Lynchburg—The Interior of Virginia.
The direct road from Richmond to Lynchburg was not yet in running order
again. “One of our fool Generals burnt a big bridge near Lynchburg,”
explained a citizen, “when there wasn’t the slightest use for it, and
the bridge has not been rebuilt. Some of our Generals thought if they
couldn’t have everything their own way, they must ruin everything. They
hadn’t sense enough to see that it was their own friends they were
ruining.” The trains from Richmond to Gordonsville, however, and thence
to Lynchburg were running with unexpected regularity. But, in at least
one respect, Richmond was not to be moved from the good old ways. The
train started from the middle of a street; and, in the absence of a
depot, the passengers rendezvoused at the shops on the corner till they
saw the cars coming along.
* * * * *
Of course, the desolation of Virginia, even in the regions most exposed
to the ravages of the war had been overrated. I do not think the white
people were starving, or likely to starve, anywhere from Alexandria to
Gordonsville, Richmond, Fredericksburg, or Lynchburg; and within these
points Virginia had suffered more than in all the rest of the State. A
little corn had been grown in the summer, and that little had been
husbanded in a style at which a Western farmer would stare in amazement.
Every blade had been stripped from the stalks, every top had been cut,
and in the center of every little inclosure a stack of blades, thatched
with tops, supplemented the lack of hay and other forage for the cattle,
while the abundant ears furnished the great staple of diet for the
classes most likely to suffer. A few little patches of cotton whitened
inclosures near the houses, at rare intervals; but the yield was light,
and the cultivation had evidently been bad. Between Richmond and
Gordonsville scarcely a dozen wheat-fields were seen. Great surface
drains had been furrowed out all over the fields, as if the owners were
afraid they had too much wheat in, and wanted a considerable portion of
it washed away. Beyond Gordonsville, they became plentier, and the crops
had been put in in better style.
But in the main, between Richmond and Gordonsville, as between
Fredericksburg and Richmond, abandoned fields alternated with pine
forests, destroyed depots, and ruined dwellings. Imaginative writers
have described the droves of wild beasts which they represent as having
taken possession of these desolated regions; but the sportsman is likely
to find nothing more formidable than abundant coveys of quails. Our
train brought up from Richmond, and left at different points along the
road, numbers of the decayed Virginia gentry, equipped with dogs and
fowling pieces, and eager for this result of the war, if not for others
of more consequence.
Hanover Junction presented little but standing chimneys and the debris
of destroyed buildings. Along the road a pile of smoky brick and mortar
seemed a regularly recognized sign of what had once been a depot, and
the train was sure to stop. Not a platform or water-tank had been left,
and the rude contrivances hastily thrown up to get the road in running
order were, in many cases, for miles and miles the only improvements
visible. Young pines covered the old wheat-fields and corn-fields.
Traces of breast-works wound off through the country in all directions.
A coterie of young officers were constantly exclaiming, “Here we whipped
the rebs.” “There’s a place where the rebs got after us mighty sharp.”
Gray-coated, heavy-bearded, ragged-looking fellows listened in scowling
silence, or occasionally beguiled the way by reminding each other how
“Here the Yanks caught hell.”
At one or two points, where once had been considerable towns, the train
was besieged by an outgrowth of the peculiar institution. A score or two
of negro women, bearing trays on which were rudely arrayed what they
called “snacks,” surrounded us, loudly announcing the merits of their
various preparations. “Sad” biscuit and fried chicken; “sad” biscuit and
fried bacon; “sad” pie-crust, covering wild grapes, constituted the main
attractions; and, as a grey-coated passenger sullenly remarked, “played
the devil” with the hen-roosts of the surrounding country. Doubtless
this petty traffic kept the wolf from many a negro’s door through the
winter.
The railroads had been supplied with rolling stock bought mainly from
the supplies of our United States military railroads, or from Northern
shops. One or two cars, however, of the best among all the trains we
met, bore the marks of a Richmond firm. The tracks were comparatively
solid; but the rails were in the worst possible condition. Looking from
the rear platform, one saw every few yards a rail bent outward till he
wondered why it did not throw us off; while half of them were crushed at
the ends or worn off the face till scarcely half an inch remained for
the wheel to touch. The roads hardly pretended to make over twelve miles
per hour, and even that was in many places a very unsafe rate of speed.
The conductors were, of course, ex-Rebels, so were the engineers and
brakemen, and any complaint as to the running of trains was very
effectually silenced by a suggestion of the improvement “since six
months ago.” Gangs of hands are at work on the roads, at distances of
very few miles. Negroes and Rebel soldiers worked harmoniously side by
side. “I tell you, sir,” said a Yankee to a Virginian who didn’t approve
of this social equality, “a white man has got just the same right a
nigger has—to starve if he won’t work!”
* * * * *
Perched among its hills, and defended by nature’s fortifications,
Lynchburg had seen little of the immediate horrors of war. Her sons had
gone down to death, but her fields had not been ravaged, her barns had
not been burned, her children had not been often startled by the cry of
the Yankees at the gates. Men had consequently escaped, to some degree,
the impoverishing effects of the rebellion. Business seemed quite brisk;
the farmers of the surrounding country were prosperous, and lands were
not largely offered for sale.
As our train approached the city, I fell into conversation with a
citizen. He rather guessed this little town was in no fix for starving.
Niggers might suffer, and doubtless would, if they grew too saucy
(pronounced “sassy;”) but the people were all right. “Half a million of
specie in that little town, sah, when the wah ended. What do you think
of that for a little rookery among the mountains, sah?”
I suggested that very few tobacco fields were to be seen along the road.
“Plenty of tobacco stored, sah. Didn’t raise much last year, because
there wa’nt many men at home to manage, but there’s plenty more tobacco
hid away in this country than people ever dreamed of. Gold will bring it
out, sah.”
“Greenbacks,” it seemed, did not yet have the same magnetic power. Men
who had been declaring for four years that the United States Government
was overthrown, could not at once convince themselves that its money was
good. Whoever wanted to trade with the Virginians in the rural
districts, must prepare himself with gold.
The town was swarming with representatives of Northern capitalists,
looking for investments. Baltimoreans were also found frequently among
them. The most went further South, over the Virginia and Tennessee road;
but a few had ideas about the mineral resources of these mountains. Many
seemed to think it necessary to adopt the coddling policy in their talk
with the Virginians. “My policy for settling up these questions,” said a
Yankee, “would be to banish all the leaders, and tell the rest that they
had been soundly whipped, and, now, the best thing they could do would
be to go to work and repair their ruined fortunes.”
“But how could you punish those equally deserving of punishment at the
North, who were just as guilty in bringing on the war?” The questioner
was, not a pardoned Rebel, but a speculative Northerner.
* * * * *
“The Lynchburg Post-office is in a church. The Government, it seems, was
not willing to pay the rent demanded for the building formerly used for
postal purposes, and the rent on churches was not exorbitant. A route
agent, whiling away his time while his mail was made up, told how he had
taken the oath, and so become an employee of the Government again.
“I was an old route agent, you see, and I wanted to go back to a nice
berth. But I had been a magistrate under the Confederacy, and I was
required to swear that I had never been. I went to see President
Johnson. There was an awful crowd in the lobby, but I cottoned to
Captain Slade, and played Yankee a little. Leaving out part of my name,
I wrote on a card simply ‘Frederick Bruce,’ and made Slade promise to
lay it before the President without a word. In a moment I was called in;
but, as I approached the President, I thought I could see, by the
twinkle of his eye, that I wasn’t the Frederick Bruce he had
expected![48] Well, I told him that I took a magistrate’s office under
the Confederate Government, to avoid having to go into the army. He said
the word ‘voluntary’ occurred at the beginning of the oath, and its
force ran through the whole of it, and applied to every clause. ‘Now,
sir,’ said the President, ‘it’s with your own conscience to say whether
you took that office voluntarily or not.’ Of course, I didn’t, for I was
compelled to do it in order to keep out of the army, and so I told the
President I would take the oath at once, and he said, ‘all right.’”
The narration threw a flood of light on the style of Unionists, with
whose aid the Southern States were being “reconstructed.” This map was
one of the “stay-at-home” Rebels. He made no secret of his entire
sympathy with the Rebel cause, but he wanted to keep out of the fight
himself, and found it pleasanter to be a Rebel magistrate than a Rebel
soldier.
Not very many Virginians seemed disposed to abandon the pleasant
mountain homes about Lynchburg, for the doubtful bliss of Mexico or
Brazil. The discovery had suddenly been made that there was a good deal
more danger of “nigger equality” in either than in the United States,
and the newspapers were dolorously warning the dissatisfied, that, if
they should go to Brazil, they might happen to be brought before courts
where negro judges presided, or be required to submit to laws enacted by
the wisdom of negro legislators. It was bad to be forced to tolerate the
presence of free negroes in the United States, but, really, it began to
look as if they could go nowhere else without finding matters a great
deal worse.
In the main, the negroes seemed to be doing well. In the Lynchburg
hotels they were paid twenty dollars a month—five dollars more than they
received for similar services in Richmond. “Den, besides dat, we picks
up ’siderable from gemmen dat gibs us half-dollar for toting deir trunk
or blacking deir boots, as I’s shore you’s gwine to do, sah.”[49] These,
however, were only the more intelligent. Through the country the negroes
were by no means earning such wages, and, in fact, the most were earning
none at all. They gained a precarious support by picking up occasional
jobs, and by a pretty general system of pilfering.
All had the idea that in January the lands of their former masters were
to be divided among them; and it was, therefore, almost impossible to
make contracts with them for labor on the farms through the ensuing
year. The inhabitants charged that this idea had been sedulously spread
among them by the Yankee soldiers, and that they had been advised never
to contract for more than a month’s work at a time, until the division
of property came. Here is a specimen of the way in which the Lynchburg
papers treated the difficulty:
“The refusal of these people to make contracts for labor another
year completely deranges all the regular and matured plans of our
farmers. They know not what provision to make for feeding their
employees; what extent of soil to mark out for seed; what kind of
crops to cultivate, or what calculations to make upon their
operations. If they sow, they are not certain to what extent they
can reap; and if they attempt a variety of crops, (including
tobacco,) they have no assurance whatever that their labor will not
forsake them at the very moment that it is most indispensable.
“A friend in Amherst suggests that the powers that be should issue
an order to the effect that all who do not get homes, or show they
have a support within themselves, by the 1st day of January, 1866,
will, on the 10th of said month, (nine days’ notice being given,) be
hired out to the highest bidder. Such an order would, in his
opinion, cause all except the most worthless to secure homes before
the 20th of December. These suggestions certainly seem to us to have
wisdom in them, and to meet the difficulties, to some extent, that
now so seriously embarrass and retard agricultural pursuits; and we
respectfully commend them to the attention of the proper
authorities. One thing is certain, that if the negroes are not made
to enter into contracts, and to keep them when made, the most
ruinous consequences will result to our farming interests, and
provisions enough will not be made to feed our people another year.
Some fanatics and deluded persons, we know, will laugh at this idea,
and tell us that the South has never been so prosperous in the past
as she will be in the future under our present system of labor. But
taking the most favorable view of the subject, it is still manifest
to every one at all familiar with the real condition of things, that
freed negro labor never was and never can be made _productive_—that
is to say, _accumulative_ or _progressive_; and that any reliance
upon the _voluntary_ work of free negroes, beyond what is absolutely
necessary to their sustenance, is both vain and foolish. And we
predict now, with regret and pain, what the results will certainly
show, that there will henceforth be a steady and permanent decline
in all the productions of the South dependent upon negro labor, as
there has been in the French and British emancipation islands; and
that the negro himself will steadily lose all the civilization which
contact with his master has given him, and finally relapse into his
native barbarism.”
At the same time they were busy inducing these people, who were steadily
losing all civilization and about to relapse into their native
barbarism, to emigrate to Liberia; by way, it should seem, of hastening
the process. One colony had already been sent off, and the papers made
much of an address, written by the negro emigrants to their “best
friends,” to wit, their old masters,[50] wherein they were made to hint
a conviction, in substance the same with that so current in the
bar-rooms, that “Virginia is no place for free niggers.”
* * * * *
The people of Lynchburg were all Johnson men. That is, they believed the
President disposed to exact less of them than his party wanted, and they
were bound to praise the bridge that promised to carry them safely over.
Here, as elsewhere, “sound conservative views” were greatly in demand;
these “views” being always found to have a relation, more or less
intimate, to the negro. “No man,” exclaimed one of the papers, “can fail
to see that our future is pregnant with the most momentous issues, and
that it will require the union of all right-thinking men to save our
country from the blasting curse of a false and most destructive radical
sentiment pervading it.” To resist this destructive radical sentiment,
the union of all the old parties was urged. They felt sure their members
would be promptly admitted, and thought it a very great outrage that any
opposition should be made to their participation in the organization of
the House.
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Footnote 48:
His “playing Yankee” consisted in a clumsy attempt to make the
President believe that Sir Frederick Bruce, the new British Minister,
was waiting in the ante-room to see him.
Footnote 49:
“Intelligent contrabands” all seem to have the money-making faculty
well developed. Here is a table of the incomes of some of the freedmen
about Newbern, North Carolina, during the third year of the war:
Three hundred and five persons, not employed by the Government, but
working at trades of their own, returned a total income of $151,562,
the average of all incomes being $496 92.
George Hargate, turpentine farmer $3,000
Ned Huggins, tar and turpentine 3,150
E. H. Hill, missionary and trader 2,000
W. A. Ives, carpenter and grocer 2,400
George Gordon, turpentine 1,500
Adam Hymen, turpentine 1,300
Samuel Collins, dry goods and groceries 1,200
Benjamin Whitfield, grocery and eating-house 1,500
Hasty Chatwick, turpentine 1,000
Limber Lewis, staves, wood, and shingles 1,500
George Physic, grocer 1,500
Sylvester Mackey, undertaker 1,000
Charles Bryan, cartman 1,000
John H. Heath, shoemaker 1,000
William Long, lumberman 1,200
John Bryan, cotton farmer 1,100
Hogan Conedy, cooper and tar maker 1,000
Danzey Heath, grocer and baker 1,500
The average of the incomes of barbers was $675; the blacksmiths, $468;
masons, $402; carpenters, $510; grocers, $678; coopers, $418, and of
turpentine farmers, $446.
While the negroes at Newbern, by patient toil, were putting such facts
as these on record, the whole refugee white population was drawing
rations.
At Beaufort, of 1,592 blacks in the place, only 300 received help,
while, at the same time, 1,200 whites were supplied with rations.
The colony of Roanoke Island, in two years, made improvements whose
cost value at the lowest figures was $44,000; more than would have
bought the whole island before the war, with all the improvements
which the “master class” had put upon it in two hundred years. In two
years Sir Walter Raleigh’s colony, established here, became utterly
extinct.
The negroes in that region have generally preferred turpentine
farming, the work being lighter and the returns earlier, as the
product of the first dipping is ready for market before mid-summer.
From three thousand to ten thousand trees have thus been leased to
single individuals. Many have become rich, hundreds have lived in
ease, and considering the difficulties in the way, a remarkable
proportion supported themselves. The same opportunities were open to
the white refugees, and the result is seen in the report of the number
of rations issued in Newbern, the largest camp for contrabands in the
State, and the great city of refuge to the whole State. Of 8,000
negroes in camp, only 3,000 drew rations, while in the white camp
every man, woman, and child was fed by the Government.
Footnote 50:
That is to say, written for them, and by the old masters themselves.