Washington jail,
loaded with enormous fines, which, from our total inability to pay them,
would keep us there for life, unless the President could be induced to
pardon us; and it was even questioned, as I shall show presently,
whether he had any such power.

The jail of the District of Columbia is under the charge of the Marshal
of the District. That office, when I was first committed to prison, was
filled by a Mr. Hunter; but he was sick at the time, and died soon
after, when Robert Wallace was appointed. This Wallace was a Virginian,
from the neighbor hood of Alexandria, son of a Doctor Wallace from whom
he had inherited a large property, including many slaves. He had removed
to Tennessee, and had set up cotton-planting there; but, failing in that
business, had returned back with the small remnants of his property, and
Polk provided for him by making him marshal. It was not long before I
found that he had a great spite against me. It was in vain that I
solicited from him the use of the passage. The light which came into my
cell was very faint, and I could only read by sitting on the floor with
my back against the grating of the cell door. But, so far from aiding me
to read,--and it was the only method I had of passing my time,--Wallace
made repeated and vexatious attempts to keep me from receiving
newspapers. I should very soon have died on the prison allowance. The
marshal is allowed by the United States thirty-three cents per day for
feeding the prisoners. For this money they receive two meals; breakfast,
consisting of one herring, corn-bread and a dish of molasses and water,
very slightly flavored with coffee; and for dinner, corn-bread again,
with half a pound of the meanest sort of salted beef, and a soup made of
corn-meal stirred into the pot-liquor. This is the bill of fare day
after day, all the year round; and, as at the utmost such food cannot
cost more than eight or nine cents a day for each prisoner, and as the
average number is fifty, the marshal must make a handsome profit. The
diet has been fixed, I suppose, after the model of the slave allowances.
But Congress, after providing the means of feeding the prisoners in a
decent manner, ought not to allow them to be starved for the benefit of
the marshal. Such was the diet to which I was confined in the first days
of my imprisonment. But I soon contrived to make a friend of Jake, the
old black cook of the prison, who, I could see as he came in to pour out
m