ABOUT HAMPTON.
As it was my intention to visit some of the freedmen’s settlements in
the vicinity, the General kindly placed a horse at my disposal, and I
took leave of him. A short gallop brought me to the village of Hampton,
distant from the Fortress something over two miles.
“The village of Hampton,” says a copy of the “Richmond Examiner” for
1861, “is beautifully situated on an arm of the sea setting in from the
adjacent roadstead which bears its name. The late census showed that the
aggregate white and black population was nearly two thousand.” Some of
the residences were of brick, erected at a heavy cost, and having large
gardens, out-houses, and other valuable improvements. The oldest
building, and the second oldest church in the State, was the Episcopal
Church, made of imported brick, and surrounded by a cemetery of ancient
graves. “Here repose the remains of many a cavalier and gentleman, whose
names are borne by numerous families all over the Southern States.”
On the night of August 7th, 1861, the Rebels, under General Magruder,
initiated what has been termed the “warfare against women and children
and private property,” which has marked the war of the Rebellion, by
laying this old aristocratic town in ashes. It had been mostly abandoned
by the secessionist inhabitants on its occupation by our troops, and
only a few white families, with between one and two hundred negroes,
remained. Many of the former residents came back with the Rebel troops
and set fire to their own and their neighbors’ houses. Less than a dozen
buildings remained standing; the place being reduced to a wilderness of
naked chimneys, burnt-out shells, and heaps of ashes.
I found it a thrifty village, occupied chiefly by freedmen. The former
aristocratic residences had been replaced by negro huts. These were very
generally built of split boards, called pales, overlapping each other
like clapboards or shingles. There was an air of neatness and comfort
about them which surprised me, no less than the rapidity with which they
were constructed. One man had just completed his house. He told me that
it took him a week to make the pales for it and bring them from the
woods, and four days more to build it.
A sash-factory and blacksmith’s shop, shoemakers’ shops and stores,
enlivened the streets. The business of the place was carried on chiefly
by freedmen, many of whom were becoming wealthy, and paying heavy taxes
to the government.
Every house had its wood-pile, poultry and pigs, and little garden
devoted to corn and vegetables. Many a one had its stable and cow, and
horse and cart. The village was surrounded by freedmen’s farms,
occupying the abandoned plantations of recent Rebels. The crops looked
well, though the soil was said to be poor. Indeed, this was by far the
thriftiest portion of Virginia I had seen.
In company with a gentleman who was in search of laborers, I made an
extensive tour of these farms, anxious to see with my own eyes what the
emancipated blacks were doing for themselves. I found no idleness
anywhere. Happiness and industry were the universal rule. I conversed
with many of the people, and heard their simple stories. They had but
one trouble: the owners of the lands they occupied were coming back with
their pardons and demanding the restoration of their estates. Here they
had settled on abandoned Rebel lands, under the direction of the
government, and with the government’s pledge, given through its
officers, and secured by act of Congress, that they should be protected
in the use and enjoyment of those lands for a term of three years, each
freedman occupying no more than forty acres, and paying an annual rent
to government not exceeding six per cent. of their value. Here, under
the shelter of that promise, they had built their little houses and
established their humble homes. What was to become of them? On one
estate of six hundred acres there was a thriving community of eight
hundred freedmen. The owner had been pardoned unconditionally by the
President, who, in his mercy to one class, seemed to forget what justice
was due to another.
The terms which some of these returning Rebels proposed to the freedmen
they found in possession of their lands, interested me. One man, whose
estate was worth sixteen dollars an acre, offered to rent it to the
families living on it for eight dollars an acre, provided that the
houses, which they had themselves built, should revert to him at the end
of the year.
My friend broke a bolt in his buggy, and we stopped at a blacksmith-shop
to get another. While the smith, a negro, was making a new bolt, and
fitting it neatly to its place, I questioned him. He had a little lot of
half an acre; upon which he had built his own house and shop and shed.
He had a family, which he was supporting without any aid from the
government. He was doing very well until the owner of the soil appeared,
with the President’s pardon, and orders to have his property restored to
him. The land was worth twenty dollars an acre. He told the blacksmith
that he could remain where he was, by paying twenty-four dollars a year
rent for his half acre. “I am going to leave,” said the poor man,
quietly, and without uttering a complaint.
Except on the government farm, where old and infirm persons and orphan
children were placed, I did not find anybody who was receiving aid from
the government. Said one, “I have a family of seven children. Four are
my own, and three are my brother’s. I have twenty acres. I get no help
from government, and do not want any as long as I can have land.” I
stopped at another little farm-house, beside which was a large pile of
wood, and a still larger heap of unhusked corn, two farm wagons, a
market wagon, and a pair of mules. The occupant of this place also had
but twenty acres, and he was “getting rich.”
“Has government helped you any this year?” I asked a young fellow we met
on the road.
“_Government_ helped _me_?” he retorted proudly. “No; I am helping
government.”
We stopped at a little cobbler’s shop, the proprietor of which was
supporting not only his own wife and children, but his aged mother and
widowed sister. “Has government helped you any?” we inquired. “Nary lick
in the world!” he replied, hammering away at his shoe.
Driving across a farm, we saw an old negro without legs hitching along
on his stumps in a cornfield, pulling out grass between the rows, and
making it up into bundles to sell. He hailed us, and wished to know if
we wanted to buy any hay. He seemed delighted when my companion told him
he would take all he had, at his own price. He said he froze his legs
one winter when he was a slave, and had to have them taken off in
consequence. Formerly he had received rations from the government, but
now he was earning his own support, except what little he received from
his friends.
It was very common to hear of families that were helping not only their
own relatives, but others who had no such claim of kindred upon them.
And here I may add that the account which these people gave of
themselves was fully corroborated by officers of the government and
others who knew them.
My friend did not succeed very well in obtaining laborers for his mills.
The height of the freedmen’s ambition was to have little homes of their
own and to work for themselves. And who could blame this simple, strong
instinct, since it was not only pointing them the way of their own
prosperity, but serving also the needs of the country?[4]
Notwithstanding the pending difficulty with the land-owners, those who
had had their lots assigned them were going on to put up new houses,
from which they might be driven at any day,—so great was their faith in
the honor of the government which had already done so much for them.
Revisiting Virginia some months later, I learned that the Freedmen’s
Bureau had interposed to protect these people in their rights, showing
that their faith had not been in vain.
-----
Footnote 4:
For example: the freedmen on the Jones Place, with one hundred and
twenty acres under cultivation, where they had commenced work with
nothing for which they did not have to run in debt, were now the
owners of both stock and farming implements; and, besides supporting
their families, they were paying to the United States a large annual
rent.