I was sitting in one of the tents of the Relief Commission one morning, when a woman came to complain that a ticket issued to her there had drawn but fifteen rations, instead of twenty-one, as she had expected.
“I didn’t think it was you all’s fault,” she said, with an apologetic grimace; “but I knowed I’d been powerfully cheated.”
This was the spirit manifested by very many, both of the rich and the poor. They felt that they had a sacred right to prey upon the government, and any curtailment of that privilege they regarded as a wrong and a fraud. So notorious was their rapacity, that they were satirically represented as saying to the government,—
“We have done our best to break you up, and now we are doing our best to eat you up.”
Where such a spirit existed, it was not possible to prevent hundreds from obtaining government aid who were not entitled to it. It was the design of the Relief Commission to feed only indigent women and children. No rations were issued by the Commissary except to those presenting tickets; and tickets were issued for the benefit only of those whose destitute condition was attested by certificates signed by a clergyman or physician.[[1]] To secure these certificates, however, was not difficult, even for those who stood in no need of government charity. Clergymen and physicians were not all honest. Many of them believed with the people that the government was a fit object for good secessionists to prey upon. Some were faithful in the performance of their duty; but if one physician refused to sign a false statement, it was easy to dismiss him, and call in another less scrupulous.
“I have just exposed two spurious cases of destitution,” said an officer of the Relief Commission, one day as I entered his tent. “Mrs. A——, on Fourth Street, has been doing a thriving business all summer, by selling the rations she has drawn for a fictitious family. Mrs. B—— has been getting support for herself, and two sick daughters, that turn out to be two great lazy sons, who take her hard-tack and salt-fish, and exchange them for whiskey, get drunk every night, and lie abed till noon every day.”
“What do you do with such cases?”
“Cut them off; that is all we can do. This whole business of feeding the poor of Richmond,” he added, “is a humbug. Richmond is a wealthy city still; it is very well able to take care of its own poor, and should be taxed for the purpose.” I found this to be the opinion of many intelligent unbiased observers.
Besides the Relief Commission, and the Freedmen’s Commission, both maintained by the government, I found an agency of the American Union Commission established in Richmond. This Commission, supported by private benevolence, was organized for the purpose of aiding the people of the South, “in the restoration of their civil and social condition, upon the basis of industry, education, freedom, and Christian morality.” In Richmond, it was doing a useful work. To the small farmers about the city it issued ploughs, spades, shovels, and other much needed implements,—for the war had beaten pitchforks into bayonets, and cast ploughshares into cannon. Earlier in the season it had distributed many thousand papers of garden-seeds to applicants from all parts of the State,—a still greater benefit to the impoverished people, with whom it was a common saying, that “good seed ran out under the Confederacy.” It had established a free school for poor whites. I also found Mr. C. the Commission’s Richmond agent, indefatigable in assisting other associations in the establishment of schools for the Freedmen.
The Union Commission performed likewise an indispensable part in feeding the poor. Those clergymen and physicians who were so prompt to grant certificates to secessionists not entitled to them, were equally prompt to refuse them to persons known as entertaining Union sentiments. To the few genuine Union people of Richmond, therefore, the Commission came, and was welcomed as an angel of mercy. But it did not confine its favors to them; having divided the city into twelve districts, and appointed inspectors for each, it extended its aid to such of the needy as the Relief Commission had been unable to reach.