The intellectual gladiators who had discoursed eloquently of war around our fireside, buckled their armor on and went forth to battle.
Band after band of brave-hearted, bright-faced youths from Southern plantation homes came to bleed and die on Virginia soil; and for four long years old Virginia was one great camping ground, hospital and battle field. The roar of cannon and the clash of arms resounded over the land. The groans of the wounded and dying went up from hillside and valley. The hearts of women and children were sad and careworn. But God, to whom they prayed, protected them in our plantation homes—where no white men or even boys remained—all having gone into the army. Only the negro slaves stayed with us, and these were encouraged by our enemies to rise and slay us; but God in His mercy willed otherwise. Although advised to burn our property and incited by the enemy to destroy their former owners, these negro slaves remained faithful, manifesting kindness, and in many instances protecting the white families and plantations during their masters’ absence.
Oh! the long terrible nights helpless women and children passed, in our plantation homes; the enemy encamped around them; the clash of swords heard against the doors and windows; the report of guns on the air which might be sending death to their loved ones.
But why try to describe the horrors of such nights? Who that has not experienced them can know how we felt? Who can imagine the heart sickness, when stealing to an upper window at midnight we watched the fierce flames rising from some neighboring home, expecting our own to be destroyed by the enemy before daylight in the same way?
Such pictures, dark and fearful, were the only ones familiar to us in old Virginia those four dreadful years.
At last the end came—the end which seemed to us saddest of all. But God knoweth best. Though “through fiery trials” He had caused us to pass, He had not forsaken us. For was not His mercy signally shown in the failure of the enemy to incite our negro slaves to insurrection during the war? Through His mercy those who were expected to become our enemies, remained our friends. And in our own home, surrounded by the enemy those terrible nights, our only guard was a faithful negro servant who slept in the house, and went out every hour to see if we were in immediate danger; while his mother—the kind old nurse—sat all night in a rocking chair in our room, ready to help us. Had we not then amidst all our sorrows much to be thankful for?
Among such scenes one of the last pictures photographed on my memory, was that of a negro boy very ill with typhoid fever in a cabin not far off, and who became greatly alarmed when a brisk firing commenced between the contending armies across our house. His first impulse—as it always had been in trouble—was to fly to his mistress for protection; and jumping from his bed—his head bandaged with a white cloth, and looking like one just from the grave—he passed through the firing as fast as he could, screaming: “O, mistress, take care of me! Put me in your closet, and hide me from the Yankees!” He fell at the door exhausted. My mother had him brought in and a bed made for him in the library. She nursed him carefully, but he died in a day or two from fright and exhaustion.
Soon after this was the surrender at Appomattox, and negro slavery ended forever.
All was ruin around us; tobacco factories burned down, sugar and cotton plantations destroyed. The negroes fled from these desolated places, crowded together in wretched shanties on the outskirts of towns and villages, and found themselves, for the first time in their lives, without enough to eat, and with no class of people particularly interested about their food, health or comfort. Rations were furnished them a short time by the United States Government, with promises of money and land, which were never fulfilled. Impoverished by the war, it was a relief to us no longer to have the responsibility of supporting them. This would indeed have been impossible in our starving condition.
Twelve years have passed since they became free, but they have not, during this time, advanced in intelligence or comfort. Wanting the care of their owners, they die more frequently; and, it is thought,—by those who have studied the subject—that abandoned to themselves, they are returning to the superstitions of their forefathers. A missionary recently returned from Africa, and witnessing here their religious rites, says they are the same he saw practiced before the idols in Africa.