USA > Virginia > Loudoun County > Loudoun County > History and comprehensive description of Loudoun County, Virginia > Part 14
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"They burned all the mills and factories, as well as hay, wheat, corn, straw, and every description of forage. Barns and stables, whether full or empty, were burned.
"At Mrs. Fletcher's (a widow), where the hogs had been killed for her winter's supply of meat, the soldiers made a pile of rails upon which the hogs were placed and burned. They even went to the Poor House and burned and destroyed the supplies provided for the helpless and dependent paupers. On various previous occasions, however, the Alms House had been visited by raiding parties, so that at this time there was
Mosby's Rangers, by James J. Williamson.
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but little left, but of that little the larger portion was taken.
"Colonel Mosby did not call the command together, there- fore there was no organized resistance, but Rangers managed to save a great deal of live stock for the farmers by driving it off to places of safety."
Home Life During the War.
In Loudoun, as everywhere in every age, the seriousness of war was not fully realized until the volunteer soldiery, fol- lowing a short season of feverish social gayety, interspersed with dress parades and exhibition drills, had departed for their respective posts. Immediately and with one accord those left behind settled themselves to watch and wait and work and pray for the absent ones and the cause they had so readily championed.
When few slaves were owned by a family the white boys, too young for service in the army, worked with them in the fields, while the girls busied themselves with household duties, though, at times, they, too, labored in the open. In families owning no slaves the old men, cripples, women, and children were forced to shoulder the arduous labors of the farm.
Stern necessity had leveled sexual and worldly distinc- tions, and manual labor was, at times, performed by all who were in the least physically fitted for it. All classes early be- came inured to makeshifts and privations, though they man- aged in some unselfish manner to send, from time to time, great quantities of clothing, meats, and other supplies to the soldiers in the field and their wounded comrades in the army hospitals.
The intense devotion of Loudoun women to the Confederate cause was most irritating to a certain class of Federal officers in the armies that invaded Northern Virginia. They seemed to think that through their military prowess they had con- quered entrance into Southern society, but the women
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repulsed them at every turn and quite effectually checked their presumptuous advances.
The women of all classes played and sang Confederate airs on every occasion, and, though ordered by the military au- thorities to desist, with consummate daring they usually per- sisted until a guard of soldiers had been detailed to enforce the order. The Federal officers who acted in a gentlemanly manner toward the non-combatants were accused by their rude fellows and by ruder newspaper correspondents of being "wound round the fingers of the rebel women," who, they were sure, had some cherished object in view.
The women, without question, had much the harder task. The men, in active service in the field, were reasonably sure that their families were safe at home and, in the feverish ex- citement of war, felt no concern for themselves, while, on the other hand, the women lived in hourly dread of direful news from the front, and, moreover, were burdened with labors and cares more irksome and harassing than had ever been borne by the absent males.
The music and songs that were popular just before and during the war attest the vacillating temper of the people. Joyous airs were at first heard, these growing contemptuous and defiant as the struggle approached, then stirring war songs and hymns of encouragement. But as sorrow followed sorrow until all were stricken; as wounds, sickness, impris- onment, and death of friends and relatives cast an ever- lengthening shadow over the spirits of the people; as hopes were dashed by defeat, and the consciousness came that, per- haps, after all the cause was losing, the iron entered into the souls of the people. The songs became sadder, while in the churches, where the doctrines of faith and good works were earnestly propounded, little else was heard than the soul- comforting hymns and the militant songs of the older church- men. The promises were, perhaps, more emphasized and a deeply religious feeling prevailed among the home-workers for the cause.
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Pierpont's Pretentious Administration.
On December 7. 1863, the legislature of the "Restored Government of Virginia" held its first meeting in the chambers of the city council at Alexandria, which munici- pality became the seat of a Union administration in the Old Dominion, after Governor Pierpont's removal from Wheeling, W. Va., where, by unqualified political trickery, he and his unauthorized following had effected the establishment of a new Union commonwealth out of the ruins of Confederate Virginia. Six senators were present, representing the counties of Norfolk. Accomac, Fairfax, Alexandria, and Loudoun, and the city of Norfolk. Prince William. Northampton, Alexan- dria. Loudoun, and Norfolk counties were represented by seven delegates. J. Madison Downey. of Loudoun, was elected speaker of the house of delegates.
This tiny mouth-piece of Virginia Unionists bad naturally few important. or even ordinary, questions of legislation to decide. The most important was a provision for the amerd- ment of the State constitution with relation to its bearing on the slavery question. "Everybody." said Governor Pier- pont in his message, "loyal or disloyal. concedes that slavery in the State is doomed. Then acting upon this concession, call a convention of loyal delegates. to alter the State consti- tution in this particular. and declare slavery and involuntary servitude. except for crime, to be forever abolished in the State."
A new constitution which should supercede that of 1851 and express the Union sentiments of the Potomac legislators. was accordingly crafted. Nominations of delegates to the constitutional convention were made in January. 1864. By the terms of the act relative thereto. any voter in the State who had not adhered by word or act to the Confederacy since September 1. 1861. might be chosen a member of the conven- tion; all "loyal" citizens, who had not given aid or comfort to the Confederacy since January 1. 1863, possessed the right to vote.
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Elections were held January 22, 1864. Very little interest was manifested by the people, as was evidenced by the ridicu- lously small vote everywhere polled. Loudoun's nominees, Dr. J. J. Henshaw, J. Madison Downey, and E. R Giver, were elected by a mere handful of voters.
The convention met at Alexandria February 13, 1864, with fifteen * delegates present from twelve counties. Le Roy G. Edwards, of Portsmouth, was elected president and W. J. Cowing, secretary. A number of radical changes in the old constitution, framed by legitimate authority in ante-bellum days, were consummated during the two months' session of this convention.
The Alexandria government held sway very nearly two years. The legislature met for its second session December 5, 1864, and re-elected J. Madison Downey, of Loudoun County, speaker of the house of delegates.
The Pierpont government was not in itself of great impor- tance. Its influence extended to only a dozen counties and three cities and, "under the shadow of bayonets, it was the rule of a few aliens in the midst of a generally hostile popu- lation. Men at the time and since have laughed at its legiti- mist pretenses." It would have been summarily dismissed by the people but for the protection afforded it by the Federal armies. Thus it appears that the "Restored Government of Virginia" was not based upon the consent and approval of the governed. Yet, suited to a policy of expediency and aggression, it was, with quivering and unseemly eagerness, recognized as the legal government of the State by the Lincoln administration.
Emancipation.
A significant event of the war was the issuance by Presi- dent Lincoln of his celebrated emancipation proclamation. This highly important measure, promulgated on New Year's day, 1863, sounded the death-knell of slavery, an institution that, in the South, had seemed commercially indispensable.
* It should be noted that Loudoun County furnished three of this number.
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The tidings spread rapidly through Loudoun producing, however, no change in the amicable relations existing be- tween the white and colored races. In all sections of the South some apprehension was at first felt lest the negroes be tempted by Federal rewards to insurrection and the state militias be required to suppress outbreaks.
The people of Loudoun, of course, shared in these early misgivings, but here, as elsewhere, the negroes, as a whole, manifested no outward signs of disaffection. History must record to their credit and praise that while actual warfare was being waged on the soil of Loudoun they quietly awaited the final issue of the fiery struggle.
Entire communities of women and children were left in their charge, while all able-bodied white men were away on the battlefield, and the trust was faithfully kept. Instances of criminal acts were so rare that at this period none are recalled, and while this fidelity is proof of the peaceable character of the negro, it is also evidence for their owners that slavery had produced no personal hostilities between the two races in Loudoun County, and that the treatment of the negro by his owner under the law had been such as to main- tain between them personal attachment and mutual confidence. Many negroes accompanied their owners to the seat of war, not to take part in battle, but to serve in semi-military duties without exposure to danger. Some of them marched in Maryland and Pennsylvania with the armies of Lee, volun- tarily returning, although they might have remained in the free States without hindrance. They are still proud of the conduct of their race in those days of anxiety and peril.
The proclamation of President Lincoln was regarded in Virginia as a strictly political war measure, designed to place the cause of war distinctly upon the sole question of slavery for an effect to be produced upon foreign countries and with the purpose of making use of negroes as soldiers in the Fed- eral army. The issue of negro freedom had not been distinctly made until this proclamation created it. Hitherto it had been understood that, at the furthest, the Federal authorities would
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insist only on restriction of slavery to the limits where it already existed and a gradual emancipation upon payment of the value of slaves held at the beginning of the war. But now it was settled that the United States proposed to enforce by arms an instantaneous emancipation without compensation.
Close of the War.
The half-clad and impoverished southern armies, after four years of valiant fighting, were no longer able to withstand the superior numbers that had confronted them with merci- less regularity in every important conflict of the war, and, in April, 1865, the struggle ceased with the complete subjuga- tion of the Southland.
All that the States-rights supporters had prophesied would be accomplished if unresisted; all that the Unionists had in- dignantly denied to be the objects of the war was accom- plished: the South was conquered, State sovereignty repudi- ated, the slaves were freed, and the recognition of negro political equality forced upon the nation.
Neighborhood strifes and animosities had been engendered in every village and hamlet, and in nearly every household mothers wept for the lost darlings asleep in their unmarked graves. The women and children, hearing with a shock of the surrender, experienced a terrible dread of the incoming armies. The women had been enthusiastic for the Confeder- ate cause; their sacrifices had been incalculable, and to many the disappointment and sorrow following defeat were more bitter than death. The soldier had the satisfaction of having fought in the field for his opinions and it was easier for him to abide by the decision of arms.
But the terms of peace had scarcely been signed when the great popular heart of the State swelled with generous and magnanimous rivalry in an effort to repair the past. The soldiers who had fought and striven under the successful banners of the Union came back with no bitterness in their hearts, with no taunts on their lips. The war-worn exiles of the Southern army, long before formal permission had been
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given by either the State or Federal Government, were sum- moned home and received with open arms and affectionate greetings by both the Union and States-rights men. The peo- ple of the entire State seemed to remember with sorrowful pride the noble men who had died gallantly in the ranks of either army. Over their faults was thrown the mantle of the sweet and soothing charities of the soldier's grave; and, on all sides, there was manifested unstinted admiration for the valor with which they had borne the dangers and privations of the war.
RECONSTRUCTION.
After the Surrender.
If the era of Reconstruction which followed the tragic drama of civil war lacked the fierce element of bloodshed, it was none the less painful and protracted. It was a gloomy period through which the people of Loudoun, in common with other communities of the Southland, were compelled to pass, and there was no appeal and no alternative save submission.
The conditions in the South in this decade were radically different from those in the North. As a result of the war, the markets of the South were destroyed, investments in slaves were lost, and land improvements deteriorated. The close of the war found the planters bankrupt, their credit destroyed, and agriculture and all business paralyzed by lack of working capital. Vast areas of land went out of cultivation, the re- ported acreage of farm land in all the Southern States was less in 1870 than in 1860, and the total and average values of land everywhere decreased.
The paroled Confederate soldier had returned to his ruined farm and set to work to save his family from extreme want. For him the war had decided two questions-the abolition of slavery, and destruction of State sovereignty. Further than this he did not expect the political effects of the war to extend. He knew that some delay would necessarily attend
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the restoration of former relations with the central govern- ment, but political proscription and humiliation were not anticipated.
No one thought of further opposition to Federal authority; the results of the war were accepted in good faith, and the peo- ple meant to abide by the decision of arms. Naturally, there were no profuse expressions of love for the triumphant North, but the people in general manifested an earnest desire to leave the past behind them and to take their places and do their duty as citizens of the new Union. Many persons were dis- posed to attribute their defeat to the will of the Almighty. 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 crowd- ing one upon another, and exhibiting little interest in govern- ment 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 hoarded, 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 fictitious prices obtaining in the South for sev- eral years after the war, and the liberality of appropriations of the first legislatures following the surrender.
With many persons there was an almost inaddening desire for the things to which they had once been accustomed, the
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traders and speculators now placing them in tempting array in the long-empty store windows.
People owning hundreds of acres of land often were as destitute as the poorest negro. The majority of those having money to invest had bought Confederate securities as a patri- otic 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 rail- road 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 dis- mantled 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 shame- ful. 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 "bummers" 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 disorgan- ized, and its scant product often stolen by roving negroes and other marauders. The planters often found themselves amid a wilderness of land without laborers.
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LOUDOUN COUNTY, VA.
· ¡ 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 to- gether 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, assembled his remaining negroes and for- mally notified them of their freedom, and talked with them concerning its entailed privileges, responsibilities, and limi- tations. The news had, of course, reached them through other channels, but they had loyally awaited the home-com- ing 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
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HISTORY OF
strange that any of them worked, for there obtained an al- most 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 re- mote 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 aver- age 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 ex- tension 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 free- dom, a something he could not exactly comprehend, but which, he was assured, 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 fœticide and child murder. The small number of children during the decade of Reconstruction was
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LOUDOUN COUNTY, VA.
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 passage of the Reconstruction Acts. As many negro men had had several wives before that date they were relieved from the various penalties of deser- tion, 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 serious- ness 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 cheer- ful as the negro men. Both sexes, 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 be- havior and freedom were incompatible. With some there was a disposition not to submit to the direction of their employ- ers, and the negro's advisers warned him against the "efforts of the white man to enslave" him. Consequently, he very
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HISTORY OF LOUDOUN COUNTY, VA.
often refused to enter into contracts that called for any as- sumption of responsibility on his part, and the few agree- ments 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, massed 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 insuffi- cient 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 num- bers and permanently injured the negro constitution.
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 de- sire 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 signifi- cance 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 seem- ingly 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.
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