History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia

by James William Head

Nearly every slaveholder, returning home after the fall of the Confederacy, assembled his remaining negroes and formally notified them of their freedom, and talked with them concerning its entailed privileges, responsibilities, and limitations. The news had, of course, reached them through other channels, but they had loyally awaited the home-coming of their masters, to whom they looked for a confirmation of the reports. Steady employment at a fixed wage was offered most of them, and, except in the vicinity of the towns and army posts, where they were exposed to alien influences, the negroes usually chose to remain at their work.

Many were satisfied with the old slavery quarters while others, for the taste of freedom that was afforded, established homes of their own at near-by points. There were two things which the negroes of the South felt must be done before they could be entirely free: They must discard their masters' names and leave the old plantations if only for a few days or weeks.

Among the most contented and industrious there was much restlessness and neglect of work. Hunting and fishing and frolics were the order of the day. Nearly every man acquired, in some way, a dog and gun as badges of freedom. It was quite natural that the negroes should want a prolonged holiday for the enjoyment of their new-found freedom; and it is really strange that any of them worked, for there obtained an almost universal impression—the result of the teachings of the negro soldiers and Freedmen's Bureau officials—that the Government would support them in idleness. But in the remote districts this impression was vague. The advice of the old plantation preachers held many to their work, and these did not suffer as did their brothers who flocked to the towns.

Neither master nor freedman knew exactly how to begin anew and it was some time before affairs emerged from the chaotic state into which the war had plunged them. The average planter had little or no faith in free negro labor, yet all who were now able were willing to give it a trial. The more optimistic land-owners believed that the free negro could in time be made an efficient laborer, in which case they were willing to admit that the change might prove beneficial to both races. At first, however, no one knew just how to work the free negro; innumerable plans were devised, many tried, and few adopted.

The new regime differed but little from the old until the fall of 1865, when the Freedmen's Bureau, aided by the negro soldiers and white emissaries, had filled the minds of the credulous ex-slaves with false impressions of the new and glorious condition that lay before them. Then, with the extension of the Bureau and spread of the army posts, many of the negroes became idle, neglected the crops planted in the spring, and moved from their old homes to the towns or wandered aimlessly from place to place.

Upon leaving their homes the blacks collected in gangs at the cross-roads, in the villages and towns, and especially near the military posts. To the negro these ordinary men in blue were beings from another sphere who had brought him freedom, a something he could not exactly comprehend, but which, he was assured, was a delightful state.

Upon the negro women often fell the burden of supporting the children, to which hardship were traceable the then common crimes of fœticide and child murder. The small number of children during the decade of Reconstruction was generally remarked. Negro women began to flock to the towns; how they lived no one can tell; immorality was general among them. The conditions of Reconstruction were unfavorable to honesty and morality among the negroes, both male and female.

Their marriage relations were hardly satisfactory, judged by white standards. The legislatures in 1865-1866 had declared slave marriages binding. The reconstructionists denounced this as a great cruelty and repealed the laws. Marriages were then made to date from the passage of the Reconstruction Acts. As many negro men had had several wives before that date they were relieved from the various penalties of desertion, bigamy, adultery, etc. Some seized the opportunity to desert their wives and children and acquire new help-meets. While much suffering resulted from the desertion, as a rule, the negro mother alone supported the children better than did the father who stayed.

Negro women accepted freedom with even greater seriousness than did the men, and were not always, nor easily, induced to again take up the familiar drudgery of field labor and domestic service. To approximate the ease of their former mistresses, to wear fine clothes and go often to church were their chief ambitions. Negro women had never been as well-mannered, nor, on the whole, as good natured and cheerful as the negro men. Both sexes, during Reconstruction, lost much of their native cheerfulness; the men no longer went singing and shouting to their work in the fields; some of the blacks, especially the women, became impudent and insulting in their bearing toward the whites.

As a result of certain pernicious alien influences there soon developed a tendency to insolent conduct on the part of the younger negro men, who seemed convinced that civil behavior and freedom were incompatible. With some there was a disposition not to submit to the direction of their employers, and the negro's advisers warned him against the "efforts of the white man to enslave" him. Consequently, he very often refused to enter into contracts that called for any assumption of responsibility on his part, and the few agreements to which he became a party had first to be ratified by the Bureau. As he had no knowledge of the obligation of contracts, he usually violated them at pleasure.