One of the incidents to the rehabilitation of Richmond after the evacuation and the accompanying disastrous fire was the great influx of mercantile firms from the North with every kind of goods imaginable. Why they should have rushed in thus with their oceans of merchandise to sell to impoverished Confederates was to me a mystery. As might be imagined prices fell very low and large numbers of the new comers failed completely. Another incident of the new order of things was the flooding of the City with counterfeit money, particularly small notes for fractional amounts of a dollar, some of the counterfeits being wretched productions. Another feature was the way in which architects and builders from the North stepped in to help rebuild the burned district, resulting in better buildings than before, but with in many cases no commensurate profit to the builders. At that time was first introduced into Richmond the ground rent system that prevails so extensively in Baltimore and Philadelphia. The first house under this system was built on a lot where had stood the house from which salt orders had been issued during the war. The salt mines belonged to and were worked by the State and a system of free distribution was inaugurated in consequence of the scarcity and the necessity of salt so that each householder depending upon the size of his family was entitled to receive gratuitously a certain quantity weekly for which an order was issued to him.
The most gruesome sight during the war was to see the vast numbers of wounded Confederate soldiers brought into Richmond in the trains. This was constantly occurring and was most noticeable during the great battles in the neighborhood of Fredericksburg. The attention given to the wounded appeared to be scant before reaching Richmond. And they were brought down on the Richmond and Fredericksburg Railroad and unloaded on Broad street to be taken to the hospitals very much as they were taken from the field of battle. How they were able to pass through the suffering they must have endured before reaching the hospital was a miracle, only to be accounted for by the life of exposure to the open air, endurance and their strong vitality.
Blockade running was carried on as an extensive business all through the war, but reached its highest state of accomplishment in the closing year before the fall of Richmond. It was of a two fold character; one, of ships with Wilmington, North Carolina, as the port and the other of individuals who crossed the Potomac at night usually landing at Leonardtown, Charles County, Maryland. The ships took out cargoes of cotton, as this was about the only article, unless it was tobacco, left to be exported from the Southern Confederacy and they brought in return a miscellaneous cargo, not very extensive and not very large, most of the cotton shipments winding up as credits abroad in many cases for agents of the Confederate government, in other cases for individuals, either singly or as syndicates. For it became common in Richmond for a number of gentlemen to form a combination and make a shipment of cotton by a blockade runner for the profit it furnished. Almost all the ships that ran the blockade in and out of Wilmington flew the British flag and were English boats. Blockade running on the Potomac was another consideration. Its ordeal can best be illustrated by an attempt made by my mother and a friend of hers under unusual favorable circumstances. The trip from Richmond to the Potomac had to be made by private conveyance of some sort for there were no public vehicles or way of getting them and for entertainment en route reliance would have to be placed on such friendly housing and entertainment as could be secured from the inhabitants of the country through which one passed. There were no hotels or taverns, and as the inhabitants were not over well supplied, were in constant apprehension of the questionable strangers who made a business of blockade running, it can be conceived what difficulties must be encountered by any one who adopted this method of passing through the lines. It would have been easier perhaps to have gone by a flag of truce. A well known Southerner who is now in a prominent position in New York City had attention attracted to him by two occurrences that took place in his younger days. He was a general in the Confederate army and he resigned and joined the army as a private, that was quite sensational. Again he went out one day in front of the outer line of breastworks near Petersburg to exchange newspapers or some other thing as was the custom during the interims of fighting and two soldiers from the Union lines came out half way to meet him. When they reached midway between the breastworks on each side each Union soldier took him by the arms and marched him into their own lines. That was more sensational still and was susceptible of several constructions. The incident subjected him to undoubtedly unjust criticism and the true construction was that the Union soldiers had violated the conventional arrangement under which the belligerents exchanged small articles, but it indicated that the Union side were not averse to “receiving” all that came and that going by flag of truce would have been less difficult on the Union side than on the Confederate and that persons on a peaceful mission, particularly ladies need not have selected the hardships of a Potomac blockade running to have gotten through the lines.
My two sisters had been left North to attend school on my father’s exchange as a state prisoner and my mother’s mission was to visit them. My father’s official and professional relations secured for the trip from the Confederate government a covered ambulance, two mules and a colored driver. They were also supplied by personal friends with letters of introduction to persons at whose houses they expected to stop on the route to the Potomac. The trip was to occupy about three days and the point of destination was as usual opposite Leonardtown, Charles County, Maryland. The first day was spent in a tiring, uninteresting ride over bad roads and the day’s journey terminated at the hospitable house of Muscoe Garnett near Newton in King and Queen County at whose house I subsequently spent a delightful summer, the next day’s journey similar in character terminated at the equally hospitable home of the Warings on the Rappahannock River in Essex County, where I also some years after visited. The third day’s journey, just like the two proceeding, brought them to the Potomac in Westmoreland County at the Wirt House. The following day arrangements were made for effecting a crossing of the river and this was termed “running the blockade.” Success required the trip to be at night, without moon or stars, with good weather and smooth water, a rather difficult combination where the river was several miles wide and Union patrol boats constantly on the lookout for blockade runners. At the appointed time, with conditions satisfactory, their boat cleared the shore, when suddenly the moon came out, a patrol boat was made out in the distance and the sail boat was compelled in consequence to return, with no further chance of success that night. After several days of waiting and constant unwillingness on the part of the boatman to make the venture, in which at every attempt, he ran the risk of losing both his boat and his liberty, they were fain to abandon the attempt, this being a common experience in blockade running. And they were compelled to return again to Richmond. Successful blockade running across the Potomac was usually done by two only, the boatman and one passenger, usually a man, a woman blockade runner added to the difficulties and lessened a successful issue. Two women would constitute almost insuperable difficulties and it had better been left unattempted. It was easier to go by ship from Wilmington to Nassau, the usual rendezvous of blockade runners and then from that point by a ship to New York; for blockade running in and out of Wilmington was common and easy.
While personal travel through the lines was as shown difficult and full of excitement and trials, communication by letter was easy and frequent. This was by way of flag of truce boat. Every letter however was opened, read and stamped as inspected and if it was free from suspicion and about personal matter only it reached its destination. Any suspicious circumstances however such as ambiguity of expression, or anything of hidden meaning which might convey information regarded as detrimental to the government subjected the letter to oblivion.
After the war closed the condition of the Confederate graves in Hollywood cemetery was so deplorable that a general call was extended to all ex-Confederate soldiers in Richmond to volunteer to put them in condition. At the time appointed great numbers assembled at the Cemetery for the purpose, including very many old cadets. Each particular division of the graves had a certain number assigned to it and there fell to the cadets a plot in the lower ground comprising several hundred graves. Each one of the cadets was furnished a hoe and the task that at once confronted us was how we were to distinguish the precise location of each grave. None of these graves were marked and all any of us knew was that wherever there was any indication of the grave, there had been placed the remains of a Confederate soldier. It seems to me that however loving our motive, we had better left undone our volunteer task, for all the workers in common solved their difficulty in identifying exact outlines of graves by raising at regular and even intervals the little mounds that were supposed to cover the places of interment, so that if any indications previously existed as to the precise location of any grave whereby some one familiar with the surroundings would have identified it, these were effectually destroyed by this service in putting in decent order the burial places of the dead. And it was utterly impossible thereafter to tell the exact resting place of any whose grave was unmarked, the condition of very nearly all.
One of the most disastrous results of the war was the effect on the education of the men of the South. With few exceptions all the young men at college or school old enough to volunteer did so, with the resulting loss of four years of the best period of their life for studying. At the close of the war, the necessities of some were such that providing for themselves or their families effectually removed from them the possibilities of further education. Others again struggled under most adverse conditions and with many privations to acquire the requisite means to complete their education, working on farms and engaging in manual labor that always theretofore had been relegated exclusively to the negro slaves. In many cases the period for accomplishing the result dragged on for years after the close of the war and even as late as 1871, six years after the close of the war there was in the same law class with me at the University of Virginia, a number of ex-Confederate soldiers and among the nineteen of us who received the degree of B. L. were two, one of whom had been a Captain and the other a Major in the Confederate army.
The condition of the ex-Confederates residing in the country was measurably better than those in the cities and towns, for the former could at the least scrape together in one way or another some sort of a living. In the towns and cities however through the South the struggle to obtain a footing was more intense, and among the methods adopted to furnish employment to ex-Confederates was one of almost national character involving what was then regarded as a very large capital with prospects supposed to be brilliant both in furnishing extensive employment for competent men and securing great financial returns for its promoters and subscribers, and that was the establishment of the Southern Express Company. General Joseph E. Johnson was made president of the company and almost every officer and employee from the highest to the lowest was an ex-Confederate soldier. These two pleas, employment of ex-Confederates and great financial returns, particularly the former were the basis upon which the subscriptions to the stock were generally secured. An additional incentive was that only a small cash payment (usually ten per cent of the subscription) was required from the stockholders. The balance it was supposed would likely be made up from profits. From the start liberal salaries were paid and assiduously drawn. Nearly all the transportation business was done on credit, the railroads and transportation companies being exceedingly liberal in this, with the rapid result from inexperience in such business and competition against an old established company and its skilled employees, that the Southern Express Company soon ceased to do business, owing a vast amount of debts to its employees for unpaid salaries and to transportation companies for unpaid freight. The sequel resulted in an assignment by the company for the benefit of creditors and an administration of its assets in the Chancery Court of Richmond, where the stockholders were assessed their unpaid subscriptions, resulting in a crop of suits to collect them that extended through many states of the Union, particularly Virginia, Maryland, Missouri and New York.
The war had a very slight effect on the negro’s character as a slave in the South, so far as he was capable of comprehending and entertaining any sympathies, most of the slaves had a vague idea that success to the Union Army meant freedom for the slave and hence naturally they felt no ill toward this result, neither did they entertain ill will towards those who had held them in slavery, for contrary to the general impression of the North the negro slaves were treated with the greatest consideration, not harshly, but just the reverse. Any master who omitted to properly clothe and feed his slaves, to assiduously care for them in sickness and old age and to treat them justly and humanely was not only ostracised by his neighbors and acquaintances but his family suffered seriously in social position so that no slaveholder was to be found who could weather the trials to which an acknowledged brutal master was subjected. This tenderness for the slave was so pronounced that all persons who occupied a dominant position with reference to him, such as the overseer or slave dealer were regarded as occupying an inferior position and were excluded from social relations with the slave holders, not from an imagined superiority of the latter, as sometimes alleged, but purely from the “offensiveness” of their occupation. And I believe it can be said with the endorsement of all who knew that the negro as a whole was better cared for, and healthier and happier in slavery than in freedom.
The hotels in Richmond that remained in operation clear up until the evacuation by the Confederate troops were the Spotswood at the corner of Main street and 8th street, the American on Main street opposite the Post Office, and the Powhatan at the corner of Broad and 11th streets. The Spottswood was the leading hotel and there the higher Confederate officers stopped when in Richmond. It was burned shortly after the war closed. The American was a popular hotel, well patronized by Confederate soldiers, officers and men, and always crowded. It was burned in the fire at the evacuation. The Powhatan was patronized to a certain extent by Confederate soldiers, the generality of its patrons were members of the Legislature.