IN AND ABOUT PETERSBURG.
On Wednesday, September 27th, I left Richmond for Petersburg. The
railroad bridge having been burned, I crossed the river in a coach, and
took the cars at Manchester. A ride of twenty miles through tracts of
weeds and undergrowth, pine barrens and oaken woods, passing
occasionally a dreary-looking house and field of “sorry” corn, brought
us within sight of the “Cockade City.”[2]
It was evening when I arrived. Having a letter from Governor Pierpoint
to a prominent citizen, I sallied out by moonlight from my hotel, and
picked my way, along the streets sloping up from the river bank, to his
house.
Judge —— received me in his library, and kept me until a late hour
listening to him. His conversation was of the war, and the condition in
which it had left the country. He portrayed the ruin of the once proud
and prosperous State, and the sufferings of the people. “Yet, when all
is told,” said he, “you cannot realize their sufferings, more than if
you had never heard of them.” His remarks touching the freedmen were
refreshing, after the abundance of cant on the subject to which I had
been treated. He thought they were destined to be crowded out of
Virginia, which was adapted to white labor, but that they would occupy
the more southern States, and become a useful class of citizens. Many
were leaving their homes, with the idea that they must do so in order
fully to assert their freedom; but the majority of them were still at
work for their old masters. He was already convinced that the new system
would prove more profitable to employers than the old one. Formerly he
kept eight family servants; now he had but three, who, stimulated by
wages, did the work of all.
One of his former servants, to whom he had granted many privileges, came
to him, after the war closed, and said, “You a’n’t going to turn me
away, I hope, master.”
“No, William,” said the Judge. “As long as I have a home, you have one.
But I have no money to hire you.” William replied that he would like to
stay, and work right along just as he had done hitherto. “And as for
money, master, I reckon we can manage that.”
“How so, William?”
“You see, master, you’ve been so kind to me these past years I’ve done a
good deal outside, and if you have no money now, I reckon I must lend
you some.”
The faithful fellow brought out his little treasure, and offered it to
his old master, who, however, had not the heart to accept it.
The Judge also told a story of a free negro to whom he had often loaned
money without security before the war. Recently this negro had come to
him again, and asked the old question, “Have you plenty of money,
master?”
“Ah, James,” said the Judge, “I used to have plenty, and I always gave
you what you wanted, but you must go to somebody else now, for I haven’t
a dollar,”
“That’s what I was thinking,” said James. “I haven’t come to borrow this
time, but to lend.” And, taking out a fifty-dollar note, with tears in
his eyes he entreated the Judge to take it.
I noticed that the library had a new door, and that the walls around it
were spotted with marks of repairs. “These are the effects of a shell
that paid us a flying visit one morning, during the bombardment.
Fortunately, no one was hurt.”
He accepted the results of the war in such a candid and loyal spirit as
I had rarely seen manifested by the late governing class in Virginia. If
such men could be placed in power, the sooner the State were fully
restored to its place in the Union, the better; but, alas!—
Returning to the hotel, I missed my way, and seeing a light in a little
grocery store, went in to make inquiries. I found two negroes talking
over the bombardment. Finding me a stranger, and interested, they
invited me to stop, and rehearsed the story for my benefit.
The shelling began on the first of July, 1864. It was most rapid on the
third. Roofs and chimneys and walls were knocked to pieces. All the
lower part of the town was deserted. Many of the inhabitants fled to the
country; some remained there in camps, others got over their fright and
returned. “We went up on Market Street, and got into a bomb-proof we
made of cotton bales.” The bombardment was kept up until the first of
October, and afterwards resumed at intervals. “Finally people got so
they didn’t care anything about it. I saw two men killed by picking up
shells and looking at them; they exploded in their hands.”
At the time of the evacuation the negroes “had to keep right dark” to
avoid being carried away by their masters. Some went across the
Appomattox, and had to swim back, the bridges being burned.
They described to me the beauty of the scene when the mortars were
playing in the night, and the heavens were spanned with arches of fire.
“It was a right glad day for us when the Rebels went out and the
Federals came in; and I don’t believe any of the people could say with
conscientiousness they were sorry,—they had all suffered so much. The
Rebels set all the tobacco-warehouses afire, and burned up the foundery
and commissary stores. That was Sunday. Monday morning they went out,
and the Federals came in, track after track, without an hour between
them.”
These two negroes were brothers, and men of decided character and
intelligence, although they had been slaves all their lives. They
learned to read in a spelling-book when children by the firelight of
their hut. “I noticed how white children called their letters; and
afterwards I learned to write without any showing, by copying the
writing-letters in the spelling-book. I learned to read in such a silent
manner, it was a long time before I could make any head reading loud. I
learned arithmetic by myself in the same way.”
If any person of white skin, who has risen to eminence, is known to have
acquired the rudiments of education under such difficulties, much is
made of the circumstance. But in the case of a poor black man, a slave,
I suppose it is different.
The two addressed each other with great respect and affection. Their
feeling of kinship and of family worth was very strong. “There were four
brothers of us,” said the elder; “and I am the only one of them that
ever went to the prison-house. After my old, kind master died, I had a
difficulty with my mistress; she was very exasperating in her language
to me, till I lost my temper, and said I could live in torment, but I
couldn’t live with her, and wished she would sell me. She sent for an
officer; and I said, ‘I am as willing to go to jail as I am to take a
drink of water.’ When the sheriff saw me, he was very much surprised,
and he said, ‘Why, John, why are you here?’ I told him I had parted with
my temper, and said what no man ought to have said to a woman. He said,
‘What a pity! such a name as your master gave you, John!’ He interceded
with my mistress, and the fourth day she had me taken out. I told her I
had acknowledged my fault to my Maker, and I was willing to acknowledge
it to her. She said she was wrong too; and we agreed very well after
that. I was a very valuable servant to her. I could whitewash, mend a
fence, put in glass, use tools, serve up a dinner, and then wait on it
as gracefully as any man that ever walked around a table. Then I would
hitch up the carriage, and drive her out. And I have never seen the day
yet when she has given me five dollars.”
He had always thought deeply on the subject of his condition.
“But I never felt at liberty to speak my mind until they passed an act
to put colored men into the army. That wrought upon my feelings so I
couldn’t but cry;” and the tears were in his eyes again at the
recollection. “They asked me if I would fight for my country. I said, ‘I
have no country.’ They said I should light for my freedom. I said, ‘To
gain my freedom, I must fight to keep my wife and children slaves.’
Then, after the war was over, they told us they had no more use for
niggers. I said I thought it hard, after they’d lived by the sweat of
our faces all our days, that now we must be banished from the country,
because we were free.”
He spoke hopefully of his race. “If we can induce them to be united, and
to feel the responsibility that rests upon them, they will get along
very well. Many have bought themselves, and paid every dollar to their
masters, and then been sold again, and been treated in this way till
they have no longer any confidence in the promises a white man makes
them. They won’t stay with their old masters on any terms. Then there
are some that expect to live without work. There are some colored men,
just as there are white men, that won’t work to save their lives. Others
won’t stay, for this reason: The master takes their old daddy, and old
mammy, and little children, and casts them out on the forks of the road,
and tells them to go to the Court House, where the Yankees are, for he
don’t want ’em; then of course the young men and young women go too.”
Early next morning, I went out to view the town. In size and importance
Petersburg ranks as the second city in the State. In 1860 it had 18,275
inhabitants. It had fifty manufacturing establishments in operation,
employing three thousand operatives, and consuming annually $2,000,000
worth of raw material. Twenty factories manufactured yearly 12,000,000
pounds of tobacco. The falls of the Appomattox afford an extensive
water-power, and the river is navigable to this place.
I found the city changed greatly from its old prosperous condition. Its
business was shattered. Its well-built, pleasant streets, rising upon
the south bank of the Appomattox, were dirty and dilapidated. All the
lower part of the town showed the ruinous effect of the shelling it had
received. Tenantless and uninhabitable houses, with broken walls,
roofless, or with roofs smashed and torn by missiles, bear silent
witness to the havoc of war. In the ends of some buildings I counted
more than twenty shot-holes. Many battered houses had been
repaired,—bright spots of new bricks in the old walls showing where
projectiles had entered.
The city was thronged by a superfluous black population crowding in from
the country. I talked with some, and tried to persuade them to go back
and remain at their old homes. But they assured me that they could not
remain: their very lives had been in danger; and they told me of several
murders perpetrated upon freedmen by the whites, in their neighborhoods,
besides other atrocities. Yet it was evident many had come to town in
the vague hope of finding happy adventures and bettering their
condition.
I remember a gang of men, employed by the government, waiting for
orders, with their teams, on the sunny side of a ruined street. Several,
sitting on the ground, had spelling-books: one was teaching another his
letters; a third was reading aloud to a wondering little audience; an
old man, in spectacles, with gray hair, was slowly and painfully
spelling words of two letters, which he followed closely with his heavy
dark finger along the sunlit page,—altogether a singular and affecting
sight.
Having letters to General Gibbon commanding the military district, I
called on him at his head-quarters in a fine modern Virginia mansion,
and through his courtesy obtained a valuable guide to the
fortifications, in the person of Colonel E——, of his staff.
We drove out on the Jerusalem plank-road, leaving on our right the
reservoir, which Kautz’s cavalry in their dash at the city mistook for a
fort, and retired from with commendable discretion.
Leaving the plank-road, and striking across the open country, we found,
in the midst of weedy fields, the famous “crater,”—scene of one of the
most fearful tragedies of the war. It was a huge irregular oblong pit,
perhaps a hundred feet in length and twenty in depth. From this spot,
spouted like a vast black fountain, from the earth, rose the garrison,
and guns, and breastworks, of one of the strongest Rebel forts, mined by
our troops, and blown into the air on the morning of July 30th, 1864.
There was a deep ravine in front, up in the side of which the mine had
been worked. The mouth was still visible, half hidden by rank weeds. In
spots the surface earth had caved, leaving chasms opening into the mine
along its course. The mouth of the Rebel counter-mine was also
visible,—a deep, dark, narrow cavern, supported by framework, in the
lower side of the crater. Lying around were relics of the battle,—bent
and rusted bayonets, canteens, and fragments of shells. In front were
the remains of wooden _chevaux-de-frise_, which had been literally shot
to pieces. And all around were graves.
In the earthworks near by I saw a negro man and woman digging out
bullets. They told me they got four cents a pound for them in
Petersburg. It was hard work, but they made a living at it.
Riding southward along the Confederate line of works, we came to Fort
Damnation, where the Rebels used to set up a flag-staff for our boys to
fire at with a six-pound Parrott gun, making a wild sport of warfare.
Opposite was Fort Hell, built by our troops, and named in compliment to
its profane neighbor. The intrenched picket-lines between the two were
not more than seventy-five yards apart; each connected with its fort by
a covered way. These works were in an excellent state of preservation.
Fort Hell especially, constructed with bomb-proofs and galleries which
afforded the most ample protection to its garrison, was in as perfect a
condition as when first completed. With a lighted torch I explored its
magazine, a Tartarean cave, with deep dark chambers, and walls covered
with a cold sweat.
All along in front of the Rebel defences extended the Federal
breastworks, and it was interesting to trace the zigzag lines by which
our troops had, slowly and persistently, by scientific steps, pushed
their position ever nearer and nearer to the enemy’s. Running round all,
covered by an embankment, was Grant’s army railroad.
Having driven southward along the Rebel lines to Fort Damnation, and
there crossed over to Fort Hell, we now returned northward, riding along
the Federal lines. A very good corduroy road, built by our army, took us
through deserted villages of huts, where had been its recent
winter-quarters; past abandoned plantations and ruined dwellings; over a
plain which had been covered with forests before the war, but where not
a tree was now standing; and across the line of the Norfolk Railroad, of
which not a sleeper or rail remained. We passed Fort Morton, confronting
the “crater”; and halted on a hill, in a pleasant little grove of broken
and dismantled oaks. Here were the earthworks and bomb-proofs of Fort
Stedman, the possession of which had cost more lives than any other
point along the lines, not excepting the “crater.” Captured originally
from the Rebels, retaken by them, and recaptured by us, it was the
subject of incessant warfare.
At the Friend House, farther on, stationed on an eminence overlooking
Petersburg, was the celebrated “Petersburg Express,”—the great gun which
used to send its iron messengers regularly into the city.
On the Friend Estate I saw, for the first time, evidences of reviving
agriculture in this war-blasted region. A good crop of corn had been
raised, and some five and thirty negro men and women were beginning the
harvest. There was no white man about the place; but they told me they
were working on their own account for a portion of the crop.
Returning to town by the City-Point Road, we set out again, in the
afternoon, to visit the more distant fortifications beyond Forts Hell
and Damnation.
Driving out on the Boydton Plank Road to the Lead Works, we there left
it on our right, and proceeded along a sandy track beside the Weldon
Railroad where wagon-loads of North Carolina cotton, laboring through
the sand, attested that the damage done to this railroad, in December of
the previous year, by Warren’s Corps,—which destroyed with conscientious
thoroughness fifteen miles of the track,—had not yet been repaired.[3]
Passing the Rebel forts, I was struck with the peculiar construction of
the Federal works. As we pushed farther and farther our advanced lines
around the city, they became so extended that, to prevent raids on our
rear, it was necessary to construct rear lines of defence. Our
intrenchments accordingly took the form of a hook, doubled backward, and
terminating in something like a barbed point.
Cities of deserted huts, built in the midst of a vast level plain,
despoiled of its forests, showed where the winter-quarters of our more
advanced corps had been, during this last great campaign.
Passing the winter-quarters of the Sixth Corps, we approached one of the
most beautiful villages that ever were seen. It was sheltered by a grove
of murmuring pines. An arched gateway admitted us to its silent streets.
It was constructed entirely of pine saplings and logs. Even the neat
sidewalks were composed of the same material. The huts—if those little
dwellings, built in a unique and perfect style of architecture, may be
called by that humble name—were furnished with bedrooms and
mantel-pieces within, and plain columns and fluted pilasters without,
all of rough pine. The plain columns were formed of single trunks, the
fluted ones of clusters of saplings,—all with the bark on, of course.
The walls were similarly constructed. The village was deserted, with the
exception of a safeguard, consisting of half a dozen United States
soldiers, stationed there to protect it from vandalism.
The gem of the place was the church. Its walls, pillars, pointed arches,
and spire, one hundred feet high, were composed entirely of pines
selected and arranged with surprising taste and skill. The pulpit was in
keeping with the rest. Above it was the following inscription:—
“Presented to the members of the Poplar Spring Church, by the 50th N. Y.
V. Engineers. Capt. M. H. McGrath, architect.”
The Poplar Spring Church, which formerly stood somewhere in that
vicinity, had been destroyed during the war; and this church had been
left as a fitting legacy to its congregation by the soldiers who built
it. The village had been the winter-quarters of the engineer corps.
Driving westward along the track of the army railroad, and past its
termination, we struck across the open fields to the Federal
signal-tower, lifting skyward its lofty open framework and dizzy
platforms, in the midst of an extensive plain. To ascend a few stages of
this breezy observatory, and see the sun go down behind the distant dim
line of forests, while the evening shadows thickened upon the landscape,
was a fit termination to the day’s experience; and we returned with
rapid wheels to the city.
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Footnote 2:
The title given to it by President Madison, in speaking of the
gallantry of the Petersburg Volunteers, in the war of 1812.
Footnote 3:
Four months later I returned northward from the Carolinas by this
road, and found that the bent rails had been straightened and
replaced, in an exceedingly scaly condition.