A snow-storm worthy of Moscow or Riga flew through New York
all day, depositing more food for the mud. I paid a visit to Mr. Horace
Greeley, and had a long conversation with him. He expressed great pleasure at
the intelligence that I was going to visit the Southern States. “Be sure you
examine the slave-pens. They will be afraid to refuse you, and you can
tell the truth.” As the capital and the South form the chief attractions at
present, I am preparing to escape from “the divine calm” and snows of New York.
I was recommended to visit many places before I left New York, principally
hospitals and prisons. Sing-Sing, the state penitentiary, is “claimed,” as the
Americans say, to be the first “institution” of its kind in the world. Time presses,
however, and Sing-Sing is a long way off. I am told a system of torture
prevails there for hardened or obdurate offenders — torture by dropping cold
water on them, torture by thumb-screws, and the like — rather opposed to the
views of prison philanthropists in modern days.
SOURCE: William Howard Russell, My Diary North and
South, p. 26
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