THE BURNT DISTRICT.
Again that morning I visited the burnt district, of which I had taken
but a cursory view the evening before.
All up and down, as far as the eye could reach, the business portion of
the city bordering on the river lay in ruins. Beds of cinders, cellars
half filled with bricks and rubbish, broken and blackened walls,
impassable streets deluged with _débris_, here a granite front still
standing, and there the iron fragments of crushed machinery,—such was
the scene which extended over thirty entire squares and parts of other
squares.
I was reminded of Chambersburg; but here was ruin on a more tremendous
scale. Instead of small one- and two-story buildings, like those of the
modest Pennsylvania town, tall blocks, great factories, flour-mills,
rolling-mills, foundries, machine-shops, warehouses, banks, railroad,
freight, and engine houses, two railroad bridges, and one other bridge
spanning on high piers the broad river, were destroyed by the desperate
Rebel leaders on the morning of the evacuation.
“They meant to burn us all out of our homes,” said a citizen whom I met
on the butment of the Petersburg railroad bridge. “It was the wickedest
thing that ever was done in this world! You are a stranger; you don’t
know; but the people of Richmond know, if they will only speak their
minds.”
“But,” said I, “what was their object in burning their own city, the
city of their friends?”
“The devil only knows, for he set ’em on to do it! It was spite, I
reckon. If they couldn’t hold the city, they determined nobody else
should. They kept us here four years under the worst tyranny under the
sun; then when they found they couldn’t keep us any longer, they just
meant to burn us up. That’s the principle they went on from the
beginning.”
I had already conversed with other citizens on the subject of the fire,
some of whom maintained that it was never the design of the Confederate
leaders to burn anything but the railroad bridges and public stores. But
this man laughed at the idea.
“That’s what they pretend; but I know better. What was the water stopped
from the reservoirs for? So that we should have none to put out the fire
with!”
“But they say the water was shut off in order to make repairs.”
“It’s all a lie! I tell ye, stranger, it was the intention to burn
Richmond, and it’s a miracle that any part of it was saved. As luck
would have it, there was no wind to spread the fire; then the Federals
came in, let on the water, and went to work with the engines, and put it
out.”
“Why didn’t the citizens do that?”
“I don’t know. Everybody was paralyzed. It was a perfect panic. The
Yankees coming! the city burning! our army on a retreat!—you’ve no
idea of what it was. Nobody seemed to know what to do. God save us
from another such time! It was bad enough Sunday. If the world had
been coming to an end, there couldn’t have been more fright and
confusion. I was watchman on this railroad bridge,—when there was a
bridge here. I was off duty at midnight, and I went home and went to
bed. But along towards morning my daughter woke me. ‘Father,’ says
she, ‘the city’s afire!’ I knew right away what was the matter. The
night was all lit up, and I could hear the roar of something besides
the river. I run out and started for the bridge, but I’d got quite
near enough, when the ammunition in the tobacco-warehouses begun to go
off. Crack!—crack!—crack, crack, crack! One piece of shell whirred
past my head like a pa’tridge. I didn’t want to hear another. I put
home and went to getting my truck together, such as I could tote,
ready to leave if my house went.”
Subsequently I conversed with citizens of every grade upon this exciting
topic, and found opinions regarding it as various as the political views
of their authors. Those aristocrats who went in for the war but kept out
of the fight, and who favored the Davis government because it favored
them, had no word of censure for the incendiaries.
“The burning of the city was purely accidental,” one blandly informed
me.
“No considerable portion of it would have been destroyed if it hadn’t
been for private marauding parties,” said another. “The city was full of
such desperate characters. They set fires for the purpose of plundering.
It was they, and nobody else, who shut off the water from the
reservoirs.”
The laboring class, on the other hand, generally denounced the
Confederate leaders as the sole authors of the calamity. It was true
that desperadoes aided in the work, but it was after the fugitive
government had set them the example.
Here is the opinion of a Confederate officer, Colonel D——, whom I saw
daily at the table of the hotel, and with whom I had many interesting
conversations.
“It is not fair to lay the whole blame on the Confederate government,
although, Heaven knows, it was bad enough to do anything! The plan of
burning the city had been discussed beforehand: Lee and the more humane
of his officers opposed it; Early and others favored it; and
Breckinridge took the responsibility of putting it into execution.”
Amid all these conflicting opinions there was one thing certain—the fact
of the fire; although, had it not been written out there before our eyes
in black characters and lines of desolation, I should have expected to
hear some unblushing apologist of the Davis despotism deny even that.
And, whoever may have been personally responsible for the crime, there
is also a truth concerning it which I hold to be undeniable. Like the
assassination of Lincoln, like the systematic murder of Union prisoners
at Andersonville and elsewhere,—like these and countless other barbarous
acts which have branded the Rebel cause with infamy,—this too was
inspired by the spirit of slavery, and performed in the interest of
slavery. That spirit, destructive of liberty and law, and
self-destructive at last, was the father of the rebellion and of all the
worst crimes of its adherents. As I walked among the ruins, pondering
these thoughts, I must own that my heart swelled with pride when I
remembered how the fire was extinguished. It was by no mere chance that
the panic-stricken inhabitants were found powerless to save their own
city. That task was reserved for the Union army, that a great truth
might be symbolized. The war, on the part of the North, was waged
neither for ambition nor revenge; its design was not destructive, but
conservative. Through all our cloudy mistakes and misdeeds shone the
spirit of Liberty; and the work she gave us to do was to quench the
national flames which anarchy had kindled, and to save a rebellious
people from the consequences of their own folly.
Richmond had already one terrible reminiscence of a fire. On the night
of the 26th of December, 1811, its theatre was burned, with an appalling
catastrophe: upward of seventy spectators, including the Governor of the
State, perishing in the flames. The fire of the 3d of April, 1865, will
be as long remembered.
The work of rebuilding the burnt district had commenced, and was
progressing in places quite vigorously. Here I had the satisfaction of
seeing the negroes, who “would not work,” actually at their tasks. Here,
as everywhere else in Richmond, and indeed in every part of Virginia I
visited, colored laborers were largely in the majority. They drove the
teams, made the mortar, carried the hods, excavated the old cellars or
dug new ones, and, sitting down amid the ruins, broke the mortar from
the old bricks and put them up in neat piles ready for use. There were
also colored masons and carpenters employed on the new buildings. I
could not see but that these people worked just as industriously as the
white laborers. And yet, with this scene before our very eyes, I was
once more informed by a cynical citizen that the negro, now that he was
free, would rob, steal, or starve, before he would work.
I conversed with one of the laborers going home to his dinner. He was a
stalwart young black, twenty-one years old, married, and the father of
two children. He was earning a dollar and a half a day.
“Can you manage to live on that, and support your family?”
“It’s right hard, these times,—everything costs so high. I have to pay
fifteen dollars a month rent, and only two little rooms. But my wife
takes in washing and goes out to work; and so we get along.”
“But,” said I, “were not your people better off in slavery?”.
“Oh no, sir!” he replied, with a bright smile. “We’re a heap better off
now. We haven’t got our rights yet, but I expect we’re go’n’ to have ’em
soon.”
“What rights?”
“I don’t know, sir. But I reckon government will do something for us. My
master has had me ever since I was seven years old, and never give me
nothing. I worked for him twelve years, and I think something is due
me.”
He was waiting to see what the government would do for his people. He
rather expected the lands of their Rebel masters would be given them,
insisting that they ought to have some reward for all their years of
unrequited toil. Of course I endeavored to dissuade him from cherishing
any such hope.
“What you ask for may be nothing but justice; but we must not expect
justice even in this world. We must be thankful for what we can get. You
have your freedom, and you ought to consider yourself lucky.”
His features shone with satisfaction as he replied,—
“That ought to be enough, if we don’t get no mo’e. We’re men now, but
when our masters had us we was only change in their pockets.”
Unlike what I saw in Chambersburg, the new blocks springing up in the
burnt district did not promise to be an improvement on the old ones.
Everywhere were visible the results of want of capital and of the hurry
of rebuilding. The thinness of the walls was alarming; and I was not
surprised to learn that some of them had recently been blown down on a
windy night. Heaven save our country, thought I, from such hasty and
imperfect reconstruction!