CHAPTER XXX.

A GENERAL VIEW OF VIRGINIA.

Called home from Fortress Monroe by an affair of business requiring my attention, I resumed my Southern tour later in the fall, passing through Central and South-western Virginia, and returning from the Carolinas through Eastern Virginia in the following February. I am warned by a want of space to omit the details of these transient journeys, and to compress my remaining notes on the State into as narrow a compass as possible.[5]

Virginia was long a synonym for beauty and fertility. In the richness of her resources, she stood unrivalled among the earlier States. In wealth and population, she led them all. She was foremost also in political power; and the names she gave to our Revolutionary history still sparkle as stars of the first magnitude.

This halo about her name has been slow to fade; although, like a proud and indolent school-girl, once at the head of her class, she has been making steady progress towards the foot. Five of the original States have gone above her, and one by one new-comers are fast overtaking her. Little Massachusetts excels her in wealth, and Ohio in both wealth and population.

The causes of this gradual falling back are other than physical causes. Her natural advantages have not been overrated. The Giver of good gifts has been munificent in his bounties to her. She is rich in rivers, forests, mines, soils. That broad avenue to the sea, the Chesapeake, and its affluents, solicit commerce. Her supply of water-power is limitless and well distributed. She possesses a variety of climate, which is, with few exceptions, healthful and delightful.

The fertility of the State is perhaps hardly equal to its fine reputation, which, like that of some old authors, was acquired in the freshness of her youth, and before her powerful young competitors appeared to challenge the world’s attention. Such reputations acquire a sanctity from age, which the spirit of conservatism permits not to be questioned.

The State has many rich valleys, river bottoms, and alluvial tracts bordering on lesser streams, which go far towards sustaining this venerable reputation. But between these valleys occur intervals of quite ordinary fertility, if not absolute sterility, and these compose the larger portion of the State. Add the fact that the best lands of Eastern and Southeastern Virginia have been very generally worn out by improper cultivation, and what is the conclusion?

A striking feature of the country is its “old fields.” The more recent of these are usually found covered with briers, weeds, and broom-sedge,—often with a thick growth of infant pines coming up like grass. Much of the land devastated by the war lies in this condition. In two or three years, these young pines shoot up their green plumes five or six feet high. In ten years there is a young forest. In some of the oldest of the old fields, now heavily timbered, the ridges of the ancient tobacco lands are traceable among the trees.

Tobacco has been the devouring enemy of the country. In travelling through it one is amazed at the thought of the regions which have been burned and chewed up by the smokers and spitters of the world.

East Virginia is hilly. The southeast portion of the State is undulating, with occasional plains, and swamps of formidable extent. The soil of the tide-water districts is generally a light sandy loam. A belt of mountain ranges, a hundred miles in breadth, runs in a northeast and southwest direction across the State, enclosing some of its richest and loveliest portions. The Valley of Virginia,—as that fertile stripe is called lying west of the Blue Ridge, drained by the Shenandoah and the head-waters of the James,—is fitly called the granary of the State. It is a limestone region, admirably adapted for grains and grazing. The virginity of its soil has not been polluted by tobacco.

In 1860 there were in the State less than eleven and a half million acres of improved land, out of an area of near forty millions. Over thirteen million bushels of wheat were produced; one million of rye, Indian corn, and oats; one hundred and twenty-four million pounds of tobacco; twelve thousand seven hundred and twenty-seven bales of cotton; and two and a half million pounds of wool (in round numbers). There were four thousand nine hundred manufacturing establishments, the value of whose manufactures was fifty-one million three hundred thousand dollars. There were thirteen cotton factories, running twenty-eight thousand seven hundred spindles. The most important article of export before the war was negroes. There were sold out of the State annually twenty thousand.[6]

With the exception of the last-named staple, these annual productions are destined to be multiplied indefinitely by a vigorous system of free labor and the introduction of Northern capital. The worn-out lands can be easily restored by the application of marl and gypsum, with which the State abounds, and of other natural fertilizers. The average value of land, in 1850, was eight dollars an acre; while that of New Jersey, which never bragged of its fertility, was forty-four dollars. The former price will now buy lands in almost any section of Virginia except the Shenandoah Valley; while there is no question but that they can be raised to the latter price, and beyond, in a very few years, by judicious cultivation, united with such internal improvements as are indispensable to make the wealth of any region available.

Still greater inducements are presented to manufacturers than to farmers. To large capitalists, looking to establish extensive cotton-mills, I do not feel myself competent to offer any suggestions. But of small manufactures I can speak with confidence. Take the Shenandoah Valley for example. The wool that is raised there is sent North to be manufactured, and brought back in the shape of clothing, having incurred the expense of transportation both ways, and paid the usual tariff to traders through whose hands it has passed. The Valley abounds in iron ore of the best quality; and it imports its kettles and stoves. The same may be said of nearly all agricultural implements. The freight on many of these imports is equal to their original cost. It was said before the war that scarce a wagon, clock, broom, boot, shoe, coat, rake or spade, or piece of earthen ware, was used in the South, that was not manufactured at the North; and the same is substantially true to-day, notwithstanding the change in this particular which the war was supposed to have effected. Let any enterprising man, or company of men, with sufficient experience for the work and capital to invest, go into Virginia, make use of the natural water-power which is so copious that no special price is put upon it, and manufacture, of the materials that abound on the spot, articles that are in demand there, establishing a judicious system of exchange, and who can doubt the result, now that the great obstacle in the way of such undertakings, slavery, has been removed?

In speaking of the products of Virginia, we should not forget its oysters; of which near fourteen and a half million bushels, valued at four million eight hundred thousand dollars, were sent from Chesapeake Bay in one year, previous to the war.

Virginia never had any common-school system. One third of her adult population can neither read nor write. There was a literary fund, established to promote the interests of education, which amounted, in 1861, to something over two millions of dollars; but it was swallowed by the war. At the present time the prospect for white common schools in the State is discouraging. The only one I heard of in anything like a flourishing condition was a school for poor whites, established by the Union Commission in the buildings of the Confederate naval laboratory, at Richmond. It numbers five hundred pupils, and is taught by experienced teachers from the North. The prospect is better for the education of the freedmen. There were in the State last winter ninety freedmen’s schools, with an aggregate of eleven thousand five hundred pupils. There were two hundred teachers; twenty-five of whom were colored men and women at the head of self-supporting schools of their own race. The remaining schools, taught by experienced individuals from the North, were supported mainly by the following benevolent associations: The New-York National Freedmen’s Relief; American Missionary; Pennsylvania Freedmen’s Relief; Baptist Home Mission; New-England Freedmen’s Aid; and Philadelphia Friends’ Freedmen’s Relief.

The opposition manifested by a large class of whites to the establishment of these schools was at first intense and bitter. It had nearly ceased,—together with the outrages on freedmen, which had been frequent,—when, on the removal of the troops from certain localities,[7] it recommenced, and was, at my last visit, fearfully on the increase. Teachers were threatened and insulted, and school-houses broken into or burned. The better class of citizens,—many of whom see the necessity of educating the negro now that he is free,—while they have nothing to do with these acts of barbarism, are powerless to prevent them. The negro-haters are so strong an element in every society that they completely shield the wrong-doers from the reach of civil law.

The great subject of discussion among the people everywhere was the “niggers.” Only a minority of the more enlightened class, out of their large hearts and clear heads, spoke of them kindly and dispassionately. The mass of the people, including alike the well-educated and the illiterate, generally detested the negroes, and wished every one of them driven out of the State. The black man was well enough as a slave; but even those who rejoiced that slavery was no more, desired to get rid of him along with it. When he was a chattel, like a horse or dog, he was commonly cherished, and sometimes even loved like a favorite horse or dog, and there was not a particle of prejudice against him on account of color; but the master-race could not forgive him for being free; and that he should assume to be a man, self-owning and self-directing, was intolerable. I simply state the fact; I do not condemn anybody. That such a feeling should exist is, I know, the most natural thing in the world; and I make all allowances for habit and education.

It is this feeling which makes some protection on the part of the government necessary to the negro in his new condition. The Freedmen’s Bureau stands as a mediator between him and the race from whose absolute control he has been too recently emancipated to expect from it absolute justice. The belief inheres in the minds of the late masters, that they have still a right to appropriate his labor. Although we may acquit them of intentional wrong, it is impossible not to see how far their conduct is from right.

Before the war, it was customary to pay for ordinary able-bodied plantation slaves, hired of their masters, at rates varying from one hundred and ten to one hundred and forty dollars a year for each man, together with food, clothing, and medical attendance. After the war, the farmers in many counties of Virginia entered into combinations, pledging themselves to pay the freed slave only sixty dollars a year, exclusive of clothing and medical attendance, with which he was to furnish himself out of such meagre wages. They also engaged not to hire any freedman who had left a former employer without his consent. These were private leagues instituting measures similar to those which South Carolina and some other States afterwards enacted as laws, and having in view the same end, namely,—to hold the negro in the condition of abject dependence from which he was thought to have been emancipated.

That the freedman’s supposed unwillingness to work, and the employer’s poverty occasioned by the war, were not the reasons why he was to be paid less than half the wages he earned when hired out as a slave, I had abundant evidence. One illustration will suffice. Visiting the tobacco factories of Richmond, I found them worked entirely by freedmen under white superintendents. I never saw more rapid labor performed with hands than the doing up of the tobacco in rolls for the presses; nor harder labor with the muscles of the whole body than the working of the presses. The superintendents told me they had difficulty in procuring operatives. I inquired if the freedmen were well paid; and was informed that good workmen earned a dollar and a half a day.

“If the negroes will not engage in the business, why not employ white labor?”

“We tried that years ago, and it wouldn’t answer. White men can’t stand it; they can’t do the work. This press-work is a dead strain; only the strongest niggers are up to it.”

Those putting up the tobacco in rolls,—three ounces in each, though they rarely stopped to place one on the scales,—showed a skill which could have resulted only from years of practice. I learned, from conversing with them, that they were dissatisfied with their pay; and the superintendents admitted that, while the negroes worked as well as ever, labor was much cheaper than formerly. On further investigation I ascertained that a combination between the manufacturers kept the wages down, that each workman had to employ a “stemmer,” who made the tobacco ready for his hands; and that his earnings were thus reduced to less than five dollars a week, out of which he had himself and his family to support.[8]

The Bureau labored to break up these combinations, and to secure for the freedmen all the rights of freemen. Colonel Brown, the Assistant-Commissioner for Virginia, divided the State into districts, and assigned a superintendent to each. The districts were subdivided into sub-districts, for which assistant superintendents were appointed. Thus the Bureau’s influence was felt more or less throughout the State. It assisted the freedmen in obtaining employment, regulated contracts, and secured to them fair wages. It had a general superintendence of freedmen’s schools. It used such powers as it possessed to scatter the negroes, whom the exigencies of the war had collected together in great numbers at places where but few could hope for employment. It fed the destitute, the aged, the orphan, the infirm, and such as were unable to find work,—who, in that period of transition, must have perished in masses without such aid. It likewise established courts for the trial of minor cases of litigation or crime in which persons of color were concerned. Each court was originally presided over by an officer of the Bureau; but in order to secure impartial justice to all, there were associated with him two agents, one chosen by the citizens of the sub-district in which it was located, and the other by the freedmen.

There is in every community a certain percentage of its members that look to get a living without honest toil. I am not aware that the negro has any more love for work than another man. Coming into the enjoyment of freedom before they knew what freedom meant, no wonder that many should have regarded life henceforth as a Christmas frolic. The system which had held them in bondage had kept them ignorant. Having always been provided for by their masters, they were as improvident as children. They believed that the government which had been their Liberator would likewise be their Provider: the lands of their Rebel masters were to be given them, and their future was to be licensed and joyous. They had the vices of a degraded and enslaved race. They would lie and steal and shirk their tasks. Their pleasures were of a sensuous character; even their religion was sensuous; the sanctity of the marriage-tie, so long subject to the caprices of the master-race, was lightly esteemed. Under these circumstances the proportion of those who have shown a persistent determination to lead lives of vice and vagrancy, appears to me surprisingly small. Their number still decreases as their enlightenment increases. The efforts of the Freedmen’s Bureau, and Northern missionary and educational labors among them, have contributed greatly towards this desirable result. Still more might be done if additional discretionary powers were granted the Assistant-Commissioner. Vagrants, whether white or black, should be treated as vagrants; and I thought it would have been a wholesome measure for the Bureau to make contracts for those freedmen who refused to make contracts for themselves, and were without any visible means of support.

There are in Virginia half a million negroes. Those appear most thriving and happy who are at work for themselves. I have described the freedmen’s farms about Hampton. In other portions of Southeast Virginia, where the Federal influence has been longest felt, they are equally industrious and prosperous. Captain Flagg, the superintendent at Norfolk, whose district comprises seven counties, told me that he was not issuing rations to a hundred persons, besides orphan children. In Northampton and Accomack counties every negro owns his boat, and earns with it three dollars a day at oystering, in the oyster season. There are perhaps eighteen thousand freedmen in those counties, all engaged in oystering, fishing, and the cultivation of lands which they own or hire. In Norfolk, Princess Anne, and other counties adjacent, planters were very generally renting or selling lands to the freedmen, who were rapidly becoming a respectable, solid, tax-paying class of people. Many colored soldiers were coming back and buying small farms with money earned in the service of the government. Captain Flagg, a man of sense and discretion, said to me deliberately, and gave me leave to publish the statement:—

“I believe the negro population of the seven counties of my district will compare favorably, in respect to industry and thrift, with any laboring white population of similar resources at the North.” Adding, “I believe most thoroughly in the ability of these people to get a living even where a white man would starve.”

The freedmen in other parts of the State were not doing as well, being obliged generally to enter into contracts with the land-owners. Many of these, impoverished by the war, could not afford to pay them more than seven or eight dollars a month for their labor; while some were not able to pay even that. Their fences destroyed, buildings burned, farming implements worn out, horses, mules, and other stock consumed by both armies, investments in Confederate bonds worthless, bank-stock gone, without money, or anything to exchange for money, they had often only their bare lands on which to commence life anew; and could not therefore give much encouragement to the freedman, whatever may have been their disposition towards him.

The legislative and local affairs of the State had very generally fallen under the influence, or into the hands, of those who had given aid and sympathy to the Rebellion. Indeed, Governor Pierpoint told me that there were not unquestionably loyal men enough in Virginia to form a government. “In many counties,” said he, “you will not find one.”

Yet Virginia sent to the convention of February 13th, 1861, a majority of Union delegates. It was only after the fall of Fort Sumter, and President Lincoln’s call for troops, that a vote could be had taking the State out of the Union. Eighty-eight delegates voted for the ordinance of secession, fifty-five against it. It was afterwards—in the tempest of excitement which swept over the State—adopted by the people by a majority of ninety-four thousand. It was an act of passion and madness. Travelling through the State, I found a majority of the people professing to have been at heart Union men all the while. They could never forgive South Carolina for the evil course in which she had led them; and it was very common to hear the wish expressed, “that South Carolina and Massachusetts were kicked out into the Atlantic together.” Having, however, against her better reason, seceded, Virginia became the most devoted and self-sacrificing of all the States in the cause in which she had embarked.

The railroads of the State[9] were, both financially and physically, in a bad condition. They had been used excessively during the war, and stood in need of repairs. The iron taken from the Richmond and York River Road had not been replaced. The time made by trains was necessarily slow. The rolling-stock was limited, and generally in a worse condition than the roads. But few lines were paying anything more than the expenses of running them.

The old State banks went down with the Confederacy. The circulation of the new National Banks in the State did not, in January 1866, exceed $1,300,000.

There was necessarily a great scarcity of money. It was difficult to raise funds even on the mortgage of real estate. The existence of usury laws, limiting the rate of interest at six per cent., operated to shut out Northern capital, which could find investments nearer home at more remunerative rates. When I was last in Richmond there was pending in the legislature a bill for the repeal of those laws, which, however, did not pass.

The immediate prospects of Virginia are dismal enough. But beyond this morning darkness I see the new sun rising. The great barrier, slavery, removed, all the lesser barriers to her prosperity must give way. The current of emigration, of education, of progressive ideas, is surely setting in; and in a few years we shall see this beautiful torpid body rise up, renewed with health and strength, a glory to herself and to the Union.

Footnote 5:

West Virginia, which seceded from the State after the State seceded from the Union, and which now forms a separate sovereignty under the National Government, I can scarcely say that I visited. I saw but the edges of it; it is touched upon, therefore, only in the general remarks which follow.

Footnote 6:

In 1850, the number of slave-owners in the State was 55,063. Of these 11,385 owned one slave each; 15,550, more than one and less than 5; 13,030, more than 5 and less than 10; 9,456, more than 10 and less than 20; 4,880, more than 20 and less than 50; 646, more than 50 and less than 100; 107, over 100 and less than 200; 8 over 200 and less than 300; and 1, over 300.

Footnote 7:

In February, 1866, there were but 2500 troops left in the State.

Footnote 8:

After my visit to the tobacco factories, the following statement, drawn up for the colored workmen by one of their number, was placed in my hands by a gentleman who vouched for its truthfulness. I print it verbatim:—

Richmond September 18, 1865 Dear Sirs We the Tobacco mechanicks of this city and Manchester is worked to great disadvantage In 1858 and 1859 our masters hired us to the Tobacconist at a prices ranging from $150 to 180. The Tobacconist furnished us lodging food & clothing. They gave us tasks to performe, all we made over this task they payed us for. We worked faithful and they paid us faithful. They Then gave us $2 to 2.50 cts, and we made double the amount we now make. The Tobacconist held a meeting, and resolved not give more than $1.50 cts per hundred, which is about one days work—in a week we may make 600 lbs apece with a stemer. The weeks work then at $1.50 amounts to $9—the stemers wages is from $4 to $4.50 cts which leaves from $5 to 4–50 cts per week about one half what we made when slaves. Now to Rent two small rooms we have to pay from $18 to 20. We see $4 50 cts or $5 will not more then pay Rent say nothing about food Clothing medicin Doctor Bills, Tax and Co. They say we will starve through lazines that is not so. But it is true we will starve at our present wages. They say we will steal we can say for ourselves we had rather work for our living, give us a Chance. We are Compeled to work for them at low wages and pay high Rents and make $5 per week and sometimes les. And paying $18 or 20 per month Rent. It is impossible to feed ourselves and family—starvation is Cirten unles a change is brought about.

Tobacco Factory Mechanicks of Richmond and Manchester.

Footnote 9:

In 1860, there were in Virginia $66,000,000 of capital invested in 1675 miles of railroad, distributed over sixteen lines. This estimate includes 287 miles of the Baltimore and Ohio Road. In all the important roads except this, the State is a principal shareholder. The management of some of them has always been loose and uneconomical.

Governor Pierpoint wisely recommends a consolidation of certain lines:—“On the south side of James River we have the Norfolk and Petersburg, South-Side, Virginia and Tennessee, and the Richmond and Danville railroads. These roads are under the management of four different corps of officers, employed at remunerative salaries. Three of these roads form a continuous line of about four hundred miles, and all three of them afford business for the fourth. By working these roads separately a car is loaded at Norfolk with freight for Danville or Abingdon; it is brought to Petersburg to the South-Side Road, and there transferred from the Norfolk to a South-Side car; thence it is taken to Burkeville, where it is again transferred to a Danville car,—if its destination is to that town,—or taken to Lynchburg and reshipped on the Virginia and Tennessee Road, if it goes to Abingdon. In these transactions the cars are delayed, thereby causing a much larger investment in rolling-stock to accommodate the business of these roads, in addition to the labor required to load and unload the freight, besides exposing the merchandise to loss and delaying its transportation. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, with the Northwestern Virginia and Washington branches, is nearly as long as the four roads above named, and the gross earnings of that railroad is about three times as great, the charges for passengers and freight being thirty-three per cent. less than on the Virginia roads referred to; yet the whole business of the Baltimore and Ohio road is done by one corps of officers with moderate salaries. There is the same reason for consolidating the Orange and Alexandria and Virginia Central Roads.”