nine o'clock at night
Barely forty thousand inhabitants , one third of whom were negro slaves , it could boast none of the displays or excitements of a metropolis . Its vices were few , its life orderly and its society the finest type of the genuine American our country had developed . Rowdyism was unknown . The police department consisted of a dozen `` watchmen '' whose chief duty was to round up a few straggling negroes who might be found on the streets after nine o'clock at night and put them in `` the Cage '' until morning . `` The Cage '' was a ramshackled wooden building too absurd to be honored by the name of prison . The quiet , shady streets were suddenly transformed into the throbbing , tumultuous avenues of a crowded Capital -- already numbering more than one hundred thousand inhabitants . Its pulse beat with a new and fevered life .