East Virginia is hilly. The southeast portion of the State is undulating, with occasional plains, and swamps of formidable extent. The soil of the tide-water districts is generally a light sandy loam. A belt of mountain ranges, a hundred miles in breadth, runs in a northeast and southwest direction across the State, enclosing some of its richest and loveliest portions. The Valley of Virginia,—as that fertile stripe is called lying west of the Blue Ridge, drained by the Shenandoah and the head-waters of the James,—is fitly called the granary of the State. It is a limestone region, admirably adapted for grains and grazing. The virginity of its soil has not been polluted by tobacco.
In 1860 there were in the State less than eleven and a half million acres of improved land, out of an area of near forty millions. Over thirteen million bushels of wheat were produced; one million of rye, Indian corn, and oats; one hundred and twenty-four million pounds of tobacco; twelve thousand seven hundred and twenty-seven bales of cotton; and two and a half million pounds of wool (in round numbers). There were four thousand nine hundred manufacturing establishments, the value of whose manufactures was fifty-one million three hundred thousand dollars. There were thirteen cotton factories, running twenty-eight thousand seven hundred spindles. The most important article of export before the war was negroes. There were sold out of the State annually twenty thousand.[[6]]
With the exception of the last-named staple, these annual productions are destined to be multiplied indefinitely by a vigorous system of free labor and the introduction of Northern capital. The worn-out lands can be easily restored by the application of marl and gypsum, with which the State abounds, and of other natural fertilizers. The average value of land, in 1850, was eight dollars an acre; while that of New Jersey, which never bragged of its fertility, was forty-four dollars. The former price will now buy lands in almost any section of Virginia except the Shenandoah Valley; while there is no question but that they can be raised to the latter price, and beyond, in a very few years, by judicious cultivation, united with such internal improvements as are indispensable to make the wealth of any region available.
Still greater inducements are presented to manufacturers than to farmers. To large capitalists, looking to establish extensive cotton-mills, I do not feel myself competent to offer any suggestions. But of small manufactures I can speak with confidence. Take the Shenandoah Valley for example. The wool that is raised there is sent North to be manufactured, and brought back in the shape of clothing, having incurred the expense of transportation both ways, and paid the usual tariff to traders through whose hands it has passed. The Valley abounds in iron ore of the best quality; and it imports its kettles and stoves. The same may be said of nearly all agricultural implements. The freight on many of these imports is equal to their original cost. It was said before the war that scarce a wagon, clock, broom, boot, shoe, coat, rake or spade, or piece of earthen ware, was used in the South, that was not manufactured at the North; and the same is substantially true to-day, notwithstanding the change in this particular which the war was supposed to have effected. Let any enterprising man, or company of men, with sufficient experience for the work and capital to invest, go into Virginia, make use of the natural water-power which is so copious that no special price is put upon it, and manufacture, of the materials that abound on the spot, articles that are in demand there, establishing a judicious system of exchange, and who can doubt the result, now that the great obstacle in the way of such undertakings, slavery, has been removed?
In speaking of the products of Virginia, we should not forget its oysters; of which near fourteen and a half million bushels, valued at four million eight hundred thousand dollars, were sent from Chesapeake Bay in one year, previous to the war.
Virginia never had any common-school system. One third of her adult population can neither read nor write. There was a literary fund, established to promote the interests of education, which amounted, in 1861, to something over two millions of dollars; but it was swallowed by the war. At the present time the prospect for white common schools in the State is discouraging. The only one I heard of in anything like a flourishing condition was a school for poor whites, established by the Union Commission in the buildings of the Confederate naval laboratory, at Richmond. It numbers five hundred pupils, and is taught by experienced teachers from the North. The prospect is better for the education of the freedmen. There were in the State last winter ninety freedmen’s schools, with an aggregate of eleven thousand five hundred pupils. There were two hundred teachers; twenty-five of whom were colored men and women at the head of self-supporting schools of their own race. The remaining schools, taught by experienced individuals from the North, were supported mainly by the following benevolent associations: The New-York National Freedmen’s Relief; American Missionary; Pennsylvania Freedmen’s Relief; Baptist Home Mission; New-England Freedmen’s Aid; and Philadelphia Friends’ Freedmen’s Relief.
The opposition manifested by a large class of whites to the establishment of these schools was at first intense and bitter. It had nearly ceased,—together with the outrages on freedmen, which had been frequent,—when, on the removal of the troops from certain localities,[[7]] it recommenced, and was, at my last visit, fearfully on the increase. Teachers were threatened and insulted, and school-houses broken into or burned. The better class of citizens,—many of whom see the necessity of educating the negro now that he is free,—while they have nothing to do with these acts of barbarism, are powerless to prevent them. The negro-haters are so strong an element in every society that they completely shield the wrong-doers from the reach of civil law.
The great subject of discussion among the people everywhere was the “niggers.” Only a minority of the more enlightened class, out of their large hearts and clear heads, spoke of them kindly and dispassionately. The mass of the people, including alike the well-educated and the illiterate, generally detested the negroes, and wished every one of them driven out of the State. The black man was well enough as a slave; but even those who rejoiced that slavery was no more, desired to get rid of him along with it. When he was a chattel, like a horse or dog, he was commonly cherished, and sometimes even loved like a favorite horse or dog, and there was not a particle of prejudice against him on account of color; but the master-race could not forgive him for being free; and that he should assume to be a man, self-owning and self-directing, was intolerable. I simply state the fact; I do not condemn anybody. That such a feeling should exist is, I know, the most natural thing in the world; and I make all allowances for habit and education.
It is this feeling which makes some protection on the part of the government necessary to the negro in his new condition. The Freedmen’s Bureau stands as a mediator between him and the race from whose absolute control he has been too recently emancipated to expect from it absolute justice. The belief inheres in the minds of the late masters, that they have still a right to appropriate his labor. Although we may acquit them of intentional wrong, it is impossible not to see how far their conduct is from right.
Before the war, it was customary to pay for ordinary able-bodied plantation slaves, hired of their masters, at rates varying from one hundred and ten to one hundred and forty dollars a year for each man, together with food, clothing, and medical attendance. After the war, the farmers in many counties of Virginia entered into combinations, pledging themselves to pay the freed slave only sixty dollars a year, exclusive of clothing and medical attendance, with which he was to furnish himself out of such meagre wages. They also engaged not to hire any freedman who had left a former employer without his consent. These were private leagues instituting measures similar to those which South Carolina and some other States afterwards enacted as laws, and having in view the same end, namely,—to hold the negro in the condition of abject dependence from which he was thought to have been emancipated.