"The year 1864 closed with a gloomy outlook for the Confederacy" writes Williamson and adds that "the winter in Virginia was very severe and the ground was covered with snow and sleet for the better part of the season." About all the comfort Loudoun had was in the repeated rumours of peace to which the people eagerly listened and repeated one to another.
And so the bitter winter passed and in the spring came Appomattox.
CHAPTER XVI
RECOVERY
From east to west, from north to south, her farm lands ravaged, plundered and made desolate, many of her sons dead or incapacitated by wounds or sickness, her barns, outbuildings and fences burned, her horses, cattle and other livestock stolen, confiscated or wantonly driven away, Loudoun presented, in that summer of 1865, a sad and dispiriting contrast to the fruitful abundance of five years before. By the terms of the surrender at Appomattox the Southern cavalryman had been allowed to retain the horse or horses owned by him; but as the infantry started on their long trudge homeward, they carried with them little beyond the ragged clothes they wore and their determination to begin life anew. How slowly and with what unremitting toil and self-denial the ruined farms were restored, the fields again made to yield their corn and wheat and clover, rails split to rebuild the vanished fences, makeshifts at first and then better structures erected to replace those burned, only the people who lived through those years of poverty could tell; and on that slow path upward from ruin and desolation the part borne by the women equalled, perhaps surpassed, that enacted by the men. The County still reverently relates the uncomplaining toil and sacrifices of mothers, wives and daughters during that grievous time.
Bad as conditions were for the majority, they were even worse for the large landowners, the former wealthier class. Gentlefolk, wholly unused to manual labor, perforce turned to tasks theretofore the work of their slaves. The men ploughed and hoed, their women cooked, performed every household task and somehow kept up their homes. One of the few bright spots in the drab picture was that dwelling-houses seldom had been destroyed; thus at least there was human shelter. Also the small towns and hamlets, having escaped the devastation of the farm lands, were to a certain extent nuclei from which the new life could be built.
County government had well-nigh ceased to function during the war. All those who had borne arms against the United States or otherwise aided and abetted the Confederacy—that is, a very definite majority of the men of the county—now found themselves disfranchised; the minority of Union men, Quakers, Germans or others who had discreetly avoided acting with one side or the other, controlled the first local election after the peace. It was held on the 1st day of June, 1865. The court record, after a long silence and copied into its books later, begins again on the 10th of the following month:
"At a County Court held for Loudoun County on Monday the 10th day of July, 1865, present: George Abel, R. M. Bentley, Francis M. Carter, John Compher, Thomas J. Cost, John P. Derry, Enoch Fenton, Herod Frasier, Fenton Furr, Henry Gaver, John Grubb, William H. Gray, Eli J. Hoge, Joseph Janney, Alexander L. Lee, Charles L. Mankin, Asbury M. Nixon, Rufus Smith, Basil W. Shoemaker, Jno. L. Stout, Mahlon Thomas, Lott Tavenner, Henry S. Taylor, Michael Wiard, Jno. Wolford, Thomas Burr Williams and James M. Wallace. Gentlemen Justices elected who were on the 1st day of June 1865 duly elected Justices of the peace for the County of Loudoun, and who have been commissioned by the Governor, were duly qualified as such Justices by William F. Mercer, one of the Commissioners of Election for said County, appointed by the Governor by taking the several oaths prescribed by law."[180]