Nothing could point with more
unerring aim than these sombre monuments do, to the distance behind
the age that marks the thoughts and actions of the Charlestonians.
They are the poor-house, hospital, and jail; but as the latter only
pertains to our present subject, we prefer to speak of it alone, and
leave the others for another occasion. The workhouse may be said to
form an exception-that being a new building, recently erected upon a
European plan. It is very spacious, with an extravagant exterior,
surmounted by lofty semi-Gothic watch-towers, similar to the old
castles upon the Rhine. So great was the opposition to building this
magnificent temple of a workhouse, and so inconsistent, beyond the
progress of the age, was it viewed by the "manifest ancestry," that
it caused the mayor his defeat at the following hustings. "Young
Charleston" was rebuked for its daring progress, and the building is
marked by the singular cognomen of "Hutchinson's Folly." What is
somewhat singular, this magnificent building is exclusively for
negroes. One fact will show how progressive has been the science of
law to govern the negro, while those to which the white man is
subjected are such as good old England conferred upon them some
centuries ago. For felonious and burglarious offences, a white man
is confined in the common jail; then dragged to the market-place,
stripped, and whipped, that the negroes may laugh "and go see buckra
catch it;" while a negro is sent to the workhouse, confined in his
cell for a length of time, and then whipped according to modern
science,--but nobody sees it except by special permission.
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