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Families of Soldiers Suffering in New York — Negroes Cared For.
About ten o'clock this morning, about two hundred women, many of them with infants in their arms, assembled on the steps of the City Hall, and were proceeding in a body to the Mayor's office, when they were stopped by the police. They then attempted to enter by the back doors of the Hall, but here also they were opposed by the police.
Several of the women carried sticks, which they blandished in the faces of the Metropolitans, and declared that sooner or later they would force an entrance into the Mayor's office, and compel his Honor to listen to, if he did not relieve, their wants. — They also expressed their intention of paying a visit to both Boards of the Common Council to-morrow night. While they were assembled on the steps of the Hall, some mischievous individual called out, "Here comes Mayor Opdyke," and at the same time a tall, thin man attempted to pass through the crowd of women. This person they mistook for the Mayor, and they at once surrounded him and flourished their sticks in alarming proximity to his nose. He, however, pushed through the crowd and made a hasty retreat. Finally, two of the most noisy of the party were arrested and taken to the Sixth Ward station-house. This appeared to have a quieting effect upon the remainder, who gradually dispersed.
The women were nearly all Germans, and came mostly from the 1st, 11th and 17th Wards. A few of respectable demeanor and neat appearance, called on some of the Councilmen during the morning and represented that, unless they obtained aid from the city, they should soon suffer, as their husbands had not received their pay in the army for periods of from two to five months.
Remarking upon the above, the Rochester Union says:
While these white women, whose husbands are pouring out their hearts' blood in the cause of their country, are crying for aid, and their little ones at home are famishing with hunger, thousands upon thousands of blacks are receiving the most constant and careful attention of the government and its officers at Washington, at Fortress Monroe, at Newbern, at Port Royal — everywhere. In the capital of the country negroes — men, women and children — are housed and fed in idleness, and cared for even better than our soldiers in the field, and furnished with the army ration, which costs thirty-one cents per day. At Port Royal they are similarly supported, and in addition furnished at government expense with a score or more of male and female teachers, missionaries, or whatever they may be called, to dance attendance upon their sable highnesses. But in the great metropolis thousands of soldiers' wives seek in vain for the slightest recognition or aid, and are driven by the circumstances of their situation to the performance of such scenes as the Commercial Advertiser and Express describe above! — Great country, this, and much virtue in a black skin; blessed is the negro, for he shall be comforted!