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"Something that Requires Explanation." New York Journal of Commerce
15 Nov., 1839: 2.
SOMETHING THAT REQUIRES EXPLANATION.--
It is asserted by those who pretend to know, that Mr. Norris Wilcox, U.S. Marshal
at New Haven, will neither provide winter clothing for the Africans of the Amistad
at the expense of the government, nor permit it to be provided by others,
free of expense to the government. Not wishing to prejudice the case, we some days
since addressed a respectful note to Mr. Wilcox, with a view to ascertain whether
the fact was as stated, and if so, the reasons. He however has not done us the honor
to reply, and so we are left as much in the dark as before. We shall therefore state
the case as we understand it.”
Some thirty or forty Africans have been remanded into the custody of Marshal Wilcox
not as criminals, but as property, with a direction from the District Judge
to take good care of them and see that they are properly fed and clothed. The health
of these persons, in the estimation of the physician, requires that they should be
taken from the prison frequently, in pleasant weather, and allowed to exercise in
the open air. This was allowed as long as the warm weather continued, but as the
season advanced, the persons in custody are kept within doors, where they are sickening
and dying weekly, and the reason given is, the Marshal does not think it proper to
provide them with sufficient woolen garments. This is not all. When a committee of
citizens, to whom funds have been entrusted by a benevolent community, offer to supply
the clothes themselves, the Marshal refuses it, alleging that winter clothes are
not wanted, as the rooms in the jail are kept so heated by stoves that the Africans
do not want any more clothes, and even prefer to be without any! How long, we ask,
can they suffer in this way? Will it be endured that people for whom a wide spread
sympathy is felt, not only in this country but in Europe, are to be treated thus
in a nation boasting of its philanthropy and free institutions? We hope that the
good people of New Haven, where Providence has cast the lot of these Africans for
the present, will remonstrate against the inhumanity that appears to exist on the
part of the Marshal, backed, it may be, by those in superior stations. Five have
already died; about as many more, we understand, are sick; and unless a new course
is pursued, we expect to hear of many more deaths. In whose skirts will their blood
be found? We do not say that the deaths have been occasioned by want of clothes,
but we greatly feat that impure air, and a description of clothing that has kept
the Africans within doors, have aggravated their disease.
