territorial and two state govern ments ; two conventions, convening and forming constitu tions, and a third provided for ; seven governors and acting governors succeeding upon the throne of this ruffian dynasty, all crucified upon this gubernatorial Gol gotha as fast as they come short of the bidding of the slavocracy ! But freedom and peace and prosperity will come. The American Home Missionary Society and the American Missionary Association have shown a just appre ciation of the importance of Christian ministers in this struggle for civil and religious freedom, by early sending, each of them, four or five home missionaries.

The influence of these men is acknowledged as very great in behalf of liberty as well as of religion ; and now as society settles down, they will have a hold upon the people which will be of great service in their specific work. A band of four young men is soon to come from Andover under the American Home Missionary Society. These are Storrs, Cordly, Parker, and Marsh.

Letter III. The Missouri Plan In North Carolina And Kentucky

Syracuse, N. Y., October 12, 1860. Here at the fourteenth annual meeting of the Ameri can Missionary Society in Rev. M. E. Strieby's Plymouth Church, we have a lot of refugees, our missionaries, driven out of North Carolina and Kentucky by mob violence on account of their liberty-loving sentiments. Here is Rev. Daniel Worth, of Quaker origin, a native of the old North State, where he. had served as a justice of the peace. The New York Herald says he " is a large, portly man, with a large head and intellectual and expressive counte nance and a large, commanding eye. He looks enough like Burton, the comedian, to be his twin-brother. He is fluent in speech, and the general style and manner of his speaking are calculated to win attention." He was arrested in Guilford County and thrown into the Greens boro' jail.

He was released upon three thousand dollars of bail. This sum the friends at the north have raised, and now he is a free man. The punishment, if he had been convicted, would have been pillory, whipping, and imprisonment. The sole charge on which he was impris oned, after the preliminary examination, was the circulating of " Helper's Impending Crisis," a book written by a southern man, and dwelling, not upon the moral aspects of slavery, but solely upon its economic bearings. Now we have here a pamphlet entitled "An Address to the People of North Carolina on the Evils of Slavery," printed in that state and in that very county in the year 1830, by the "Manumission Society of North Carolina," which a newspaper in that state declares to be ten times worse than Helper's book. It maintains these propositions : " First, Our slave system is radically evil.

Second, It is founded in injustice and cruelty. Third, It is a fruitful source of pride, idleness, and tyranny. Fourth, It in creases depravity in the human heart, and nourishes a train of dark and brutal passions and lusts, disgraceful to the human nature and destructive of the general welfare. Fifth, It is no less contrary to the Christian religion than to the dictates of justice and humanity." Mr. Worth and his associates had eight Wesleyan churches under their charge. Rev. Alfred Vestal was driven back north by violence. Another was seized by the throat in the pulpit and shamefully treated. They were all under commission of this body. The whole Kentucky force has been driven out. Rev erends George Candee and William Kendrick were seized in Laurel County by a committee ; their hair and beards were sheared off, and then their heads and faces were tarred.

Rev. J. C. Richardson was teaching a school in Whitley County ; being suspected of anti-slavery sentiments, upon search a copy of Wesley's tract on slavery was found in his possession. He was seized and bound with ropes at the house of Mr. Rockhold, where was the post-office, to which he had gone for his mail. There he was kept under an armed guard of three men. He was released by two Elliott brothers and their father, powerful men, who took away their man, covering his escape by their rifles, The whole of the Berea community were driven out upon the demand of a committee of sixty of the first citizens of Madison County, who in martial array rode around from house to house. Among those thus compelled to leave were the families of Reverends John G. Fee, J. A. Rogers, and James S. Davis. This, after the burning of their mill, and mobs and whippings not a few.

It was the shiver of the John Brown raid that had aroused the people to these atrocities. I spent the evening with John Brown not long ago at the house of John Jones, a colored man in Chicago, when he was on his way with a batch of fugitives from Missouri to Canada. He said he was showing the people at the south what could be done. He did the same at Harper's Ferry. On the evening of his execution we had a prayer-meeting in Plymouth Church, to pray for the emancipation of the slave. This has been a grand meeting of the Association. The refugees have added greatly to the enthusiasm. Dr. John Morgan preached the sermon. In the home field there were last year 112 missionary pastors, who served 145 churches. Of these churches there were in the states east of the Ohio, 15 ; in Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana, 35 ; in Illinois, 23 ; in Wisconsin and Minnesota, 14 ; in Iowa, 10 ; in Kansas, 4 ; in Missouri, 1 ; in Kentucky, 8 ; and in North Carolina, 2.

Among these may be mentioned : in Michigan, those of Charlotte, Augusta, Allegan, Eaton Rapids, Grand Haven ; in Illinois, DeKalb, Dundee, Pax ton, Sandwich, New England of Aurora, Morrison, and Waukegan ; in Wisconsin, Broadhead, Reedsburg, Burlington, and Sparta; in Iowa, Cedar Falls, Waterloo, Mason City ; in Minnesota, the Plymouth Church of Min neapolis. It was to labor among these churches that I resigned my pastorate last July. PERIOD II. DURING THE WAR, 1861-63. The South Pushing at the North. — Emancipation Memorial. — Soldiers from Western Colleges. — Trip to the Army. — United States Sanitary Disbursements. — Surgery in the Army. — Emancipation Meeting. — Boston Tract Society in the Army. — A New York May Anniversary. — The Morgan Raid. — First Sanitary Fair.

Letter IV. The King Of The South Pushing At The King Of

THE NORTH. Norwich, Conn., October 25, 1861. In 1856 was printed that sermon with a prophecy on the king of the south coming forth to fight against the king of the north. So soon has it come to pass. At Sumter did that king, moved with choler, push at our king to rouse him to come like a whirlwind, with chariots and with horsemen and with many ships, to enter into the countries and pass over. The American Missionary Association, holding its anniversary in this ancient city, by its identification with the cause of freedom now finds itself brought to the forefront of the battle. By General Butler's stroke of genius the colored people coming through our lines at Fortress Monroe are not to be sent back to their masters, but are to be treated as " contraband of war." There are now eighteen hundred of them, in great destitution.

Rev. L. C. Lockwood has been sent forward as a missionary, General Wool heartily approving. He is to preach at the fortress, the seminary, and at the Tyler House. A week-day school was opened on the seven teenth of September, under Mrs. Mary E. Peake, a colored person of English education ; and Sunday-schools were opened at the three places named, the last being the residence of ex-President Tyler. Not only Bibles, Testaments, and school-books, but clothing has been sent forward to meet the necessities of the "contrabands." This body, moved by the grandeur of the opportunity, declared its purpose " to follow the armies of the United States with faithful missionaries and teachers." How grand the opening when God, by the issues of war, shall set before us a "wide and effectual door" in all the south for teaching and propagating the gospel, and when four millions of ex-slaves shall be thrown upon our hands for nourishment into Christian citizenship !

The Association, in this changed order of things, while expressing thanks to God for the work accomplished in the north-west by its missionaries and by its organic testimony against slavery, has determined now the more to concentrate its effort along the fifteen hundred miles of border-ground and over in the slave states as rapidly as possible. This, as is contemplated, will leave the mission aries and the district secretary of the north-west to fall over into their natural relation to the American Home Missionary Society.

Letter V. The Emancipation Memorial

Chicago, September 20, 1862. The idea of such a memorial was born in the brain of Dr. William W. Patton. I had the honor of circulating the call for the meeting that adopted the memorial. We agreed that the call should be limited to those who were ready to ask for emancipation, thus shutting off discussion on that question. In passing about the streets for signa tures, I was deeply impressed with the fact that so many of our business men of first position were Christian men. The call was also signed by the Congregational, Baptist, and Methodist ministers. After the meeting had been held and the memorial adopted, the following circular was issued, calling upon the people in other places to hold similar meetings : — Chicago, September 8, 1862. Dear Sir, — At the call of more than one hundred of the prominent citizens of this city, a meeting of all denominations was held in Bryan Hall, Thursday evening, September 4, Hon. L. B. Otis in the chair, to take measures to memorialize the President to issue a proclamation of national emancipation.