The loss of life has been frightful. Half the families are in mourning. I hear of a Danville regiment, twelve hundred strong, of whom less than fifty survive. Not less than eighty thousand arms-bearing men of the State are believed to have been killed or disabled. This, and the disorganization of the labor system, have naturally left thousands of families through the State utterly destitute. Mr. Pennington, the editor of the Raleigh Progress, predicts great distress next winter. In fact, the Government is already issuing rations to thousands of destitute whites.
As yet, notwithstanding their poverty and destitution, few of the large landowners have put their estates in the market. No such feeling exists here, however, as in Virginia, where the farmers are said to hold on with a death grip to their lands, and to consider it discreditable to sell to a Yankee. Many of the most violent Rebels here will sell at exceedingly low rates, in order to get out of the country, where everything reminds them of their mortifying defeat and disgrace. And of those who remain, large numbers will be forced to sell part of their lands, to get means for living comfortably on the remainder.[[10]] The new blood, likely thus to be infused into North Carolina, will be its salvation; and the capital which is now seeking openings for trade, will presently find vastly more profitable returns from investments in lands.
General Hawley, General Abbott and their wives, the Collector, the Treasury Agent, a party of staff officers and others, pursued us with kindness till our vessel had absolutely pushed off from the almost deserted wharf, which, four years ago, was crowded with the keels of a thriving commerce, and even a year ago bustled with scores of adventurous blockade runners. Trade, indeed, follows the flag; but for trade you must have money; and of this there is far too little in the exhausted country to bring back business into its old channels, as speedily as Northern speculators are imagining.
Some of the officers and their wives came down with us in the river steamer, to the bar, whither the “Wayanda” had returned to await us; and kindly good-byes and fluttering handkerchiefs could still be heard and seen after the vessels had each begun moving. At the North we think little of loyalty; here loyal men, and especially those in the service of the Government, seem drawn toward each other, as are men who serve under the same flag in a foreign country.
[7]. The farther north you can grow any grain, or other crop, and mature it, the better it is—according to the theory of the North Carolina planters. The rice crop is more profitable here, they claim, than on the best plantations about Savannah.
[8]. In other words, call them freedmen, but indirectly make them slaves again. The same idea seems to pervade the State, and, indeed, the entire South. Colonel Boynton, a very intelligent and trustworthy officer, writing from Danville, North Carolina, on the 21st of June, said:
“The belief is by no means general here, that slavery is dead, and a hope that, in some undefined way, they will yet control the slaves, is in many minds, amounting with some to a conviction. They look for its restoration through State action—not yet comprehending that the doctrine of State sovereignty has been somewhat shattered by the war. Here, as in Richmond, the people, instead of grappling with the fact that the war has liberated the slaves, are very busy proving the utter worthlessness of the negroes, and treating them with additional cruelty and contempt—neither offering them fair inducements to work, or working themselves.”
[9]. Numerous instances were told, while I was at Wilmington, but the following case, related by Colonel Boynton, occurred farther in the interior:
“Here in Salisbury, two prominent men are on trial by a military court, for killing a negro, and one of the wealthiest, most refined and respectable young ladies in all this section, is under twenty thousand dollars bonds to appear and answer for shooting a negro woman with her own hands. Miss Temple Neeley is considered one of the belles of the State. The family is very wealthy, aristocratic, and all that, and stands at the very top in this section. Her mother was flogging a little negro child, when the mother of the child interfered to protect it. Miss Neeley stepped up, and, drawing a revolver from her pocket, shot the negro woman dead, firing a second ball into the body. She was arrested, and will be tried by a military court. The papers here are defending her, and trying to stir up the old feeling toward the slaves, and excusing her under the black laws of the State.”