be found
among the nations of the earth.

Such is the ordinary condition of suffering within this establishment,
that men, and even women, are forced to all kinds of extremes to
sustain life; and, to speak what experience has taught me, crime is more
increased than reduced by this wretched system. There seems to be little
distinction among the prisoners, and no means to observe it, except in
what is called Mount Rascal on the third story. Pilfering is so common,
that you cannot leave your room without locking your door. The jailer
is a good, kind-hearted old man, very often giving from his own table to
relieve the wants of debtors, many of whom repay him with ingratitude. I
have suffered many privations from shipwreck and cold, but never until
I came to South Carolina was I compelled to endure imprisonment and
subsist several days upon bread and water.

Talk about chivalry and hospitality! How many men could join with me and
ask, "Where is it?" But why should I demur, when I see those abroad who
have been driven from this State to seek bread; when I hear the many
voices without tell of struggling to live, for want of system in
mechanical employment, and when I look upon several within these sombre
walls who are even worse than me. Here is a physician, with a wife
and large family, committed for a debt which he was unable to pay.
His father's name stands among the foremost of the State--a General of
distinction, who offered his life for her in time of war, and whose name
honors her triumphs, and has since graced the councils of state.

General Hammond, whose name occupies such a conspicuous place in the
military history of South Carolina. The father's enthusiasm for his
country's cause led him to sacrifice his all, and by it he entailed
misfortune upon his descendants. When I consider the case of Shannon,
whose eleven years and seven months' imprisonment for debt, as it
was called, but which eventually proved to be a question turning upon
technicalities of law, gave him, body and soul, to the vindictiveness of
a persecutor, whose unrelenting malignity was kept up during that long
space of time. It was merely a breach of limitation between merchants,
the rights of which should be governed by commercial custom. Shannon
had, amassed about twenty thousand dollars by hard industry; his health
was waning, and he resolved to retire with it to his native county.
The gem proved too glaring for the lynx eye of a "true Carolinia