On Wednesday, September 27th, I left Richmond for Petersburg. The railroad bridge having been burned, I crossed the river in a coach, and took the cars at Manchester. A ride of twenty miles through tracts of weeds and undergrowth, pine barrens and oaken woods, passing occasionally a dreary-looking house and field of “sorry” corn, brought us within sight of the “Cockade City.”[[2]]

It was evening when I arrived. Having a letter from Governor Pierpoint to a prominent citizen, I sallied out by moonlight from my hotel, and picked my way, along the streets sloping up from the river bank, to his house.

Judge —— received me in his library, and kept me until a late hour listening to him. His conversation was of the war, and the condition in which it had left the country. He portrayed the ruin of the once proud and prosperous State, and the sufferings of the people. “Yet, when all is told,” said he, “you cannot realize their sufferings, more than if you had never heard of them.” His remarks touching the freedmen were refreshing, after the abundance of cant on the subject to which I had been treated. He thought they were destined to be crowded out of Virginia, which was adapted to white labor, but that they would occupy the more southern States, and become a useful class of citizens. Many were leaving their homes, with the idea that they must do so in order fully to assert their freedom; but the majority of them were still at work for their old masters. He was already convinced that the new system would prove more profitable to employers than the old one. Formerly he kept eight family servants; now he had but three, who, stimulated by wages, did the work of all.

One of his former servants, to whom he had granted many privileges, came to him, after the war closed, and said, “You a’n’t going to turn me away, I hope, master.”

“No, William,” said the Judge. “As long as I have a home, you have one. But I have no money to hire you.” William replied that he would like to stay, and work right along just as he had done hitherto. “And as for money, master, I reckon we can manage that.”

“How so, William?”

“You see, master, you’ve been so kind to me these past years I’ve done a good deal outside, and if you have no money now, I reckon I must lend you some.”

The faithful fellow brought out his little treasure, and offered it to his old master, who, however, had not the heart to accept it.

The Judge also told a story of a free negro to whom he had often loaned money without security before the war. Recently this negro had come to him again, and asked the old question, “Have you plenty of money, master?”

“Ah, James,” said the Judge, “I used to have plenty, and I always gave you what you wanted, but you must go to somebody else now, for I haven’t a dollar,”