A School of Unadulterated Negroes—An Ancient Virginia Town under the
Dispensation of Sutlers.
Our steamer for the voyage was to be the revenue cutter “Wayanda,” a
trim, beautifully-modeled, ocean-going propeller, carrying six guns, and
manned with a capital crew. While Captain Merryman was making his final
preparation for a cruise, much longer than he had expected when the
telegraph hurried his vessel around from New York, we retained the
little “Northerner” for a trip up to Norfolk—only delaying long enough
at the Fortress to drive out and see a great negro school, established
by General Butler.
The wharves were crowded by the usual curious throng of idle spectators,
laborers taking care of supplies, soldiers on duty, and a very sparse
sprinkling of ladies. Rebel soldiers by scores were mixed in the groups,
or could be seen trudging along the sidewalks toward the Commissary’s.
Everywhere were negroes—on the sidewalks—driving the wagons—in the huts
that lined the road. All the slaves of the adjoining counties seem to
have established themselves at the Fortress. As we crossed the long,
narrow isthmus, contracting at last to an attenuated causeway, which
separates the Fortress from the main land, and came out into the ancient
village of Hampton, the negro huts thickened into swarms, and fairly
covered the sites of the old aristocratic residences which the Rebels
fired early in the war when compelled to evacuate the place. Bricks, two
centuries old, imported by the early colonists from Great Britain, for
the mansions of the first families, were built up into little outside
chimneys for these cabins of the Freedmen; and here and there one
noticed an antique Elizabethan chair, of like age and origin, converted
to the uses of a portly negress.
To our right, down on the water’s edge, rose a high, narrow
residence—the former home of John Tyler; near it was another, somewhat
less pretentious, as well as less uncouth, which had formerly been
occupied by S. R. Mallory. Both find loyal and benevolent uses now at
the hands of the Government. Near them was a long colonnade, with
spacious piazzas, fronting a many-windowed brick hospital, which one of
our party was observed closely scrutinizing. “Upon my word,” he
exclaimed, after a moment’s reflection, “that is the old Chesapeake
Female College, of which I have been, from the foundation, one of the
Trustees.” Pale-faced men in blue occupied the chambers of the
boarding-school misses; and sentries, pacing to and fro, kept a stricter
guard than strictest duenna of boarding-school ever achieved.
To our left extended a stretch of marshy meadows and half-cultivated
fields. In their midst was one little field cultivated above all the
rest. White boards, with a trifle of modest lettering on each, dotted
its surface, and the grass grew greenest over long, carefully-smoothed
hillocks. A file of slow-paced soldiers, with arms reversed, was
entering the inclosure; behind them followed an army wagon, with five
rude pine boxes piled upon it; beyond, quietly, and, as one loved to
think, even sadly, regarding the scene, was a group of paroled Rebel
soldiers; while, as we turned, in passing, to catch a last glimpse of
the mourners in blue by the open graves, there was seen away behind us,
rippling in the breeze above the fort, the old flag for which these dead
had died, and against which these Rebels had fought.
* * * * *
We found the school-house (a barn-like frame structure), a little
removed from the cluster of negro huts, and took the school fairly by
surprise. Passing up a long hall, wide enough for double rows of desks,
in the center, with seats for about ten or twelve boys in each, and an
aisle on either side, with benches for the class recitations against the
walls, we came to an elevated platform, from which led off, in opposite
directions, two other precisely similar halls. The fourth, completing
the cross, was designed for girls, and was yet unfinished. Down these
three long halls were ranged row after row of cleanly-clad negro boys,
from the ages of six and seven up to sixteen or seventeen.
All seemed attentive; and though the teachers complained that the sudden
entrance of visitors always led to more confusion than usual, there was
certainly no more than one would expect from any school of equal extent
anywhere, or under any management. The rolls contained the names of
three hundred and seventy-four pupils, of whom about two hundred were
present. The Superintendent, who seemed an earnest, simple-minded man,
enthusiastically convinced that he had a “mission” here, spoke of this
as about the average attendance. The parents, he said, were themselves
so uncertain, and so little accustomed, as yet, to habits of regularity,
that they could not well bring up this average to a better point. It
seemed to me surely not so far behind our ordinary public schools at the
North as to suggest any unfavorable contrasts.
These children had all been slaves, and nearly all had accompanied their
parents on their escape from the plantations of the Peninsula, and of
the upper counties of North Carolina, to the Fortress. The parents had
generally been field hands, and one noticed among the children very few
faces not of pure African descent. Such masses of little woolly heads,
such rows of shining ivories, and flat noses and blubber lips, I had
never seen collected before, unless in a state of filth utterly
unbearable. The teachers were all convalescent soldiers from the
hospitals, moving noiselessly about among the benches in their hospital
slippers and cheap calico wrappers—as they themselves had often seen
moving about among their hospital cots the angels of mercy from the
North. Who shall say they were not doing as beneficent a work, or that
the little negroes might not well follow them with as longing and
affectionate a gaze?
Several classes were called up to exhibit their proficiency. Doubtless
the teachers selected their best scholars for the test—I think even
Northern schools sometimes do that—but there can be little opportunity
for deception in the reading of an unlearned lesson in a book, or in
answers to questions in mental arithmetic, propounded by the visitors
themselves. It was strange to see boys of fourteen or fifteen reading in
the First Reader; but stranger to observe how intelligently scholars in
the First Reader went about their work, and with what comparative
rapidity they learned. I passed among the forms and conversed with a
good many of the soldier-teachers. They all united in saying that on an
average the raw negro boys admitted to the school would learn their
letters and be able to read well in the First Reader in three months;
while some of them, who were originally bright, and who were kept in
regular attendance, made considerably more rapid progress.
An advanced class, composed of the little negro “monitors” who had been
longest in the school, was summoned to the platform to read a lesson in
the Fourth Reader. One or two of them read very badly; one or two quite
well, and with an evident understanding of what was said. The best
reader in the class was the smallest boy, an ebony-faced urchin, whose
head looked as a six-pound round shot, coated with curled hair from a
mattress, might. The Superintendent exhibited his manner of calling out
the classes through the whole school to recite, the military style in
which the boys were required to march to their places at the word of
command, and the general adherence to military forms, even in such
minutiæ as distributing slates, removing the stools for the monitors,
returning books to their places, and the like.
Then came a little address from the Dominie of our party, a former South
Carolina lawyer and heavy slaveholder; and we finally took our leave,
the little urchins eagerly handing up their slates, as we passed, to
have us see their penmanship; and laboriously tracing out, in school-boy
characters, their oddly-sounding names, to show us how readily they
could write.
This school is kept up at little or no expense to the Government, save
the original cost of erecting the rough board structure in which it is
held. The parents of the children have been, to a considerable extent,
employed by the Government as laborers in the Quartermaster’s
Department; and, meantime, the convalescents from the hospitals have
prepared the sons, in some measure, for the new order of things. Still
there is more dependence on charity than could be desired, especially
among the parents. Negroes need to be taught—just as slaves of any race
or color would need to be taught—that liberty means, not idleness, but
merely work for themselves instead of work for others; and that, in any
event, it means always work. To teach them this, do not gather them in
colonies at military posts, and feed them on Government rations; but
throw them in the water and have them learn to swim by finding the
necessity of swimming. For the present, these collections of negroes are
an inevitable result of the war; and that would be a barbarous
Government indeed which would not help in time of distress the men whose
friendship to it has brought them into distress; but it must be the
first care of the authorities to diminish the charity, and leave the
negroes, just as it would leave the white men—to take care of
themselves.
* * * * *
On arriving at Norfolk, we were met, at the shabby-looking old wharf, by
General Gordon, commanding the post. Carriages were in waiting, and we
were rapidly whirled past the tumble-down warehouses, through streets of
stores from which every former proprietor had gone, by the old English
brick church, whence the former pastor had departed, past elegant
residences of prominent rebels, in whose parlors sat the wives of Yankee
officers, and through whose superb gardens we were invited to wander,
and pluck at will great bending bunches of flowers that, at Washington,
were still scarce in the hot-houses.
From the gardens we turned toward the country to see the old line of
fortifications (planned, curiously enough, by a nephew of one of our
party), by which the Virginians, in the first months of the war, had
been confident they could hold Norfolk forever against the Yankee scum.
Negro soldiers manned the lines the rebel engineer had traced; but wild
flowers covered the embankments, and we plucked azalias of exquisite
fragrance from the crumbling embrasures. It was not less strange that
another member of our party, then foremost in the Cabinet, had
undertaken the search hereabouts for a landing for our troops, after the
officers had given it up; and had actually chosen the point where they
were safely debarked, and whence they had turned these long lines, and
reduced Norfolk—“Merrimac” and all—without a blow.
The wild flowers filled the moist evening air with their perfume as we
drove back through the negro quarter. Every hut exhibited the tender
tokens of mourning for the good, dead President, which were missing on
many aristocratic residences. There were no evidences of suffering or
destitution among these people; and it was not from their windows that
the lowering glances were turned upon the General, and the well-known
features of the anti-slavery leader by his side.
Norfolk ought to do, and will do a fine business—whenever it has any
country to do business for. It must always be the great shipping point
for the Virginia and North Carolina coast; the heaviest vessels can lie
by its wharves, and between it and Hampton Roads is room for the navies
of the world. But, thus far, there is scarcely any business, save what
the army has brought, and what the impoverished inhabitants who remain
are themselves able to support. Sutlers have sat in the high places
until they have amassed fortunes; but the merchants whose deserted store
rooms they are occupying are paroled and ruined Rebel officers. No trade
comes or can come from the interior. The people have no produce to
spare, and no money with which to buy. And the very number of
able-bodied men in the country has been sadly reduced.[1]
Everything is controlled by the military authority; and while there may
be a genuine Union sentiment that warranted the attempted elections of
Congressmen, one may still be permitted a quiet suspicion of the
independent and disinterested patriotism of the voters. Just as we were
pushing off, Mr. Chandler, a nervous, restless, black-haired Virginian,
came hobbling out from his carriage. He was a claimant for a seat in the
last House, which was refused; and was the leader of the Virginia
delegation to the Baltimore Convention, whose admission to that body his
fluent and impassioned rhetoric secured. Naturally he is a warm
supporter of the Pierpoint State Government, believes that “the loyal
men of the State constitute the State,” and doesn’t see why the fact
that they are few in numbers should prevent their exercising all the
powers of the State. Just now he and the few really loyal men, like him,
are very bitter against the Rebels, whom they wish to have excluded from
any participation in the ready-made State Government, which they hope
soon to have transferred from Alexandria to Richmond, and extended over
the State. But they frankly admit themselves to be in a very small
minority; and it remains to be seen how long a minority, however loyal,
can govern, in a republican country.
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Footnote 1:
Calculations, seemingly accurate, have placed the number of dead and
disabled Virginia soldiers at 105,000, or nearly one-tenth of the
entire free population of the State.