I assured her that it was truly a “No. 2,” and asked why it was preferable to another.
“This is the kind they ishy to sick folks; it allows tea and sugar,” she replied, wrapping it around her skinny finger.
Colored people were not permitted to draw “destitute rations” for themselves at the same place with the whites. There were a good many colored servants in the crowd, however, drawing for their mistresses, who remained at home, too ill or too proud to come in person and present their tickets.
At the place where “destitute rations” were issued to the blacks, business appeared very dull. I inquired the reason of it, and learned this astonishing fact.
The colored population crowded into Richmond at that time equalled the white population; being estimated by some as high as twenty-five thousand. Of the whites, over TWO THOUSAND were at that time receiving support from the government. The number of blacks receiving such support was less than two hundred.
How is this discrepancy to be accounted for?
Of the freedmen’s willingness to work under right conditions there can be no question. It is true, they do not show a disposition to continue to serve their former masters for nothing, or at starvation prices. And many of them had a notion that lands were to be given them; for lands had been promised them. At the same time, where they have a show of a chance for themselves, they generally go to work, and manifest a commendable pride in supporting themselves and their families. Until he does that, the negro does not consider that he is fully free. He has no prejudice against labor, as so many of the whites have. We must give slavery the credit of having done thus much for him: it has bred him up to habits of temperance and industry. Notwithstanding the example of the superior race, which he naturally emulates, he has not yet taken to drink; and his industry, instead of being checked, has received an impulse by emancipation. Now that he has inducements to exert himself, he proceeds to his task with an alacrity which he never showed when driven to it by the whip.
Another thing must be taken into account. His feeling for those who have liberated him is that of unbounded gratitude. He is ashamed to ask alms of the government which has already done so much for him. No case was known in Richmond of his obtaining destitute rations under false pretences; but in many instances, as I learned, he had preferred to suffer want rather than apply for aid.
The reverse of all this may be said of a large class of whites. Many, despising labor, would not work if they could. Others, reared amid the influences of wealth, which had now been stripped from them, could not work if they would. Towards the United States Government they entertained no such feeling of gratitude as animated the freedmen. On the contrary, they seemed to think that they were entitled to support from it during the remainder of their lives.
“You ought to do something for us, for you’ve took away our niggers,” whined a well-dressed woman one day in my hearing. To the force of the objection, that the South owed the loss of its slaves to its own folly, she appeared singularly insensible; and she showed marked resentment because nothing was done for her, although obliged to confess that she owned the house she lived in, and another for which two colored families were paying rent.