“That’s what I was thinking,” said James. “I haven’t come to borrow this time, but to lend.” And, taking out a fifty-dollar note, with tears in his eyes he entreated the Judge to take it.
I noticed that the library had a new door, and that the walls around it were spotted with marks of repairs. “These are the effects of a shell that paid us a flying visit one morning, during the bombardment. Fortunately, no one was hurt.”
He accepted the results of the war in such a candid and loyal spirit as I had rarely seen manifested by the late governing class in Virginia. If such men could be placed in power, the sooner the State were fully restored to its place in the Union, the better; but, alas!—
Returning to the hotel, I missed my way, and seeing a light in a little grocery store, went in to make inquiries. I found two negroes talking over the bombardment. Finding me a stranger, and interested, they invited me to stop, and rehearsed the story for my benefit.
The shelling began on the first of July, 1864. It was most rapid on the third. Roofs and chimneys and walls were knocked to pieces. All the lower part of the town was deserted. Many of the inhabitants fled to the country; some remained there in camps, others got over their fright and returned. “We went up on Market Street, and got into a bomb-proof we made of cotton bales.” The bombardment was kept up until the first of October, and afterwards resumed at intervals. “Finally people got so they didn’t care anything about it. I saw two men killed by picking up shells and looking at them; they exploded in their hands.”
At the time of the evacuation the negroes “had to keep right dark” to avoid being carried away by their masters. Some went across the Appomattox, and had to swim back, the bridges being burned.
They described to me the beauty of the scene when the mortars were playing in the night, and the heavens were spanned with arches of fire.
“It was a right glad day for us when the Rebels went out and the Federals came in; and I don’t believe any of the people could say with conscientiousness they were sorry,—they had all suffered so much. The Rebels set all the tobacco-warehouses afire, and burned up the foundery and commissary stores. That was Sunday. Monday morning they went out, and the Federals came in, track after track, without an hour between them.”
These two negroes were brothers, and men of decided character and intelligence, although they had been slaves all their lives. They learned to read in a spelling-book when children by the firelight of their hut. “I noticed how white children called their letters; and afterwards I learned to write without any showing, by copying the writing-letters in the spelling-book. I learned to read in such a silent manner, it was a long time before I could make any head reading loud. I learned arithmetic by myself in the same way.”
If any person of white skin, who has risen to eminence, is known to have acquired the rudiments of education under such difficulties, much is made of the circumstance. But in the case of a poor black man, a slave, I suppose it is different.