The Daily Dispatch

A Picture For History.—A letter from Washington, North Carolina, gives an account of the desolation of that town and the following description of a faithful old negro:

"One of the first things that strikes the visitor upon entering Washington is the almost entire absence of negroes. I do not think there are over six in the entire corporation, very nearly all of whom are free persons. One of these—and a most remarkable man every way—is Abram Allen, concerning whom it is almost impossible to speak otherwise than in terms of extravagant eulogy. Abram was an old citizen, and a highly respected one. He was reared with Badger and the Stanlys; possessed the highest intellectual qualities of any colored man I ever saw; and was a Southern patriot to the backbone. When the Yankees, under the application of the rule to "run the churches" as well as the Government, undertook to unite the colored church in Washington to the Connecticut Conference, they wanted to ordain Abram and make him pastor. But the heroic colored man told them it was against the laws of his State for a colored man to preach, and he intended to keep the laws. They could not bribe or intimidate him. He stood to his colors. They carried away his wife and family, and left him solitary by his own hearth. But he remained true to the South. And when I visited Washington the first time, I found the brave old Christian colored man, like Old Mortality, busy among the graves of the old citizens, rubbing up and shutting in the desolated tombs of his departed friends.—Let Abram live in story."