USA > Virginia > Rockbridge County > Rockbridge County > A history of Rockbridge County, Virginia > Part 17
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In October, 1868, a local paper remarks that greenbacks were becoming fairly plentiful and that the merchants were laying in heavy stocks of goods. In the same month the Rockbridge Agricultural and Mechanical Society roused itself frem its war eclipse and held a fair continuing three days. The new beginning was kept up, and notwithstanding the fact that the whole country was in 1874 in the throes of a severe business depression, the fair of that year was quite successful.
In 1800 Rockbridge fell a victim to the speculative mania known as a boom The visitation created an important town at Buena Vista and was not entirely unsuccessful at Glasgow or at the county seat. The amount of money that was forthcoming to be invested in "development" stock and town lots was a significant commentary on the rapid recuperation that had taken place in twenty-five years. In fact, the assessed valuation for 1877 was greater hy $2.000,000 than the value of farms, farm machinery, and livestock in 1850. By 1917 the valuation of real and personal property bad risen from $5,785,786 to $8.533,920, exclusive of Buena Vista.
During the reconstruction episode the "Yankee" was not a popular personage. In 1869 we hear the complaint that pedlers from the North were representing them elves as Englishmen. However, when Colonel Waite came from Batavia. New York, in 1873 to visit his old friends the Davidsons, he could report that le was treated in the most friendly and courteous manner, although he saw nans et d'diers who were lame or otherwise disabled. He observed that the Hopro wa inclined to Block to the towns, thus causing a scarcity of labor, although mums were still in the employ of their former masters He found slavery unre- gretted, yet found the opinion general that the enfranchi ement of the blacks. in the way it was accomplished, was a political blunder. Two years after the vist of Col nel Warte, John Lesburn remarked that "no well disposed Northerner rel fen af to a kindly reception " Two years later yet, a county paper was willing that more results might come from efforts to attract immigration from
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RECENT PERIOD
the North. It remained for the dastardly shooting of President Garfield to elicit the following remark from the Gazette:
No event in American history has so unified the people as the shot at Garfield. We have discovered all at once that we are Americans. The Union has been restored. The Republic lives. Guiteau's bullets have done more to show the people of these United States what manner of men they are than anything that has happened in their history. The spontaneous outburst of Southern indignation speaks too plainly to be misunderstood.
In announcing the death of the president, C. M. Dold, mayor of Lexington, requested that business be suspended for the day, and that at four o'clock the citizens should assemble at the Presbyterian church, the largest in the town. The schools were also suspended, minute guns were fired at the Institute, and the religious services at the church were largely attended.
By a majority of forty-four votes, one precinct not reporting, Rockbridge declared itself adverse to the Constitutional Convention of 1902. But the changes cmbodied in the state constitution of that year met with general approval. Three years later the County Newes deprecated airing the race issue on the stump.
During the few decades that the Whig party was a factor in American politics, Rockbridge gave majorities for that ticket. We are without precise knowledge of the political complexion of the county in the carly period of the nineteenth century.
The close of hostilities in 1865 found the Whig party in high favor in the South because of its far-sighted attitude respecting sccession in 1860-61. Its opponent, generally in the lead in these states, was under some reproach because of the results of its sponsorship of that issue. The way seemed open for two strong parties to exist in the South as well as in the North. But with a pro- found lack of broad vision, the ultra partisan element that came to the front after the assassination of Lincoln pursued a course which almost solidified the whites of the South in a support of the Democratic party. In 1873 the Democratic candidate for the governorship had more than twice as many votes in Rockbridge as his opponent, the latter carrying only one precinct. In the presidential contest of 1876 Tilden had 2505 votes and Hayes only 903. When the Democracy of Virginia divided on the state debt issue, the Readjuster wing was the stronger in this county, and its majority in 1879 was about 200. Yet in 1881 the Readjuster candidate as governor ran behind his popular opponent by ninety-one votes, al- though he carried seven precincts.
Many of the Readjusters went over to the Republican party, and for more than twenty years Rockbridge lay in the doubtful column. In 1880 the Republican candidate for the governorship had a majority of sixty-eight. In 1884 the Democratic majority for Cleveland was 101, and in 1892 it was 230. But Mc- Kinley's majority was 660 in 1896, and 553 in 1900. In 1901 the state ticket
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& HISTORY OF ROCKERIDGE COUNTY, VIRGINIA
showed a Republican majority of 142 In 1893, Yost for Congress had a majority over Tucker of seventy seven
The constitution of 1002 had in Rockbridge a twofold effect. It caused a great reduction in the aggregate vote, and as this reduction made a heavier in- road upon the Republican column than upon the Democratic, the county no longer stands in the doubtful list. Thus in 1894, 1900. and 1901, the combined votes for the two leading candidates were respectively 3,945. 3.968, and 3,450. it is therefore evident that the average election brought out fully eighty per cent of the voting population. But in the first election under the new system-that of 1903-the total vote had fallen to 1,895. In 1913 it was only 780 In 1912. however, it rose to 1,837. 1,100 votes going to Wilson, 474 to Tait, and 257 to Roosevelt. In 1916 the Democratic candidate for the Assembly carried thirteen precincts and had 1.030 votes. His Republican competitor carried eight precincts and had 835 votes. In the same year Wilson had 1,205 votes and Hughes 678. The west side of the county remains a Republican stronghold.
The period we are considering has brought a number of important changes. The census of 1870 was defective in the Southern states, but on the face of the returns there was a significant loss in population in this county for the decade 1860-70 of 1,100 Between 1870 and 1910, there was a gain of fifty-two per cent., or, if the figures for 1860 be compared with those for 1910, ile gain was forty-two per cent However, much the greater share of this gain is absorbed by the increase in the town and village population. In the neighborhoods strictly rural the gain has been small.
The canal has gone into dinse, there have been great inroads upon the forest supply, and the smelting of iron keeps in the closest touch with the rail- way siding. But with the exception of the old line of the Chesapeake and Ohio, all the railroad mileage in the county has come into operation since 1880. If mining has relatively decreased, manufacturing has greatly increased If there is no conspicuous increase in the tilled acreage, the local agriculture has ad vanced in output, and there is a more general recognition of scientific methods The silo and the commercial erebard have appeared, and the canning industry is gaining a foothold The log house is not extinct, and inhabited specimens will be found in Rockbridge about as long as anywhere in Virginia ; but very many of the farm homes are roomy, comfortable, attractive, and modern.
The pay school has yielded to the free school, and the latter is efficiently administered The higher educational institutions of the county were never in a more prosperous condition.
The telephone, the automobile, and free rural delivery, unknown in the carh years of the period, are deeply modifying the habits of the people The taxable wealth is greater than in the most palmy days of the antebellum era, even with its slave valuation.
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RECENT PERIOD
With a colored laboring class nearly one-third as numerous as the white population, there was necessarily a jar in the adjustment to the changed labor system that began in 1865. But the whites went to work so manfully that in a few years the deeper traces of the war were obliterated. Hired service is no longer under any social ban. Between 1900 and 1910, the colored element de- creased nearly one-third, and Rockbridge has assumed much of the appearance of a community that is wholly white. Yet it does not by any means follow that the negro will totally disappear. In the Rockbridge of today the colored people are, on the whole, orderly, industrious, and prosperous.
In a larger degree than was usual in the Valley counties, the old Rockbridge was noted for its fine country estates, owned hy an old family element that was numerous, cultured, and influential. This class has relatively declined, much of it having been attracted to the cities and to other states. The less wealthy class of whites has perhaps come nearer to holding its own, and a new element has slowly yet steadily been coming in. In consequence, there is a very perceptible difference between the Rockbridge of yesterday and the Rockbridge of today.
The citizen of this county is industrious and hospitable, and is conservative in thought and action. His local patriotism is deep, and it leads him to draw a distinction between the descendant of the early settler and the resident born in some other community.
In 1914 the world was prosperous. With only one conspicuous exception all the members of the family of nations had a sincere desire to live in peace with one another. Yet a rich and thriving country of Europe, acting through a subservient neighbor, deliberately provoked a general war, and waged it with a studied cruelty which would have shamed the North American Indian of the eighteenth century. There was a contempt for the good opinion of the world. No considerations of truth, honor, or humanity were permitted to stand in the way of the German program. The horrible crimes perpetrated by the German armies were by order of the German leaders, and seemingly with the general consent of the German people.
The colossal vanity of the kaiser made him aspire to be another Alexander the Great. Behind him was a feulalistic group of military leaders, land barons. and captains of industry. Below him and them were the millions of the German people, trained from infancy to obey the nod of the man in authority, and with- out any practical voice in their government. The conceit, arrogance, and greed of the war lords was boundless. By means of a domestic propaganda, adroit and persistent, the German had for years been indoctrined with the myth of his superiority to anyone else whomsoever. The clergyman, the schoolmaster. and the journalist were permitted to teach only what would encourage the opinion that it was the God-given mission of the German to overcome other
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A HISTORY OF ROCKBRIDGE COUNTY, VIRGINIA
nations by the sword and rule the entire earth. The world was not to be conquered for the world's good, but that it might be plundered and domineered over. That nation the German saw fit to deem degenerate was to be blotted out. This propaganda developed the "bighead" in a most acute form. It led to an insufferable contempt for the rest of the world. Consequently, the German has utterly failed as a colonizer, or in gaining the good will of the Europeans who are not German, yet hitherto under German rule.
Germany has posed as a highly civilized nation. Her industrial organiza- tion was very efficient. She already had an enviable "place in the sun," but wanted a monopoly of this privilege. The Germans have some commendable traits and have great possibilities for good in the upbuilding of the world. But they are as yet a young people, only superficially weaned from barbarism and paganism, and without the acquirement of the habit of good manners. Napoleon said that if one scratched a Russian he found a Tartar. Were he alive now he would say that if one scratches a Prussian he finds a savage. Under auto- cracy, the civilization of Germany was an effort to accommodate the twentieth century to the spirit of the Middle Ages. It was worn as a garment and not as a part of hier being. It was materialistic and without a soul. It scoffed at the reality of any power except brute force. The war which the criminal leaders of Germany set in motion in 1914 has been a conclusive demonstration of the unfitness of present-day Germany to lead the world in the path of real civilization.
"That war was not a war in the ordinary sense of the term. It was the overpowering of an outlaw who was running amuck AA more righteous conflict was never waged. Germany was fought that the world might be made a decent place to live in There is no place for that country in the household of civilized nations until her people cease to bow down to the false gods they have so assidu- ously worshipped the last half century. It is entirely against a growing spirit of the age for one nation to throttle another by a resort to arms, particularly when this recourse involves the plunder of destruction of mines and factories, the en- lavement or massacre of the operative population, and indiscriminate piracy and murder on the high seas. It is not for any nation to assume that it is a law to it (If and that whatever it does is justifiable
The U'mted States was forced into this war to assist in the rescue of civilza- tion "The people of Rockbridge have the consciousness that they loyally upheld their country, and that their sons were numerously represented on the battle-from that ended the war.
XVI
THE NEGRO ELEMENT
SLAVERY IN VIRGINIA-GROWTH OF SLAVERY IN ROCKBRIDGE-MAINTAINING ORDER AMONG THE NEGROES-CRIME-EMANCIPATION EFFORTS-THE NEGRO IN THE WAR OF 1861-THE ROCKBRIDGE NEGRO OF TODAY
African slavery was almost as unfamiliar to the British people in their own land as it was in the whitest county of the Old Dominion. It was not legalized in Virginia until more than fifty years after the founding of Jamestown. White servants were preferred to colored ones until after 1700. Negroes of American birth were more satisfactory laborers than those coming direct from Africa. Slavery grew in favor, and when American independence was declared, the negro population of Virginia was already so large that it seemed likely to exceed the white at an early day.
The more far-seeing of the ruling class in Virginia perceived the unde- sirability of this inundation. The House of Burgesses repeatedly asked the British government to cease bringing negroes to the colony. All these efforts were set at naught by the greed of the mercantile classes of England. On the eve of the Revolution, Lord Dartmouth said England "cannot allow the colonies to check or discourage in any degree a traffic so beneficial to the nation." This forcing of slaves upon Virginia was one of the grievances named by Jefferson in his original draft of the Declaration of Independence. It must be conceded, how- ever, that slaves would not have been brought to Virginia unless there was a willingness to buy them. A stern boycott would have ended the traffic. No British ministry would have dared to break down such a weapon by sheer force.
The fact that the summer climate of Virginia is considerably warmer than that of Britain had very little to do with the importation of slaves. Black slaves as well as white servants were purchased because the society of Tidewater was essentially aristocratic. Where there is an aristocracy, there is inevitably a menial class. The Tidewater was a land of tobacco plantations, and these could not be carried on without a large class of laborers. It is interesting to note that above the Tidewater and below the Blue Ridge, slaves were fewer than in the former section. In the Valley they were still fewer, and in many of the counties beyond the Alleghany Divide they were almost non-existent. Slaves and large farms grew fewer and yet fewer as one journeyed toward the Ohio.
There never was a time when the opponents of slavery in America were not numerous. The institution was vehemently denounced by the delegates from Virginia to the Federal Convention of 1787. A Virginia law of 1784 encouraged
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A HISTORY OF KOMKERIM, COUNTY, VIRGINIA
the freeing of the slaves. In the same year the Methodists of America became an independent church, and one of their first official acts was to petition against slavery, although most of their membership was then in Virginia and Maryland. Slavery tended to make manual labor discreditable unless it was performed by slaves. It thereby degraded the lower classes of society and contributed to idle- ness in the higher. It was a Southern man who tersely described slavery as "a curse to the master and a wrong to the slave." It was another who defined it as "a mildew which has blighted every region it has touched from the creation of the world."
Colonial AAugusta was almost a white man's country. In 1756 it had only about eighty slaves ; perhaps not more than one per cent. of the population. But thence forward they became increasingly numerous in the better agricultural dis- tricts of the Valley. In Rockbridge they were few prior to the Revolution, and they were confined to a small number of the wealthier families. When the iron industry arose and made a demand for labor, negroes were hired from masters cast of the Blue Ridge. "By 1861," remarked Colonel Preston, "we were quite a slaveholding people; a few more years, and we would have had to undergo much that Tuckahoe did on that score. It was well the unpleasantness came as soon as it did."
So completely have the outward vestiges of the reign of slavery passed away from Rockbridge, that only a few of the original negro quarters remain. . notable exception in the Weaver estate at Buffalo Forge, where the houses for the slaves were of an uncommonly substantial and comfortable kind. The insti- tution was milder in Virginia than in the cotton belt, and the relations between master and slave were as a rule kindly. The mam highway to "the darky's heart was down his throat." The slave was given a holiday weck at Christmas time and he enjoyed it as much as his master did. He was in his element when playing banjo and bones and patting his knee.
But since the African came to Virginia as a child-race, and was not used to any softer argument than brute force, it was felt that slavery could not be maintained by treating the negro in the same manner as the white man The lave was supposed not to carry a gun or to go outside his master's premises without a pass. Poisons might not be put into his hands, and this restriction was necessary. In 1839 a Rockbridge slave attempted to poison several persons Ile might not be taught to read or write. But between himself and his own lave the master did not think the law had any claim to interfere. Accordingly. if he saw fit, he taught a favorite slave to read and write.
The patrol system was one means of keeping the slaves in order, and it occasioned a good deal of expense. Captains were appointed by the county court, each having a force of some six or eight men. \ captain and his squad
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THE NEGRO ELEMENT
were to patrol a specified area at specified times. For this service the patrol- man was paid thirty-three cents a night in 1782. In 1822, he was paid six cents an hour. The penal code was not the same to the slave that it was to the Caucsaian. His ears could be cropped. He could be hanged for burning a barn, or for stealing, and the county court was empowered to decree the death penalty. But before the negro was hanged, his valuation as a slave was determined, and this sum was paid by the county to the master.
A considerable share of the crime in Rockbridge has been committed by the negro. The first civil execution of a white man in this county took place August 3, 1905. It was preceded by the legal hanging of five negroes at five different times. York, a slave of Andrew Reid, was adjudged guilty December 1, 1786, of killing Tom, another of Reid's slaves. It was odrered that he be hanged one week later, that his head be severed from the body, and that it be set on a pole at the forks of the road between Lexington and John Paxton's. Rape was not at all unknown before emancipation. An execution for this crime took place in Rockbridge in 1850. For assaulting and beating Arthur McCorkle, Alexander Scott was ordered to be hanged April 5, 1844. The master was to be paid $450.00. Cyrus, a slave of Robert Piper, was ordered to hang in 1798 for burning his master's house. In 1840, Nelson, a slave, was ordered to be hanged for burglary. Outlaw slaves might be put to death with impunity. But the penalty for burglary was sometimes changed to transportation to Liberia. Whip- ping was administered in less serious matters, as when thirty-nine lashes were ordered for Peter, a slave of John Hays, in 1800. He had stolen leather worth $3.25. In 1804, Jinny, a slave of John Dunlap, threatened his wife, Dorcas. The wonian was ordered to be kept in jail until her child was born, and thirty lashes, well laid on, were to be given. A negress was occasionally guilty of infanticide.
Before 1861, and particularly before 1830, there were somewhat frequent instances of manumission. But restrictions were imposed on the freedman. Ile was registered as to height, color, markings, etc., and a duplicate of the paper given him. Registration had to be repeated every five years. To live in the county he had to have the consent of the county court. But he had a surname as well as a given name, and his marriages were recorded among those of the white people. It was the policy of Virginia to discourage the free negro from remaining in the state. He was too frequently idle and worthless, and his pres- ence tended to make the slaves restless and demoralized. Yet a request to remain, if by a freedman who stood well with the whites, was not likely to be turned down.
In 1830 the desire to get rid of the institution of slavery had become very strong in Virginia. The state was declining in wealth, and emigration to the West and South was very heavy. About this time, 343 women of Augusta county
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A HISTORY OF ROCKBRIDGE COUNTY, VIRGINIA
signed a petition for umechate emancipation. A petition to the Assembly, dated 1827 and sent from Rockbridge, asks the removal of free negroes from the state, and favors manumission and colonization. It goes on to say that "the evils, buth political and moral, which spring from the difference of color and condition in our population, are great and obvious. The blacks, in proportion to their number, are a positive deduction from our military strength, an impedi- ment to the wealth and improvement of the country, and to the general diffusion of knowledge by schools; a source of domestic uneasiness and an occasion of mi ral degeneracy of character. Separated by an impassable barrier from politi- cal privileges and social respectability, and untouched by the usual incentives to improvement, they must be our natural enemies, degraded in sentiment and base in morals." Another Rockbridge petition exhibits the contrast between 1790 and 1830, with respect to the section of the state east of the Blue Ridge. The whites had increased from 314,523 to 375,935, but the blacks had increased from 288,425 to 457,013, being now in a large majority. The tendency toward an Africanization of the Eastern District was causing much emigration of the whites. It was prophesied that a race war would result and cause a blotting out of the negroes. The petition asked for a special tax to create a fund to re- move such blacks as were willing to go, and to purchase some others to send with them. It also asked that private emancipation be followed by removal.
In 1832 a bill for a general emancipation passed the lower house of the legislature, and lacked only one vote of going through the senate The Western Instruct of Virginia was almost unanimous for the measure. The value of the slave property was about $100,000,000. Shortly after the defeat of this bill came the tragic insurrection in Southampton, whereby sixty white people lost their lives. An anti-slavery feeling spread in the North, and the many anti- slavery societies in the South were chisbanded. The institution was given a new lease of life, and yet there was still a strong economic opposition to slavery in the We tern District, tlos name being given, until 1861, to the portion of Virginia Best of the Blue Ridge.
A petition from this county in 1817 says it is beheved there are 60,000 of the free colored in the state, and it asserts the opinion that there will be 250.000 of them in the year 1900 It recommends deportation to liberia, and says that with few exceptions the freedmen are idle, worthless, and increasingly infurion to the slaveholders and the slaves Henry Rutiner, himself a slave- Folder, put forward a plan the same year. He found that slavery was driving away immigration, driving ont white laborers, crippling agriculture, commerce. and industry, imposing hurtful social ideals upon the people, and that it was detrimental to the common schools and to popular education His plan was to divide the state along the line of the Blue Ridge, climmate slavery on the west
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