Free negroes in the North.
A well-dressed white man who appears to be Henry Ward Beecher is the focal point of this print. Despite his finery, Beecher does not offer monetary help to an emaciated African American beggar clothed only in rags: he merely drops a religious "tract" to him with a gloved hand. On the other side of a fence, another white man (presumably a surgeon) looks through his purse to pay two African American grave robbers for a corpse. All of this is taking place on a street corner called "Lovely Lane," outside of an establishment with a sign above the door that reads, "Praise the Lord Bare Bones Colored Mens Home." Inside the building, men and women are dancing and carousing while other women lean out of the upstairs windows suggestively. A fight spills out of a second floor doorway.; Reprinted in the 1880s from original plates created by Volck in the 1860s. Set titled Confederate War Etchings and published by Porter & Coates. This is plate 26.; Adalbert Johann Volck originally published this print under the pseudonym V. Blada.
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