“Be sure you examine the slave-pens. They will be afraid to refuse you, and you can tell the truth.”—William Howard Russell Diary

March 22d.–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 thumbscrews, and the like–rather opposed to the views of prison philanthropists in modern days.