History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia Part 23

Others believed that fate, destiny, or Providence had frowned upon the South, and this state of mind made them the more ready to accept as final the results of the war.

Such was the state of feeling in the first stage, before there was any general understanding of the nature of the questions to be solved or of the conflicting policies. News from the outside world filtered through slowly; while the whole County lay prostrate, breathless, exhausted, resting. Little interest was evinced in public questions; the long strain had been removed, and the future was a problem too bewildering even to be considered yet awhile. The people settled down into a lethargy, seemingly indifferent to the events that were crowding one upon another, and exhibiting little interest in government and politics.

There was a woeful lack of good money in the County and industry was paralyzed. The gold and silver that remained was carefully h.o.a.rded, and for months none was in circulation except in the towns. The people had no faith in paper money of any description and thought that greenbacks would become worthless in the same way as had Confederate currency. All sense of values had been lost, which fact may account for the fabulous and fict.i.tious prices obtaining in the South for several years after the war, and the liberality of appropriations of the first legislatures following the surrender.

With many persons there was an almost maddening desire for the things to which they had once been accustomed, the traders and speculators now placing them in tempting array in the long-empty store window.

People owning hundreds of acres of land often were as dest.i.tute as the poorest negro. The majority of those having money to invest had bought Confederate securities as a patriotic duty, and in this way much of the specie had been drawn from the County.

Nearly all the grist-mills and manufacturing establishments had been destroyed, mill-dams cut, ponds drained, and railroad depots, bridges, and trestles burned. All farm animals near the track of the armies had been carried away or killed by the soldiers, or seized after the occupation by the troops. Horses, mules, cows, and other domestic animals had almost disappeared except in the secluded districts. Many farmers had to plough with oxen. Farm buildings had been dismantled or burned, houses ruined, fences destroyed, corn, meat, and other food products taken.

In the larger towns, where something had been saved from the wreck of war, the looting by Federal soldiers was shameful. Pianos, curios, pictures, curtains, and other household effects were shipped North by the Federal officers during the early days of the occupation. Gold and silver plate and jewelry were confiscated by the "b.u.mmers" who were with every command. Abuses of this kind became so flagrant that the Northern papers condemned the conduct of the soldiers, and several ministers, among them Henry Ward Beecher, rebuked the practice from the pulpit.

The best soldiers of the Federal army had demanded their discharge as soon as fighting was over, and had immediately left for their homes.

Those who remained in the service in the State were, with few exceptions, very disorderly and kept the people in terror by their robberies and outrages.

Land was almost worthless, many of the owners having no capital, farm animals, or implements. Labor was disorganized, and its scant product often stolen by roving negroes and other marauders. The planters often found themselves amid a wilderness of land without laborers.

From this general gloom and despair the young people soon partially recovered, and among them there was much social gayety of a quiet sort. For four years the young men and young women had seen little of each other, and there had been comparatively few marriages. Now that they were together again, these nuptials soon became more common than conditions seem to have warranted.

This revival of spirits did not extend to the older people, who were long recovering from the shock of grief, and strain of war, much that had made life worth living being lost to them forever.

_Conduct of the Freedmen._

Nearly every slaveholder, returning home after the fall of the Confederacy, a.s.sembled his remaining negroes and formally notified them of their freedom, and talked with them concerning its entailed privileges, responsibilities, and limitations. The news had, of course, reached them through other channels, but they had loyally awaited the home-coming of their masters, to whom they looked for a confirmation of the reports. Steady employment at a fixed wage was offered most of them, and, except in the vicinity of the towns and army posts, where they were exposed to alien influences, the negroes usually chose to remain at their work.

Many were satisfied with the old slavery quarters while others, for the taste of freedom that was afforded, established homes of their own at near-by points. There were two things which the negroes of the South felt must be done before they could be entirely free: They must discard their masters' names and leave the old plantations if only for a few days or weeks.

Among the most contented and industrious there was much restlessness and neglect of work. Hunting and fishing and frolics were the order of the day. Nearly every man acquired, in some way, a dog and gun as badges of freedom. It was quite natural that the negroes should want a prolonged holiday for the enjoyment of their new-found freedom; and it is really strange that any of them worked, for there obtained an almost universal impression--the result of the teachings of the negro soldiers and Freedmen's Bureau officials--that the Government would support them in idleness. But in the remote districts this impression was vague. The advice of the old plantation preachers held many to their work, and these did not suffer as did their brothers who flocked to the towns.

Neither master nor freedman knew exactly how to begin anew and it was some time before affairs emerged from the chaotic state into which the war had plunged them. The average planter had little or no faith in free negro labor, yet all who were now able were willing to give it a trial. The more optimistic land-owners believed that the free negro could in time be made an efficient laborer, in which case they were willing to admit that the change might prove beneficial to both races.

At first, however, no one knew just how to work the free negro; innumerable plans were devised, many tried, and few adopted.

The new regime differed but little from the old until the fall of 1865, when the Freedmen's Bureau, aided by the negro soldiers and white emissaries, had filled the minds of the credulous ex-slaves with false impressions of the new and glorious condition that lay before them. Then, with the extension of the Bureau and spread of the army posts, many of the negroes became idle, neglected the crops planted in the spring, and moved from their old homes to the towns or wandered aimlessly from place to place.

Upon leaving their homes the blacks collected in gangs at the cross-roads, in the villages and towns, and especially near the military posts. To the negro these ordinary men in blue were beings from another sphere who had brought him freedom, a something he could not exactly comprehend, but which, he was a.s.sured, was a delightful state.

Upon the negro women often fell the burden of supporting the children, to which hardship were traceable the then common crimes of foeticide and child murder. The small number of children during the decade of Reconstruction was generally remarked. Negro women began to flock to the towns; how they lived no one can tell; immorality was general among them. The conditions of Reconstruction were unfavorable to honesty and morality among the negroes, both male and female.

Their marriage relations were hardly satisfactory, judged by white standards. The legislatures in 1865-1866 had declared slave marriages binding. The reconstructionists denounced this as a great cruelty and repealed the laws. Marriages were then made to date from the pa.s.sage of the Reconstruction Acts. As many negro men had had several wives before that date they were relieved from the various penalties of desertion, bigamy, adultery, etc. Some seized the opportunity to desert their wives and children and acquire new help-meets. While much suffering resulted from the desertion, as a rule, the negro mother alone supported the children better than did the father who stayed.

Negro women accepted freedom with even greater seriousness than did the men, and were not always, nor easily, induced to again take up the familiar drudgery of field labor and domestic service. To approximate the ease of their former mistresses, to wear fine clothes and go often to church were their chief ambitions. Negro women had never been as well-mannered, nor, on the whole, as good natured and cheerful as the negro men. Both s.e.xes, during Reconstruction, lost much of their native cheerfulness; the men no longer went singing and shouting to their work in the fields; some of the blacks, especially the women, became impudent and insulting in their bearing toward the whites.

As a result of certain pernicious alien influences there soon developed a tendency to insolent conduct on the part of the younger negro men, who seemed convinced that civil behavior and freedom were incompatible. With some there was a disposition not to submit to the direction of their employers, and the negro's advisers warned him against the "efforts of the white man to enslave" him. Consequently, he very often refused to enter into contracts that called for any a.s.sumption of responsibility on his part, and the few agreements to which he became a party had first to be ratified by the Bureau. As he had no knowledge of the obligation of contracts, he usually violated them at pleasure.

The negroes, ma.s.sed in the towns, lived in deserted and ruined houses or in huts built by themselves of refuse lumber. They were very scantily clothed and their food, often insufficient and badly cooked, if cooked at all, was obtained by begging, stealing, or upon application to the Bureau. Taking from the whites was not considered stealing, but was "Spilin' de Gypshuns."

The health of the negroes was injured during the period 1865-1875. In the towns the standard of living was low, sanitary arrangements were bad, and disease killed large numbers and permanently injured the negro const.i.tution.

Following the military occupation of the State the negroes, young and old, were seized with an overmastering desire for book learning. This seeming thirst for education was not rightly understood at the North; it was, in fact, more a desire to imitate the white master and obtain formerly forbidden privileges than any real yearning due to an understanding of the value of education. The negro hardly knew the significance of the bare word, but the northern people gave him credit for an appreciation not yet altogether true even of whites.

CONCLUSION.

No occurrences of extreme historic value mark the career of Loudoun since the days of Reconstruction, and the seemingly abrupt conclusion to which the reader has now arrived is not thought incompatible with the plan of this work, which in no single instance has contemplated the inclusion of any but the most momentous events. Besides, existing conditions have received protracted mention in the preceding descriptive and statistical departments where appear evidences of the County's present vast wealth and resources, numberless charms and recent marvelous development.