CHAPTER XXVII.

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.

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.