The old jail.

There are three institutions in Charleston-either of which would be a stain upon the name of civilization-standing as emblems of the time-established notions of a people, and their cherished love for the ancestral relics of a gone-by age.  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.  Thus the negro has the advantage of science and privacy.

The jail is a sombre-looking building, with every mark of antiquity standing boldly outlined upon its exterior.  It is surrounded by a high brick wall, and its windows are grated with double rows of bars, sufficiently strong for a modern penitentiary.  Altogether, its dark, gloomy appearance strikes those who approach it, with the thought and association of some ancient cruelty.  You enter through an iron-barred door, and on both sides of a narrow portal leading to the right are four small cells and a filthy-looking kitchen, resembling an old-fashioned smoke-house.  These cells are the debtors’; and as we were passing out, after visiting a friend, a lame “molatto-fellow” with scarcely rags to cover his nakedness, and filthy beyond description, stood at what was called the kitchen door.  “That poor dejected object,” said our friend, “is the cook.  He is in for misdemeanor-one of the peculiar shades of it, for which a nigger is honored with the jail.”  “It seems, then, that cooking is a punishment in Charleston, and the negro is undergoing the penalty,” said we.  “Yes!” said our friend; “but the poor fellow has a sovereign consolation, which few niggers in Charleston can boast of-and none of the prisoners here have-he can get enough to eat.”