Except on the government farm, where old and infirm persons and orphan children were placed, I did not find anybody who was receiving aid from the government. Said one, “I have a family of seven children. Four are my own, and three are my brother’s. I have twenty acres. I get no help from government, and do not want any as long as I can have land.” I stopped at another little farm-house, beside which was a large pile of wood, and a still larger heap of unhusked corn, two farm wagons, a market wagon, and a pair of mules. The occupant of this place also had but twenty acres, and he was “getting rich.”
“Has government helped you any this year?” I asked a young fellow we met on the road.
“Government helped me?” he retorted proudly. “No; I am helping government.”
We stopped at a little cobbler’s shop, the proprietor of which was supporting not only his own wife and children, but his aged mother and widowed sister. “Has government helped you any?” we inquired. “Nary lick in the world!” he replied, hammering away at his shoe.
Driving across a farm, we saw an old negro without legs hitching along on his stumps in a cornfield, pulling out grass between the rows, and making it up into bundles to sell. He hailed us, and wished to know if we wanted to buy any hay. He seemed delighted when my companion told him he would take all he had, at his own price. He said he froze his legs one winter when he was a slave, and had to have them taken off in consequence. Formerly he had received rations from the government, but now he was earning his own support, except what little he received from his friends.
It was very common to hear of families that were helping not only their own relatives, but others who had no such claim of kindred upon them. And here I may add that the account which these people gave of themselves was fully corroborated by officers of the government and others who knew them.
My friend did not succeed very well in obtaining laborers for his mills. The height of the freedmen’s ambition was to have little homes of their own and to work for themselves. And who could blame this simple, strong instinct, since it was not only pointing them the way of their own prosperity, but serving also the needs of the country?[[4]]
Notwithstanding the pending difficulty with the land-owners, those who had had their lots assigned them were going on to put up new houses, from which they might be driven at any day,—so great was their faith in the honor of the government which had already done so much for them.
Revisiting Virginia some months later, I learned that the Freedmen’s Bureau had interposed to protect these people in their rights, showing that their faith had not been in vain.