The work of rebuilding the burnt district had commenced, and was progressing in places quite vigorously. Here I had the satisfaction of seeing the negroes, who “would not work,” actually at their tasks. Here, as everywhere else in Richmond, and indeed in every part of Virginia I visited, colored laborers were largely in the majority. They drove the teams, made the mortar, carried the hods, excavated the old cellars or dug new ones, and, sitting down amid the ruins, broke the mortar from the old bricks and put them up in neat piles ready for use. There were also colored masons and carpenters employed on the new buildings. I could not see but that these people worked just as industriously as the white laborers. And yet, with this scene before our very eyes, I was once more informed by a cynical citizen that the negro, now that he was free, would rob, steal, or starve, before he would work.
I conversed with one of the laborers going home to his dinner. He was a stalwart young black, twenty-one years old, married, and the father of two children. He was earning a dollar and a half a day.
“Can you manage to live on that, and support your family?”
“It’s right hard, these times,—everything costs so high. I have to pay fifteen dollars a month rent, and only two little rooms. But my wife takes in washing and goes out to work; and so we get along.”
“But,” said I, “were not your people better off in slavery?”.
“Oh no, sir!” he replied, with a bright smile. “We’re a heap better off now. We haven’t got our rights yet, but I expect we’re go’n’ to have ’em soon.”
“What rights?”
“I don’t know, sir. But I reckon government will do something for us. My master has had me ever since I was seven years old, and never give me nothing. I worked for him twelve years, and I think something is due me.”
He was waiting to see what the government would do for his people. He rather expected the lands of their Rebel masters would be given them, insisting that they ought to have some reward for all their years of unrequited toil. Of course I endeavored to dissuade him from cherishing any such hope.
“What you ask for may be nothing but justice; but we must not expect justice even in this world. We must be thankful for what we can get. You have your freedom, and you ought to consider yourself lucky.”