“Do you use horses?”
“No; mules altogether. Two mules are equal to three horses. Mules are not subject to half the diseases horses are. They eat less, and wear twice as long.”
I found farms of every description for sale, around Richmond. The best land on the James River Bottom could be bought at prices varying from forty to one hundred dollars an acre. I remember one very desirable estate, of eight hundred acres, lying on the river, three miles from the city, which was offered for sixty dollars. There were good buildings on it; and the owner was making fences of old telegraph wire, to replace those destroyed during the war.
CHAPTER XXIV.
IN AND AROUND RICHMOND.
If temples are a token of godliness, Richmond should be a holy city. It has great pride in its churches; two of which are noteworthy.
The first is St. John’s Church, on Church Hill,—a large, square-looking wooden meeting-house, whose ancient walls and rafters once witnessed a famous scene, and reëchoed words that have become historical. Here was delivered Patrick Henry’s celebrated speech, since spouted by every schoolboy,—“Give me liberty or give me death!” Those shining sentences still hang like a necklace on the breast of American Liberty. The old meeting-house stands where it stood, overlooking the same earth and the same beautiful stream. But the men of that age lie buried in the dust of these old crowded church-yards; and of late one might almost have said that the wisdom of Virginia lay buried with them.
On the corner of Grace Street, opposite my hotel, I looked out every morning upon the composite columns and pilasters, and spire clean as a stiletto, of St. Paul’s Church, with which are connected very different associations. This is the church, and (if you enter) yonder is the pew, in which Jeff Davis sat on Sundays, and heard the gospel of Christ interpreted from the slave-owners’ point of view. Here he sat on that memorable Sabbath when Lee’s dispatch was handed in to him, saying that Richmond was lost. The same preacher who preached on that day, still propounds his doctrines from the desk. The same sexton who handed in the dispatch glances at you, and, if you are well dressed, offers you a seat in a good place. The same white congregation that arose then in confusion and dismay, on seeing the President go out, sit quietly once more in their seats; and the same colored congregation looks down from the nigger gallery. The seats are still bare,—the cushions that were carried to the Rebel hospitals, to serve as mattresses, having not yet been returned.
Within an arrow’s shot from St. Paul’s, in the State Capitol, on Capitol Square, were the halls of the late Confederate Congress. I visited them only once, and found them a scene of dust and confusion,—emblematical. The desks and seats had been ripped up, and workmen were engaged in sweeping out the last vestiges of Confederate rule. The furniture, as I learned, was already at an auction-room on Main Street, selling under the hammer. I reported the fact to Mr. C——, of the Union Commission, who was looking for furniture to be used in the freedmen’s schools; and he made haste to bid for the relics. I hope he got them; for I can fancy no finer stroke of poetical justice than the conversion of the seats on which sat the legislators of the great slave empire, and the desks on which they wrote, into seats and desks for little negro children learning to read.
It was interesting, by the light of recent events, and in company with one who knew Richmond of yore, to make the tour of the old negro auction-rooms. Davis & Co.’s Negro Bazaar was fitting up for a concert hall. We entered a grocery store,—a broad basement room, with a low, dark ceiling, supported by two stout wooden pillars. “I’ve seen many a black Samson sold, standing between those posts; and many a woman too, as white as you or I.” Now sugar and rice were sold there, but no more human flesh and blood. The store was kept by a Northern man, who did not even know what use the room had served in former years.
A short ride from the city are two cemeteries worth visiting. On one side, Hollywood, where lie buried President Monroe and his doctrine. On the other side, Oak Wood, a wild, uncultivated hill, half covered with timber and brush, shading numerous Confederate soldiers’ graves. Here, set apart from the rest by a rude fence, is the “Yankee Cemetery,” crowded with the graves of patriot soldiers, who fell in battle, or died of slow starvation and disease in Richmond prisons; a melancholy field, which I remember as I saw it one gusty September day, when wild winds swept it, and shook down over it whirling leaves from the reeling and roaring trees.