. Slegroes and Their Treatment
in Virginia
1865-1867
JOHN PRESTON MCCONNELL

D

' YiSkLIE«¥]MII¥IEI^Sflir¥" " ILUIBI^^IElf °

1915

NEGROES AND THEIR TREATMENT IN
VIRGINIA FROM 1865 TO J867

By
JOHN PRESTON McCONNELL, M. A., Ph. D.
Professor of History and Political Science
in Emory and Henry College

Pfinted fay
B. D. SMITH & BROTHERS,
Pulaski, Va.

COPTKIGHT 1910
BT J. F. McCONNBLL

Ml

PREFACE.
FEOM 1865 to 1867 an unprecedented revolution was
witnessed in the Southern States. In the following
pages an attempt is made to note the essential fea
tures of that upheaval through which the negroes passed
in two years from chattel slavery to full citizenship.
In these two momentous years the white people were
called upon to adjust themselves not only to the fall recog
nition of the freedom of the negroes but to accept them as
fellow-citizens with equal civil and political rights.
Many old prejudices had to be reckoned with iu this
adjustment. This revolution was attended by less demoral
ization of society in Virginia than in most of the other
Southern States, nevertheless the transition from the old
order to the new was painful and confusing.
It is hoped that this discussion of that troubled period
will, in some measure, prove useful in correcting any
wrong impressions that may yet exist as to what were the
sentiments of the people in regard to the changed condition
of the negroes and what was the civil, political and social
status of the freedmen during that unhappy period which
culminated in the enfranchisement of the blacks by con
gressional act.
This little book is a part of a proposed larger work
treating the history of Virginia since the War between the
States. The cares and responsibilities incident to my work
as a teacher have thus far prevented my finishing the pro
posed work.
In the preparation of this work I am indebted to Dr.
E. H. Dabney and many other persons for assistance in
many ways. I am especially indebted to my wife, who
contributed many helpful suggestions and prepared the
manuscript for the printer.

JOHN PEESTON McCONNELL.

Emory and Henry College,
December, 1909.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.
Number and Distribution op Negroes in Virginia.
CHAPTER n.
Public Opinion in Virginia in Regard to Emancipation.
CHAPTER m.
The Effect of Emancipation on the Negroes.
CHAPTER IV.
Disturbing Forces.
CHAPTER V.
The Evolution of a System op Hired Labor.
CHAPTER VI.
Vagrancy and Vagrancy Laws.
CHAPTER vn.
Contract Laws.
CHAPTER VHI.
The Slave Code Repealed.
CHAPTER IX.
Outrages on Pbbedmen and the Civil Courts from 1865 to 1867.
CHAPTER X.
Fbeedmbn and Civil Rights in 1865 and 1866.
CHAPTER XI.
Enfranchisement of the Frbedmen.

CHAPTER xn.
Education of Frbedmen.
CHAPTER Xm.
Apprentice Laws.
CHAPTER XIV.
Negro Mabbiagbs.
CHAPTER XV.
Insuerection.
CHAPTER XVI.
Sepabatb Churches fob Negbobs.
CHAPTER XVn.
Effects op the Rbconstbuction Acts.
CHAPTER XVm.
Summary and Conclusion.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.

Negroes and Their Treatment in Vir
ginia from 1865 to 1867.

CHAPTEE I.
Number and Distribution of Negroes in Virginia.
THE surrender of General Lee at Appomattox virtual
ly closed the "War between the States. This contest
had freed the negroes throughout the seceding States;
but the future status of the freedmen had not yet been
determined. In the spring of 1865 there were probably about half a
million negroes in the State of Virginia — a number suffi
ciently large to prove a very disturbing factor amongst a
white population of less than 700,000. It added much to
the gravity of the situation that in a large part of the State
the negroes were a very small part of the population, while
in other grand divisions of the State the excited and idle
freedmen were in a decided majority. There are no figures
giving the population of Virginia in the year 1865, yet the
census reports of 1860 or 1870 will enable one to determine
with considerable accuracy the distribution of the white
and colored population throughout the State at the close of
the war. The census of 1870 shows, in the eighteen southwest
counties of the State, a white population of 152,297 and a
colored population of only 21,595. In the twelve Valley
counties having a white population of 117,321 there were
only 25,681 negroes. In these two great divisions of the
State, embracing thirty counties with a white population of

2 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6?
269,618, there were only 47,276 negroes who constituted
less than fifteen per cent, of the entire population.'
In these two sections the greater part of the labor had
always been performed by white men as free laborers work
ing either for themselves or for other white men for wages.
Slave labor had never been such an important factor in the
industry of these communities as it had been in the counties
east of the Blue Eidge; for this reason, there was less dis
turbance of the industrial system of these sections, the
whites more readily adapted themselves to a system of free
labor, and the supply of labor was much less demoralized
than in the parts of the State where society and industry
were, in a larger degree, based on slave labor. ^ Probably
the negroes did not desert the farms and their accustomed
trades to such an extent in these sections as they did in the
eastern and southeastern parts of the State. If as large a
percentage of them did leave their old homes and trades
they were very readily absorbed as barbers, porters, livery
men and in other menial services about the towns.
In the section of the State east of the Blue Eidge there
were, according to the census of 1870, 442,471 whites and
465,565 blacks, giving the negroes a majority over the
whites of 23,044.' In 1860 the Southside, the counties
south of the James Eiver, had a negro population of 207, -
668. This population had increased considerably by 1865.*
It is safe to say that these counties contained at least 215,-
000 negroes in the spring of 1865. Here a large part of the
labor had always been performed by negro slaves. In the
counties of Amelia, Brunswick, Charlotte, Cumberland,
iPor distribution of negroes throughout the State, see pp. 5, 69-70,
Vol. of Statistics and Population, Census Report 1870.
^For demoralized state of labor and industry in the eastern part of
the State, see the Virginia newspapers of that period.
8Pp. 69-70, Vol. of Statistics and Population, Census Report 1870.
*rhis section was comparatively little disturbed by army operation^
until near the close of tbe war.

Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 3
Nottoway, Powhatan, Prince Edward, Prince George, Sur
ry and Sussex, the negroes constituted about two- thirds of
the inhabitants. In Buckingham, Lunenburg, Southamp
ton, Dinwiddle and Halifax, the negroes were in majorities
ranging from 2,000 to 7,000 in each county. In Campbell
and Pittsylvania they had a majority in a combined popu
lation.* In many other counties in eastern and southeast
ern Virginia the negroes were in the majority and were
more ignorant than in the sections of the State where they
were less numerous. As might be expected it was in these
sections that the emancipation of the slaves brought most
hardships and disorder.
In addition to these agglomerations of negroes in cer
tain sections of the State, thousands of them had thronged
to the cities and towns and there taken up their abode.
The census of 1870 shows that the thirty-five cities and
towns of the State, for which the population was given in
1860 and 1870, had an increase of only 705 white inhabi
tants, while the increase of the colored inhabitants in the
same towns was 25,834. This increase of colored popula
tion took place almost entirely in the section of the State
where the negroes were most numerous. In many of the
towns of the Valley and the Southwest there was an actual
decrease in the number of negroes. In the decade from
1860 to 1870 the white population of these thirty-five towns
grew from 88,381 to 89,086. The colored population in
the same cities leaped from 41,675 to 67,509. The number
of negroes in the District of Columbia had grown from
14,316 in 1860 to 43,404 in 1870, of whom 16,785 had been
born in Virginia. Alexandria's colored population had in
the meantime grown from 2,801 to 5,301; Hampton's
from 855 to 1,841; Eichmond's from 14,275 to 23,110; Nor
folk's from 4,330 to 8,766; Portsmouth's from 1,477 to

'For number and character of negroes in the Southside, see passim
Bruce, Plantation Negro as a Freeman.

4 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67
3,617. There had been very little increase in the white
population in any of these cities, and in Alexandria,
Lynchburg, Manchester, Petersburg, Williamsburg, Ports
mouth, Fredericksburg and Winchester there had been an
actual loss in the number of the whites for this same
decade.^ The number of negroes in the towns and cities of
Virginia in 1865 was trom twenty-five to fifty' per cent.
greater than it was in 1870, before which time many of
them had returned to the farms.
The census of 1870 shows that more than 50,000
of the negroes in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Dis
trict of Columbia, Massachusetts and New York had
been born in Virginia." Many of them had gone
to these states before the war, but it is not possible to de
termine at present how many. It is a significant fact that
the colored population of Virginia and West Virginia was
18,086 less in 1870 than in 1860". A constant stream of
negroes poured across the Potomac and Ohio rivers from
1862 to 1867. Kentucky and Missouri had also lost about
the same percentage of their blacks. The number of
negroes in each of the seceding States, except Virginia, was
larger in 1870 than in 1860. In some of the states, in
which the military operations had not been so constant, the
ePp. 278-383, Vol. of Statistics and Population, Census Report 1870.
'This statement is based on estimates made by conservative citizens
who were living at that time. The press and army oflScers spoke repeat
edly of the influx of negroes to the cities. There are no figures giving the
number of negroes in the towns in 1865. Gen. HaUeck reported, June 86,
1865, that there were from 30,000 to 40,000 free negroes in Richmond at
that time. Serial 97, OflBcial Records of War of RebeUion.
For account of the desertion of their homes by negroes see Richmond
DaUy Enquirer, May 32, 1866; The Richmond Republic, May 16, 1865, and
Aug. 10, 1865. Women, with their chUdren, walked three or four days to
get away from their old homes to the towns.
8Table VI, Vol. Statistics and Population, Census Report 1870.
Table n. Ibid. See this table also for gain or loss in negro population
in other states.

Negroes and Tlieir Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 5
increase of the negro population had been very marked,
being 79,000 in Georgia and more than 30,000 in several
other states. The remoteness of most of the slave states
from the free states rendered "refugeeing" very difficult
for all negroes and impossible for most of them. The pres
ence of the Federal armies and the proximity of free terri
tory rendered it comparatively easy for many negroes in
Virginia to find their way across the Ohio or the Potomac
to the free states.
It is, therefore, easy to see, that in the spring of 1865
the whole slave system was utterly destroyed in Virginia;
the former slave population was agitated and unsettled;
the old forms of industry and social life based on slavery
were irrevocably gone.

CHAPTEE II.
Public Opinion in Virginia in Eegaed
TO Emancipation.
Although Congress, in the Crittenden Eesolution of
July, 1861, had declared that the war was not waged to
interfere with any of the domestic institutions of the states,
but solely for the preservation of the union of the states,
and that the war should cease when that union was assured,
it was felt everywhere that the fate of slavery was an issue.
The South had entered into the contest feeling that failure
would involve the downfall of slavery. Before the war was
finished it became quite as much the aim of a large part of
the people of the Northern States utterly to extirpate
slavery as to preserve the union. It was felt that it was

6 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6?
necessary to destroy slavery to save the union. With
these clearly defined issues the war was fought out.
At the close of this four years' contest, in which the
people of the South with an unanimity unparalleled resisted
the invading armies as long as honor demanded or human
ity permitted, it was naturally asked by the world: "Do
the people of Virginia accept the abolition of slavery in
good faith, or is their acquiescence in its destmction only
a ruse of exhausted disloyalty, by which they hope to gain
strength and opportunity to renew the contest to restore
slavery, or to accomplish by cunningly devised legislation
the re-enslavement of the negroes? Has the war merely
destroyed the name of slavery without destroying its
realityt"" To appreciate just how the people of Virginia regard
ed the abolition of slavery it is necessary to understand
what they thought of this institution prior to the war.
Many slaveholders in Virginia had long considered slavery
a burden on the masters and a detriment to the best inter
ests of the community.^ It had long been a question with
many of the most thoughtful whether slavery in Virginia
was profitable in the mere production of wealth. Through
out the South slave labor was being driven to a few regions
devoted to the cultivation of tobacco, cotton and sugar
cane. Slaves were not as valuable in Virginia as in the
undeveloped states of the Southwest. The average hfre of
an able-bodied man slave for the four states, Arkansas,
Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana was in 1860 a little more
than 60 per cent higher than in Virginia.^ As a natural
''Conp;ressional Globe 1865-1867 (passim) .debates on Freedmen's Bureau
Bill, CivU Rights BiU, Constitutional amendments and Reconstruction
acts. See also Summer's speech. Congressional Globe 1864-1865, p. 989.
See Carl Schurz's report, Congressional Globe 1865-1866, p. 1305.
^Minor's Institutes, Vol. I, p. 168. Ballagh, A History of Slavery in
Virginia. 2 Annual Report of the Department of Agriculture 1867, p. 416. Vir
ginia never engaged in breeding and raising negroes for the slave market.
For conclusive evidence of this, see The Domestic Slave Trade bv W H
CoUins. > J • •

Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865^6? 7
consequence slavery had lost much of its popular support
in Virginia as compared with the "Cotton States;" for any
Cjommunity is apt to see the weakness of slavery when it
has once ceased to be profitable, even if it cannot see the
means of abolishing it.
The same spirit that had caused Jefferson and Henry
to deplore the evils of slavery persisted in Vfrginia. Like
Jefferson, Henry and Tucker at the beginning of the cen
tury, many owners of negroes in the middle of the century
would gladly have been free from their slaves; but,
embarrassed by the difficulties and dangers of emancipa
tion and restrained by the meshes of this all-permeating
institution, they did not feel justified in taking the initiative
in this general manumission. The atrocities of the lately
emancipated West India negroes deterred many from fol
lowing thefr desire to liberate their own servants. In addi
tion to all these difficulties every plantation was a little
community in which there were many helpless old negroes,
cripples, and children who were unable to provide for
themselves. To liberate these and turn them adrift would,
under the mantle of philanthropy, have been extreme
heartlessness and cruelty. The white master could not feel
that it was his duty to continue to care for the dependents
and at the same time emancipate the able-bodied sons or
fathers to lead idle and vagrant lives. The master, there
fore, however humane or philanthropic he might be, was
under the moral obligation to hold these plantation groups
together.^ A plan of gradual emancipation was seriously discussed
in the General Assembly of Virginia in 1831-32.^ Public
sentiment was rapidly moving toward a general emancipa
tion about the time the anti-slavery crusade began in the
^Bruce's Plantation Negro as a Freeman discusses, in an admirable
manner, the economy of a Virginia slave plantation and the difficulty of
breaking it up.
^Minor's Institutes, Vol. I, p. 168.

8 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67
North. The abolitionists became quite offensive in their
criticism of slavery in the South. The Virginians, always
jealous of outside intermeddling with their affairs, resented
the efforts of Northern agitators. Naturally tbe movement
w^as thus checked in the State. Nevertheless the Legisla
ture continued to provide for emancipation and granted an
annual appropriation of $30,000 and a poll tax of one
dollar per head on every male free negro of the age of
twenty- one years and under fifty-five to be used in coloniz
ing free negroes in Liberia.* This appropriation, continued
until 1860, is a proof of the sincerity of the Virginians in
their professions of interest in the gradual abolition of
slavery, and shows how keenly they realized the difficulties
of emancipating the negroes and allowing them to remain
in the State, and further explains why so many men, who
detested the whole system, hesitated to free their slaves.
There were statutes against the immigration of free negroes
into the State.* The presence of negroes in any capacity
was felt to be a perplexing problem of which the most
practical solution was either gradual emancipation and
colonization or, if this was impracticable, the continued
servitude of the negroes. There had been a great amelior
ation in the treatment of slaves in the twenty-five years
preceding the war. Many benevolent individuals exerted
themselves to bring about this state of things by creating in
the public mind a spirit of reprobation of cruelty to slaves.^
Gov. F. H. Pierpont, of Virginia, in his message to
the Legislature in 1865, speaking of the negroes, said that
thefr condition was a hard one as they had the ' 'theory of
the politicians and the dogma of the divines against them.^"
His statment is true if he meant that the politicians of the
State considered the negro a race so radically different from

6Code of 1860, p. 520.
sCode of 1860, p. 810.
'Hildreth, Despotism in America (passim) .
SAmerican Annual Cyclopsedia 1866, p. 768.

Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 9
the whites that it was impossible for them to be assimilated
by the whites; that they were a race incapable of sharing
in the government of the State; and that the wisest solution
of this question for both races at that time, at least, was the
political and social subordination of the weaker race to the
stronger. The statement is not true if he means that the
great mass of the people either in 1860 or in 1865 bore any
malice or hatred to the negroes, or that they wished to
make hard the condition of their lives.^ In regard to the
statement that the dogmas of the divines were against the
negroes, the great body of the ecclesiastical leaders of the
State were not in love with the institution of slavery.
They did not wish its presence but simply accepted it as
the wisest and most humane solution of the presence of the
negroes amongst the whites. They felt that the mere hold
ing of a negro as a servant was not obviously opposed to
the spirit and doctrine of the Christian religion. They
were deeply interested in their spiritual welfare and car
ried on a successful propaganda among them with the re
sult that a very large percentage of them were severely
orthodox Christians when they became freemen in 1865."
"See State newspapers of that period in regard to the feeling toward
negroes. A letter from B. Johnson Barbour, Esq., published in The Republic,
Richmond, Va., Aug. 13, 1865. * * * * "In their general conduct
they (the whites) should recognize the two great facts which rhe war has
established— Life to the Nation and Death to Slavery. It is our duty to
deal kindly and gently with a race suddenly emancipated, even though
in the first flush of freedom they should violate our traditional ideas of
subordination and discipline. By calmness and patience we shaU do
much toward repressing that spirit of agitation which, through folly or
crime, would make freedom a curse instead of a blessing to the negro.
His future condition is the only diflScult problem left unsettled by the
war." OThis is the universal testimony. These facts are forcetuUy brought
out in a personal letter from Rev. J. WiUiam Jones to the writer.
The following preamble and resolution adopted by the East Hanover
Presbytery is representative of the spirit of the other denominations:
"In consideration of the fact that the largest proportion of the colored
population are within the bounds of East Hanover, this Presbytery would

10 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6?
There were slaveholders who, in their heartlessness and
greed for gain, made the life of tbe slave a burden and thus
made slavery odious in the eyes of the world. It is doubt
less true that some ministers were over anxious to palliate
the evils and to magnify the necessity and the Christianity
of slavery. StiU it is true that the great body of the most
thoughtful men of all classes regarded human slavery as an
unfortunate inheritance, a burden from which they wished
to be relieved by some safe and practicable means.
Entertaining these opinions the people of Virginia did
not hesitate to accept the abolition of slavery as one of the
most patent results of the contest out of which they emerged
in 1865. The events and agitation of the four years' war
had so shattered and demoralized slavery that all sensible
men felt that its fate was sealed in Virginia, whatever
might be the wishes of the whites. Large numbers of the
slaves had enjoyed a taste of personal liberty within the
Union lines. It was not to be expected that they, having
once felt that they were free, would readily take again
their former places as slaves. In the Valley, in the North
ern, North Central and Tidewater counties of the State the
old plantation life was broken up. It was estimated in the
spring of 1865 that 50,000 negroes in Virginia had deserted
express its undiminished interest in the spiritual welfare of this class of
our people and its solemn conviction of the peculiar responsibiUties now
resting upon us in consequence of the new relations they now susteiin
to us. "Remembering that our colored friends have an equal interest with
us in the redemption provided by Christ Jesus, and mindful of the claims
of those who were born and reared among us, and many ot whom are
still members of our famiUes and in our employment, and regarding it
both as our duty and privUege to do aU in our power to promote their
spiritual well-being, liesolved. That by means of famUy and Sabbath
school and catechetical instruction, by the preaching of the Gospel for
their special beneflt, we wiU endeavor, with unabated zeal, to advance
their religious culture, with the hope and prayer that we may be made
equaUy instrumental with other denominations— our co-laborers with us
— in the great work of bringing them into the fold of Christ." — Richmond
BepubUc, Sept. 81, 1865.

Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 11
their homes and masters.^ These were generally the most
intelligent and aspiring of their race — many of them being
soldiers in the Federal army.
The Virginians, seeing that slavery was already "worn
out by the friction of the war," had laid down their arms
in 1865, understanding full well that they had seen the last
of slavery; and, in their hearts, many were thankful that
they were rid of it.^ While few recognized that it had been
constitutionally abolished, most were glad to accept it as an
accomplished fact and felt that the dire consequences that
seemed about to foUow the wholesale and immediate eman
cipation were not chargeable to them. After the close of
hostilities and the return of the soldiers to their homes,
iRichmond Times, July 14, 1865.
2May 17, 1865, Richmond Times said : "The fate of slavery in Virginia
was, by the natural effects, * * settled in Virginia before the Confed
eracy coUapsed. * * Under such circumstances, if the continuance of
slavery was decreed tomorrow, the shattered wreck of the dilapidated
carcass of the institution would prove, we fear, little better than an eye
sore and a stumbUng block iu our path, a mildew upon our prosperity."
Richmond Enquirer, Nov. 23, 1865, says : "The abrogation of property
in slaves" is one of the indisputable results of the war. The Richmond
Republic, May 19, 1865, says: "The war has administered a death blow
to slavery. Nothing, therefore, is more idle or vain than the hope or ex
pectation of prolonging the existence of the institution (of slavery) by
expedients which should aim to preserve the reaUty while relinquishing
the name." However, the Daily Dispatch, Jan. 4, 1865, claims that the
condition of the negro, if freed by the Federal Government, would be
more pitiable than that of the slave and that a new slavery would arise.
Robert Ridgeway, in The Whig, Aug. 11, 1865, says: "The abolition of
slavery is one of the accomplished results of the war and it becomes the
duty of the people of Virginia to accept that result in entire good faith,
dismissing from their mirds the chimerical idea, if any such idea is en
tertained by them, that it can, in any event, ever be re-established." The
Richmond papers from AprU, 1865, to the close of the year, give accounts
of county mass-meetings in various parts of the State, accepting unre
servedly the abolition of slavery as an accompUshed and irrevocable fact.
The General Assembly, in its Joint Resolution of Feb. 6, 1866, uncondition-
aUy accepted emancipation. Acts 1865-6, p. 449. Hon. A. H. H. Stuart's
"Narrative of the Popular Movement in Virginia in 1865, and the Com
mittee of Nine," discusses very fuUy the feeling in regard to the uncondi
tional emancipation of the slaves.

12 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67
large and representative meetings of the white citizens
were held throughout the State, in which resolutions were
adopted declaring that the people accepted in good faith
and without mental reservation the results of the war,
amongst which they regarded the abolition of slavery the
chief. Many of the most prominent men in the State, by
speeches and open letters in the newspapers, expressed their
acquiescence in emancipation and urged all the people
everywhere to accommodate themselves to the changed
relations they bore to their former slaves, to deal fairly
with them, to employ them for wages, or to share with
them the crops.
The negroes were at once recognized as free. Thefr
right to assert their freedom was not questioned. Col. O.
Brown, the assistant Commissioner of the Freed
men's Bureau for the State of Vfrginia, in his report
to Gen. O. O. Howard, at the close of the year 1865,
says: "It is believed that there is not within the State a
person who does not understand and successfully assert his
right to freedom.'" If there had been any denial of free
dom to any freedman in the State it is not probable that it
would have escaped the attention of Col. Brown, as the
agents of the Bureau were scattered over the State and
were generally careful to investigate any real or imagined
wrong done a negro, and the negroes were not negligent in
reporting their troubles to the Freedmen's Bureau.
In addition to the evidence furnished by the numerous
county meetings, in regard to the full and frank acceptance
of the freedom of the negro, the editorials and the corre
spondence of the representative newspapers of the State re
peatedly expressed full recognition of the unconditional de
struction of slavery.* In the summer of 1865 it was reported
3Col. O. Brown's report of the operation of the Feedmen's Bureau in
Virginia 1865, published in Lynchburg Virginian, Jan. 2, 1866.
¦•See newspapers of that period. April 25, 1865, Gen. Halleck, in letter
to Secretary Stanton, quotes Alexander Rives as saying that nearly all

Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 13
that a man in Petersburg was paying $10.00 per capita for
the claim of ownership of able-bodied negroes, in the belief
that they would be remanded to their old condition. So
absurd did his course seem that he was made a subject of
ridicule and held up by the press as a sort of harmless and
good-natured lunatic. It was declared by the press that
the restoration of slavery was not desired, even if the courts
should hold the various proclamations and acts emancipat
ing the slaves unconstitutional.^ The following quotation
from Ex- Gov. Henry A. Wise expresses about what many
representative Vfrginians thought in the summer of 1865:
"So far from my being opposed to the name 'freedom' as
indicating the condition of slaves freed by the war, the
chief consolation I have in the result of the war is that
slavery is forever abolished; that not only slaves are, in
fact, at last freed from bondage but that I am freed from
them. Long before the war ended, I had definitely made
up my mind actively to advocate emancipation throughout
the South. I had determined, if I could help it, my
decendants should never be subject to the humiliation I
have been subject to by the weakness, if not the wicked
ness, of slavery; and while I cannot recognize as lawful and
humane the violent and shocking mode in which it has
been abolished, yet I accept the fact most heartily as an
accomplished one, and am determined not only to abide by
it and acquiesce in it, but to strive by all means in my
power to make it beneficent to both races and a blessing
especially to our country. I unfeignedly rejoice at the fact,
and am reconciled to many of the worse calamities of the
war because I am now convinced that the war was a special
providence of God, unavoidable by the nations at their ex-
parties were ready to abandon slavery and that a'popular vote would be
strongly against it. P. 939, serial 97, OflBcial Records of War of RebeUion.
For account of delegation sent from the Legislature of Virginia to Presi
dent Johnson, see p. Ill, App. Congressional Globe 1865-1866.'
^Lynchburg Virginian, June 12, 1866, and for several days following.

14 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6?
treme, to tear loose from us a black idol from which we
could never have been separated by any other means than
those of fire and blood, sword and sacrifice."^
Col. O. Brown, the agent of the Freedmen's Bureau in
Virginia, divided the people of Virginia into three classes
according to thefr views of the negro and the Freedmen's
Bureau. Of the first class he said: "Many of the citizens,
under the control of tradition, habit and education, only
sullenly acquiesced in the freedom of their former slaves.'"
He further complained that this class regarded the colored
population as necessarily and appropriately servile and
unfit for freedom ; that they felt that negroes were in some
way responsible for the failure of the Confederacy. For
this reason he thought this first class "wholly unqualified"
for co-operation in the work of the Bureau.
It is true that many people accepted the abolition of
slavery as an accomplished fact without recognizing the
legality or justice of the manner in which it was accom
plished, but even this class entertained no hope, and but
little desfre, of seeing its restoration attempted.
It is also true that most people in Virginia did then
regard and always have regarded the negro as an inferior
race and unqualified to take a leading part in the govern
ment of the State; but this opinion of his place in society
did not indispose the whites to deal justly with him and to
grant him all civil rights and several political rights as
will be shown later.
The feeling that a race or an individual is an
inferior in point of ability and power begets a sense
of kindly interest and sympathy for the weaker party
by the stronger rather than a desire to do wrong or

'This letter is quoted exactly as published in the Lynchburg Virgin
ian, Sept. 9, 1865.
'Lynchburg Virginian, Jan. 2, 1866.

Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 16
violence to the weakling.* Such was the case in
1865 in Virginia in regard to the negroes, from whom so
ciety hoped to receive less and to whom it felt inclined to
give more than it was prepared to receive from and give to
the whites. The enfranchisement of the negroes in 1867,
and the efforts to place the whites under the domination of
the blacks, did much to destroy the interest and sympathy
which the whites had always felt for them.
Of the second class into which he divided the people,
Col. Brown said: "Another class, numerically small but
of the best talent, culture and influence, not only accepted
the situation, but with a wise foresight and noble patriotism
were ready to co-operate with the (TJ. S. ) Government for
the speediest restoration of tranquility and law, and to
assist the Bureau in its endeavor to bring the highest good
to all classes out of the present evils."'
From these quotations it is seen that co-operation
or failure to co-operate with the Freedmen's Bureau
in 1865 is one of the chief marks by which Col.
Brown distinguishes and classifies the people. Per
haps it was impossible for the agents of the Freedmen's
Bureau at that time to understand how any white man could
sincerely accept the abolition of slavery and at the same
time stand aloof from the Bureau. Still, many who unre
servedly recognized and accepted the complete destruction
of slavery were firmly convinced that the Bureau's purpose
and method, with the possible exception of its educational
work and the support of the absolutely helpless negroes,
were unwise and tended to widen the chasm between the
whites and the blacks.
sjuly 7, 1865, Richmond Times says: "The collapse of the Confed
eracy having, as we anticipated, resulted in the overthrow of slavery, we
have no wrongs to avenge at the expense of the negro. It is to our inter
est to make him a useful laborer, and cruelty to the emancipated slave
would be just as absurd a piece of inhumanity as cruelty to a horse or an
ox." 'Lynchburg Virginian, Jan. 3, 1866.

16 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6?
In addition to the two classes just mentioned Col.
Brown declared that "a third and more numerous class,
because forced to acknowledge the freedom of thefr for
mer slaves, wished either to effect their entire removal
from the State or bind them by such contracts as would
allow them but little more freedom than they formerly
possessed.*" The perplexed and unsettled state of the public
mind is indicated very clearly in this quotation.
By some people it was felt that the whites and blacks could
not live together on terms of equality. To some the only
solution of this problem seemed to be a general emigration
of one of the races. There was much talk of such a move
ment of the negroes either to some territory of the United
States or to Africa. Numbers of the most intelligent col
ored people in the State were setting out for Liberia; others
were preparing to follow." On the other hand many whites,
despairing of peace and prosperity of the community, at
tempting to ignore racial differences and antipathies, were
planning to find for themselves new homes in Mexico or in
some of the South American States. Wiser heads, under
standing the improbability, if not the impossibility of a
general emigration either of the whites or blacks, were try
ing to devise some plan to reorganize the social and indus
trial framework so suddenly revolutionized by the immedi
ate manumission of the colored race. The press almost
universally discouraged emigration schemes and urged the
people to adjust themselves to the new conditions.^
^Lynchburg Virginian, Jan. 3, 1866.
"A considerable number of negroes left Lynchburg in October, 1865,
for Liberia. Others were to follow. The emigrants were very unfortun
ate in Liberia. It was reported that some of them were eaten by canni
bals. All that were able to do so returned to Virginia. Lynchburg Vir
ginian, Oct. 19, 1865.
iFor discussion of emigration schemes pro and con see the Virginia
newspapers during the summer of 1865 and early part of 1866. Enquirer
editorial March 17, 1866, favors "diffusion of the colored population"

Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 17
While the people of Virginia thus fully accepted the
logical results of the war and granted to the negro his per
sonal freedom, they were not in 1865 or 1866 prepared to
extend to him the franchise, to admit him into the jury
box, to permit him to testify in cases in which white par
ties alone were interested, to come into the State from any
other state or to intermarry with the whites. His rights
in property were secured to him by the laws existing prior
to 1860, which permitted free negroes to own personal and
real property.^

CHAPTEE III.
The Effect of Emancipation on the Negroes.
Early in the war negroes began to desert their masters
and to seek refuge within the Federal lines. With the
progress of the struggle this movement grew stronger until
the proper disposal of the fleeing negroes became quite a
serious problem. From the first they realized that this
contest was in a large measure concerning themselves. In
many a cabin the glad word was whispered that the day
for the oppressed to '-come up out of Egypt" was at hand.
Later they heard that the invading hosts of the North were
coming to greet them as "men and brothers.'"
throughout the whole country as a solution of the question, as that wUl
give Northern people a correct idea of negroes and prevent the blunder of
equality in the South by Congressional interference.
2For the status of free negroes before the war, see Code of 1860; Bal
lagh, A History of Slavery in Virginia (passim).
SFor a fuU account of negro refugees and the disposal of them by the
Federal authorities, see (passim) McCarthy, "Lincoln's Plan of Recon
struction."

18 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6?
Most of the slaves remained at home until the close of
the war and performed their usual tasks. The old routine
of the plantation life was on the surface little disturbed.
They continued to plant and to harvest the crops, to care
for and protect the wives and children of their masters,
most of whom were in the Confederate army. From the
first to the last Virginia was the battleground of the war.
From first Manassas to Appomattox it felt the mightiest
shocks of the conflict. The Valley, Northern Virginia and
the Tidewater were overrun by the contending armies. By
the attrition of the contest slavery was worn out in these
parts of the State. Even in these sections most of the
slaves remained with their masters, but slavery as a vital
institution was gone. In a large part of the State the
negroes remained on the farms only because they did not
know what else to do, not because they did not realize that
slavery was dead.* So effective had been the war, the
movement of the armies, and the dissemination of hope and
of opinions favorable to freedom, that in the summer of
1864 the number of negroes practically free was estimated
by the North American Eeview at 1,300,000 in the seced
ing States.^ Of this number Virginia had her proportional
share. Jefferson Davis at the same time placed the num
ber of negroes practically free at 3,000,000.^ This agita
tion by the year 1865 had shattered the old plantation life;
its vitality was gone.
From 1862 to 1865 the stream of negroes deserting
their families and homes had constantly grown stronger.
At Washington, Alexandria, Fredericksburg, Portsmouth,
Newport News and Norfolk, they were assembled and fed
by the Federal Government. This movement was most
marked in the sections of the State in which the negroes
had been most frequently brought in contact with the
^For the condition of the old plantation life in the spring and summer
of 1865, see newspapers of that period.
'P. 387, American Annual Cyclopaedia, 1864,

Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 19
Union armies. In the counties of the Southside, however,
and in the Southwest, almost every negro remained on his
master's farm until the close of the war. On the approach
of the Federal army many whites fled, taking with them
their slaves; in this way the plantation life was broken up
and negroes were congregated in certain places.
At the close of hostilities in Virginia the stream of
freedmen pouring towards the towns and the military posts
was swollen to a river. Eichmond, Petersburg, Lynchburg
and all the larger towns of the State were crowded with
homeless and penniless negroes. The number of negroes in
Eichmond in the summer of 1865 was estimated at 30,000,
which indicated that at least 15, 000 strange negroes were in
the city. Squalid villages of freedmen grew up at the
various towns along the Chesapeake Bay, at Alexandria,
at Arlington, and at numerous other points throughout the
State. Still the movement of the negroes was from the
country to the city. So serious had the matter become that
the Federal authorities issued order after order urging the
freedmen to remain on the farms. At last military orders
positively forbade negroes to leave the communities where
they were unless it was absolutely impossible for them to
find work there. These orders doubtless deterred many
from moving to the towns.*
The increase of the negro population was especially
marked in the cities held directly by the military authori
ties, because the negroes there expected to be fed by Fed-
6For facts in regard to the movement of the freedmen, see Official
Records of War of RebeUion, serial 97, pp. 647, 932, 933, 1005, 1086, 1159,
1185, 1186, 1388, 1296; Richmond Times, July 14, 1865; CharlottesviUe
Chronicle, Peb. 28, 1867 ; Waddell, History of Augusta County, pp. 335-
341; Bruce, Plantation Negro as a Freeman, pp. 176, 177; Richmond
Times, July 14, 1865; Lynchburg Virginian, Sept. 7, 1865; Messages and
Documents of the U. S. Government, 1866-1867, p. 668; Col. O. Brown's
report, Lynchburg Virginian, Jan. 2, 1866; Order of Col. J. Bhaw, Jr.,
Richmond Times, Aug. 8, 1865; Gen. Gregg's General Order No. 15,
Lynchburg Virginian, June 1, 1865; Daily Enquirer, March 33, 1866, April
18, 1867; RepubUc, Aug. 10, 1865.

20 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67
eral quartermasters or agents of the Freedmen's Bureau.
Many of them doubtless felt that their newly found freedom
was too good to be true, and were fearful that they should
again be remanded to slavery, unless protected by the
agents of the United States Government, which they felt
had secured for them the liberty which they enjoyed-
Many of all classes were drawn away from their old homes
and trades to the idleness and vice of the cities, yet most of
the deserters were able-bodied young negroes who left thefr
old, young and helpless behind as a burden on thefr former
owners. In their new places of abode they were very
ready to forget their wives whom chey had left behind and
contract new matrimonial obligations without much appre
ciation of the sanctity of this relation. The negro women
especially, freed from the discipline of the old life, often
became very dissolute.'
In some cases the former owners were expected to care
for the helpless freedmen. The Federal authorities, how
ever, usually recognized that the burden of supporting
dependent negroes was no longer properly chargeable to
their former owners, but had been shifted to the relatives
of the paupers, to the community, or to the Federal Gov
ernment. It must be said, however, that many of these
deserted untortn nates were cheerfully supported by their
old masters on account of affection and humanity.*
A great restlessness to get off the farms where they
had been held as slaves seized almost aU negroes every
where, but some faithful slaves refused to leave their old
homes and continued to live with their former masters and
serve them tUl death.
'For effect of emancipation on the marriage relations and morals of
the negroes, see Ruffln, The Negro as a Political and Social Factor, (pas
sim) ; Bruce, The Plantation Negro as a Freeman, chap. II ; Gen. Hal^
leek's report. Official Records of the War of the RebelUon, serial 97, p. 1396.
^Richmond Times, July 7, 1865 ; General Order No. 13, Lynchburg Vir^
ginian, June 2,1865; Official Records of War of RebeUion, serial 97, pp.
932, 933.

Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 21
It was estimated, in July, 1865, that at least 50,000
able-bodied negroes had deserted their helpless ones and
gone to the cities of Vfrginia or the North. Not only had
able-bodied negroes flocked to the towns and military posts,
but many helpless old men, women and children were hud
dled together in wretched hovels. In some instances thirty
negroes were, in the summer of 1865, occupying the rooms
formerly considered barely comfortable for two. In filthy
improvised huts around the various military posts and in
the freedmen's towns the mortality of the negroes was
appalling.' It was felt by some of the Federal army officers that
there was danger of "the land going to waste" on account
of the desertion of the laboring population. They pro
posed to treat as "vagabonds" the freedmen who were
away from their old homes and without employment."
Prior to the war it had been claimed that the effects of
freedom on the free negroes in Virginia had been disas
trous, "the successive censuses, particularly from 1840 to
1860, showing a great physical and moral deterioration on
the part of the free blacks whether compared with the

'Lynchburg Virginian, Jan. 2, 1865; Richmond Times, June 37, July
3, 7, 1865 ; Messages and Documents of U. S. Government, 1866-7, p. 668,
1868-9, p. 508; Official Records of War of RebeUion, p. 1315, serial 97;
American Annual Cyclopaedia, 1865, p. 376.
The Whig, Oct. .2, 1866, refers to a "hallucination" amongst the
negroes that the great mortality amongst them was not due to disease
but poison. In the Tidewater region they were Uving largely on melons,
stale fish and cabbage but beUeved in many places that the white people
had "tricked" them. They were treated by quack negro doctors with
decoctions of herbs, etc. They would not trust white doctors. Nov. 5,
1866, the same newspaper declares that the number of negroes was great
ly diminished. In the Enquirer, Nov. 15, 1865, it is claimed that fifty per
cent, of the negroes had perished from disease. The mortality of the
negroes was not as great as it was believed to be at the time.
"See orders regarding negroes. Official Records of the War of Rebel
Uon, serial 97, pp. 1005, 1086, 1173, 1391 ; Order of Gen. Gregg, pubUshed in
Lynchburg Virginian, June 1, 1865.

22 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6?
slaves or with the whites. "^ In 1865 the negroes seemed to
be rapidly becoming a race of vagrants and idlers. Ne
groes possess a remarkably strong and persistent local at
tachment; yet they were so anxious to assert their liberty
and to convince themselves that they were really free, that
they felt in most cases that it was necessary to desert the
farms where they had been held as slaves and to seek homes
with some neighboring farmer, even if they did not have
the courage or think it necessary to leave the entfre com
munity. Many of the largest farms were almost depopu
lated of thefr former negroes, and their places were filled
either by those who had come in from a distance or from
the neighboring plantations.^ Fidelity and timidity in-
fiuenced some to remain with their former masters but
their number was not large. A vast majority of the
negroes changed their habitations immediately after the
war or within the next three years.
In their new homes they frequently were not able to
find, even when they wished it, the forms of labor to which
they had been trained. As has been mentioned before, the
plantations were little industrial communities in which the
division of labor system was necessarily adopted to a con
siderable extent. Some of the slaves were house servants
and personal attendants of their masters; others were
taught to spin and weave; others were blacksmiths, har
ness makers and carpenters; the great body of the slaves
were mere field hands. When the old plantation life was
broken up these freedmen were very poorly prepared for
the new society in which they must compete with the white
mechanics and laborers who had been trained in more lines
of work as well as to a higher degree of skill in the mechan
ical trades. By these white competitors their employment
was rendered more difficult and uncertain. This had a
^Minor's Institutes, Vol. I, p. 168.
^Bruce, Plantation Negro as a Freeman, chap. XII.

Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 23
tendency still further to demoralize the negroes and force
them to drift from place to place. It is needless to say
that most plantation negroes found themselves out of place
in the cities, where there was not a great demand for such
a large body of absolutely unskilled laborers as flocked to
them in 1865 and 1866.^

CHAPTEE IV.
Disturbing Forces.
During the two years from the spring of 1865 to the
passage of the E«construction Acts in March, 1867, the
negroes fell largely under the influence of their preachers
and a class of native whites who acted as leaders and ad
visers to the freedmen. The so-called "scalawags," in
many instances, had been known for their cruelty and in
justice to the negroes. Many of them had been slave over
seers, some of them slave owners before the war; yet this
reputation did not appear to be any obstacle to their win
ning the confidence of the freedmen.* By artful insinua
tion they won the favor of the colored people, and in a
large degree succeeded in alienating them from their old
friends and masters. The motives of this class were entire
ly selfish and their influence wholly disorganizing and de
moralizing at a time when society, revolutionized by the
^See the newspapers of that period for the demoralized state of labor.
^It was aUeged that Rev. Mr. Hunnicut, the most influential "scala
wag" in the early Reconstruction days, had been cruel to slaves before
the war.

24 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6?
events of the war and by emancipation, called for co-oper
ation and confidence in all classes.
Another class, numerically very small, was made up
of whites who had come to the State as agents of the
Freedmen's Bureau, teachers or adventurers.* The mo
tives of almost aU the teachers and of many of the Bureau
agents were unselfish; yet their presence and the ideas most
of them entertained in regard to the place of the negro dis
posed most of the blacks to become dissatisfied with their
position as mere "free negroes."
Many of the teachers had come from the original abo
lition homes of the North and were thoroughly indoctri
nated with the idea of the equality of aU men. They
called on the negroes and extended to them other social
courtesies that shocked the whites and encouraged the
freedmen to demand equal privileges from all the whites;
but it is untrue that they favored "miscegenation" except
in rare instances. Most of them were pure and self-deny
ing women who looked upon their work as a call from God
and regarded all human beings as entitled to equal rights
before the law and in society. Yet, despite the best of in
tentions, the teachers by their radical ideas did much to
create and foster in the freedmen an aversion to taking up
their old familiar labor with the shovel and the hoe. They
preferred to speculate about thefr abstract rights rather
than to avail themselves of the privileges actually before
them.^ The Freedmen's Court, consisting of three judges, one
representing the whites; the second, the blacks; the thfrd,
the United States Government, did much to keep the ne
groes agitated and expectant. Many of these courts gave a
5For baneful influence of clerical adventurers and radicals, see Whig,
Sept. 6, Sept. 12, 1866, Feb. 4, May 11, 1867; Dispatch, May 13, 1867; Docu
mentary History of Reconstruction (passim) , edited by W. L. Fleming.
^About this time the negroes began to talk a great deal of their desire
to be "treated as a man and a brother."

Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 25
ready ear to all the complaints of the negroes, however
worthless. On the information of mere negro children,
aged and respectable citizens were notified to appear before
these courts to answer for the most trivial offenses. The
records of these courts show many surprising verdicts.
The court at Lynchburg ordered the defendant to pay a
colored freedwoman one dollar and fifty cents for "cross
and unjust conduct."' It was reported by Gen. Fullerton,
who had been sent by President Johnson on a tour of in
spection throughout the South, that in Virginia "these
agents take the widest latitude in the exercise of their judi
cial functions, trying questions involving title to real es
tate, contracts, crimes and even actions affecting the mar
ital relations. We witnessed the trial of a divorce case be
fore the sub-agent at Charlottesville. The trial occupied
about ten minutes and resulted iu a decree of divorce.
In many places where the agents are not men of capacity
and integrity a very unsatisfactory condition of affairs pre
vails. This originates in the arbitrary, unnecessary and
offensive interference of the agents of the Bureau with the
relation between planters and their hired freedmen, causing
vexatious delays in the prosecution of labor, and imposing
expenses and costs in suits before themselves about trivial
matters. The effects produced by the actions of this class
of agents is bitterness and antagonism between the whites
and the freedmen and expectations on the part of the freed
men that can never be realized."*
The friends of the Bureau strenuously insisted that the
Bureau courts were absolutely necessary to secure anything
like justice for the negroes; that the antagonism between
the whites and the blacks was not the result of the presence
of the Bureau agents; and that the disturbed state of socie
ty existed, not because of the Bureau, but in spite of it.
'Lynchburg Virginian, Jan. 3, 1866.
sPp. 64-66, House Document No. 130, Ist Ses. 39th Congress.

26 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67
The object of the Bureau was to protect the interests
of the colored people in the courts, in contracts and in
every relation of life.'' Doubtless it did accomplish its
purpose, in part, at least; yet the Bureau had a tendency
to prolong the period of transition from slavery to freedom
by keeping the negroes in a state of excitement, since they
looked upon the Bureau as a visible demonstration of the
power and purpose of the United States Government from
which they had already received their freedom, and from
which they were led by many agents of the Bureau to be
lieve that they had not yet received half of the good things
'Compare the mUd Freedmen's Bureau Bill of March 3, 1865, (p. 141,
App. Congressional Globe, 1864-1865) , with the drastic Bureau BiU of July
16, 1866, (pp. 366-367, App. Congressional Globe, 1865, 1866).
Negro refugees flocked to the Union army during the w£ir. Some of
them were put to work on forts and fortifications, others were concen
trated in camps and colonies under army officers, usuaUy chaplains. The
Freedmen's Bureau, with Gen. O. O. Howard at its head, was put in con
trol of all negroes. The Bureau was practicaUy independent of the mUi
tary and civil governments in the South.
"Its principal legal activities were relief work, education, regulation
of labor, and the administration of justice." * * * * "it regulated
contracts, wages, hours, rations, clothing and quarters." * * * * Tti
aU that related to labor the Bureau was supreme. "The Bureau courts
had jurisdiction over all cases that arose between blacks or between
blacks and whites." It "supervised the civil courts, from which cases
relating to negroes were often removed and the decisions of which were
set aside." * * * *
"The income of the Bureau was derived from the sale of confiscated
Confederate and private property, from fees, rents, taxes, county funds,
gifts from individuals and associations, and from appropriations by Con
gress. * * * * In the great majority of the black communities there
was, at the end of the war, no destitution and had the negroes stayed
at home and worked there would have been little want, but the distribu
tion of rations caused them to crowd into the towns, and much suffering
and disease resulted. In the later years of the Bureau rations were used
simply as a means of organizing a black political party. The labor regu
lations were as a rule good in theory but absurd in practice. * * « »
The education given the negro was not suited to his needs and the doc
trines of social and political equality taught in some of the schools
aroused the opposition of the whites. The negroes as often as the whites
were cheated and blackmailed by the agents of the Bureau." Fleming
Documents Relating to Reconstruction.

Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 27
in store for them. This feeling rendered many negroes un
willing to labor. They preferred to do as little work as
possible and to wait for the abasement of the whites and
their own exaltation.
The number of white adventurers in Virginia from
1865 to 1867 was not large. In fact, this class was never
numerous in Vfrginia. From the close of the war to the
passage of the Eeconstruction Acts in March, 1867, a con
siderable number of white people, it is impossible to de
termine how many, had come to Virginia in an unofficial
capacity. Some of these had come to cast in their fortunes
with the State and to assist in its development. Others
had come as mere adventurers hoping to profit by the pros
tration and the disorganization of society without render
ing any equivalent. This last class found the negroes the
readiest road to influence and to wealth. They dissemi
nated amongst the credulous blacks alluring reports of
what was being done for them in the North."
The Union League, a secret society in the interest of
the Eepublican party, was organized throughout the State
in 1866.^ Its purpose was to attach the negroes firmly to
"The "scalawags" and "carpetbaggers" were not so influential in 1865
and 1866 as they were after the passage of the Reconstruction Acts in
March, 1867. The character and Influence of the "scalawags" and "car
petbaggers" are faithfully portrayed in Thomas Nelson Page's novel, "Red
Rock." lit is perhaps impossible to determine when Leagues were first organ
ized in Virginia. It was probably as early as 1865. The League was gen
eraUy organized throughout the State in the fall and winter of 1866 and
the spring of 1867. It was organized in Ohio in 1863. After the war the
League favored negro suffrage and radical measures in the South. The
PhUadelphia League sent out more than 4,000,000 pamphlets in three
years after the war. The publications of the League largely consisted in
stories of outrages upon freedmen in the South. It sent teachers to the
South and strove to promote the interests of the freedmen. The League
was originaUy composed of whites. About the time the negroes were en
franchised by Congressional acts negroes were admitted in large num
bers. Thereupon most of the whites withdrew leaving the control of the
organization to the "scalawags," "carpetbaggers" and the negro leaders.

28 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6?
the Eepublican party and to the organizers of the League.
It was made up of negroes, "scalawags" and "carpetbag
gers." It had a large number of offices to which the col
ored members eagerly aspired. It held nocturnal meetings
in which the colored people were urged to "stand by the
Union," which they understood as meaning to stand by the
Eepublican party and to oppose the great mass of whites
in the community. The leaders of these meetings were
the negro preachers, the "scalawags" and an occasional
"carpetbagger." The appointment of the Committee on
Eeconstruction, the Congressional discussion of the Freed
men's Bureau Bill, the Civil Eights BiU and other matters
touching the negroes gave an ever-quickening interest in
the political discussions of the League.^
At this time the colored clergy became in a large de
gree the political leaders of their people. ^ They were sent
as delegates to the numerous conventions called by the
negroes or "scalawags."* They were the chief speakers on
all occasions. They wrote letters to the newspapers in the
State and in the North, urging their claims and declaring
their grievances. They wished negroes to be admitted to
Every negro was considered a member by virtue of his color. At the
weekly meetings generally held in negro churches and school houses inflam
matory speeches promising confiscation of property and social equality
were made by white and black leaders. The Whig caUs the Leagues "only
mischief hatching concerns and nuisances." This was the general opin
ion of the majority of the whites.
2The facts above in regard to the object of the League, its officers and
its methods were obtained from colored men who were members of the
League. For Constitution and Ritual of the League, see Union League
Documents, edited by W. L. Fleming, University of West Virginia.
2The great body of the negroes were unable to read the newspapers.
They derived about all their information from the public speakers ; most
of these orators were negro preachers. See Ruffln, The Negro as a Social
and Political Factor.
*In a convention of Freedmen at Alexandria, Aug. 2, 1865, the preach
ers were present in great numbers. One of them said: "I look on this
convention as the brains of Virginia."— The Republic, Aug. 4, 1865.

Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 29
the State University on the same terms as whites; they in
sisted on being called "Mister;" they soon declared that
nothing short of absolute equality with the whites in aU
things would satisfy them.^ The League, the negro
preachers, and the "scalawags" had prepared the minds of
the blacks for the Eeconstruction Acts of 1867. After the
passage of these bills these adventurers seized control of
the State for several years.
The aforesaid disturbing forces and the undetermined
status of the freedmen kept the negroes agitated, the labor
supply uncertain, and labor contracts insecure. Conse
quently the freedmen were dissatisfied and restless; indus
try was languishing; vagrancy was prevalent; colored chil
dren were unprovided for, many of the youth of the land
were growing up in idleness and crime.

CHAPTEE V.
The Evolution of a System of Hired Labor.
The emancipation of the slaves broke up the old indus
tries in a large part of Virginia. For more than two hun
dred years the people in the oldest and most populous
parts of the State had been accustomed to slave labor with
all its attendant cfrcumstances and consequences. Many of
the people had little or no knowledge of free labor and how
to deal with it. They had little hope that their former
'A convention composed of 160 negroes and 50 whites met in Rich
mond April 17, 1867. One of the resolutions of this convention made
great promises to poor laboring white men, in order to win their support
against the "rapacious and arrogant" as they styled the whites of the
State. P. 758, American Annual Cyclopaedia, 1867.

30 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6?
slaves would serve them faithfully or efficiently for wages.
It has already been shown how the negroes, excited and
agitated by their sudden liberty, were leaving the old plan
tation. The Freedmen's Bureau, in the spring and summer of
1865, was being organized throughout the State to look af
ter the interests of the colored people. Federal soldiers
were posted at all the prominent points in the State.® It
was an additional source of weakness and embarrassment
that the State government at Eichmond had fallen with the
Confederacy in the spring of 1865. The "restored govern
ment" of Virginia at Alexandria and later at Eichmond
was without much respect or popular support. The
county governments were therefore unable to take vigorous
measures either in punishing vagrancy and crime or in re
organizing the community. All initiative in restoring
society to its normal estate was discouraged if net positive
ly prohibited. The white people were kept in suspense in
regard to the future policy of the Federal Government.
The Civil Eights Bill and Negro Suffrage were beginning to
be discussed by some of the leaders of Northern public
opinion. The outlook was gloomy. Something had to be done
at once, or famine would soon stalk through the land.
The planting season was far advanced in Virginia when
hostilities closed in the spring of 1865. Light crops were
planted, but it seemed that it was going to be impossible to
have them cultivated or harvested for lack of laborers in
many parts of the State where the negroes were the chief
farm hands.
Many of the planters at once agreed to give the negroes
board and a share in the crops that they had already helped
to plant, on the condition that they continue on the farms
and assist in cultivating and harvesting them. Not a few
^Soldiers were posted at ten points in May, 1866. House Document
No. 130, 1st Ses. 39th Congress.

Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 31
freedmen accepted these terms. This plan seems to have
met the approbation of the most prudent of the military
commanders, and orders were issued from time to time
urging the planters to adopt such a policy and the negroes
to accept such terms. The negroes accepting these terms
left thefr old masters and homes about the middle of the
winter of 1865-66, when they had received their share of
the crop, which they generally felt was too small.
The farmers of Virginia feared that the negroes as
freedmen could never be induced to become faithful and
regular laborers. In 1865 it seemed that a large number, if
not nearly all of them, would soon become worthless and
possibly as turbulent as the free negroes of the West Indies.
In reality, emancipation was attended by less permanent
idleness and disorganization of labor than was expected,
because the discipline and habits of labor which slavery
had taught the negro came to his relief when he later
found that he had to work or starve. The climatic condi
tions of Virginia rendered it impossible for them to become
permanent idlers and live as they could, and probably
would have lived had they been favored by a tropical
climate and easy conditions of life such as Hayti affords.
However that may be, when the alternative of work or
starvation was squarely presented, most of them chose
work.' Perhaps it is easy to exaggerate the actual disorganiza
tion of labor that really did take place in 1865. The
strangeness of the situation demoralized the whites quite
as much as the blacks. As has already been said, the
planters in a large part of the State were unfamiliar with
free common labor, its dignity and its employment.^ At
the same time the late slaves had much to learn of their
'Bruce's Plantation Negro as a Freeman, discusses (passim) the ef
fect of emancipation on the industry of the negroes.
81t was the opinion of Col. O. Brown and other Bureau agents that
this unfamiUarity with free labor greatly increased the difflcuities of

32 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6?
true position, their rights and duties as free laborers.
These conditions rendered the solution of the problems of
1865-66 still more difficult.
So despondent were many in regard to the negro as a
free laborer that they thought it would be necessary to call in
white laborers to take his place. White immigrants were
earnestly sought; immigration societies were formed
throughout the State; numerous enterprises encouraging
white immigration were chartered by the Legislature during
the session of 1865-66;' a State Commissioner of Immigra
tion was appointed. It was openly avowed that it was
their purpose to induce white men to come to Virginia
from England, Scotland, Germany, Poland or any other
European country to take the place of th© colored laborers.
This was not through any hostility to the negro as a man
or as a laborer, for the Virginians have always preferred
the colored laborer to any other; but it arose from a belief
that the freedman could not be induced to work. In the
State Farmers' Convention held in Eichmond in November,
1866, to discuss the labor situation, it was declared that it
was "impracticable to depend on the present labor sup
ply;" that white labor was cheaper at high wages than
colored labor at lower wages. Still it was felt by the Con
vention that the number of whites that could be induced to
come to Virginia would be very inadequate to the demand."
emancipation. See Col. Brown's report in Lynchburg Virginian, Jan. 2
1866. For opinion of the freedmen as free laborers, see Whig, Jan. 3, 1866 ;
Jan. 10, 1866; Feb. 19, 1866; AprU 16, 1866; Sept. 11, 1866; Enquirer, Nov.
1, 1865; Nov. 3, 1865; Nov. 5, 1865; Nov. 17, 1865; June 33, 1866; Dispatch,
July 8, 1867. General Howard expresses confidence that the negro free
laborer will be successful and insists that the right of negroes to rent or
buy land shaU be guaranteed to them. He also thinks that joint stock
compauies to help poor blacks should be formed. Enquirer, Dec. 32, 1865.
SActs 1865-66, pp. 334-236, 387, 288, 289, 290, 293, 396-298. Richmond
Times, Aug. 3, 1865; Whig, Nov. 8, 1866 ; Enquirer, July 11, 1866.
"Lynchburg Virginian, Nov. 34, 1866.

Negroes andjiheir Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 33
The number of white immigrants to Virginia during the
period from 1865 to 1867 was inconsiderable. Most of
those who did come to the State did not come as laborers
but rather as capitalists or "carpetbaggers." It was clear
to most people from the first that the negroes would in a
large part of the iState continue to be the chief laborers for
many years and that some plan of utilizing their labor had
to be devised.
Various plans were, during the summer of 1865, pro
posed by the whites for the employment of the negroes.
The Freedmen's Bureau had declined to fix a wage, but
thought it best to leave the rate of wages to the law of sup
ply and demand. 1 The aim of the Bureau was simply to
secure freedom of contract for the freedmen and to enforce
the contracts when made.
One attempted solution of this question was for the
farmers to hold county or district meetings to determine
the rate of wages they would pay the negroes. These
meetings were held in many of the counties where the
negroes were numerous. The wage agreed upon was usu
ally $5.00 per month and board for able-bodied men, and
$3.00 per month and board for women and boys.^ The
farmers, in some instances, agreed in these county meetings
not to employ negroes at any price unless they were able
to furnish testimonials or recommendations from their last
employer, which practically meant that a negro could not
find employment unless he had the endorsement of his
former owner. ^
iGen. Howard's report, p. 644, Messages and Documents of U. S. Gov
ernment, 1866-67.
^Richmond Times, June 15, 1865, June 80,1865; Col. O. Brown's re
port, Lynchburg Virginian, Jan. 3, 1866. Pp. 517, 908, Globe, 1865-66,
gives an account of a meeting of Hanover county farmers. General
Young's report, p. 1158, serial No. 97, Official Records of the War of the
Rebellion, also Carl Schurz's opinion, p. 1305; Globe, 1865-66; The Repub
lic, May 19, 1866, June 3, 1865; Whig, Sept. 18, 1866.
3See Richmond Times, June 20, 1865, for account of such a ineeting
and resolutions in Dinwiddie county. Col. Brown's report, Lynchburg
Virginian, Jan. 2, 1866.

34 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6?
Small as these wages seem, it does not appear that
they were unsatisfactory to the negroes in some of the
counties where they had been agreed upon. Indeed in
some parts of the State the freedmen were glad enough to
work for their board, at this time.* In other counties the
demand for colored laborers was rather active at $12.00 per
month. ^
July 24, 1865, the Franklin county farmers in a meet
ing declared: "Whilst we recognize the propriety and
necessity of giving employment to the negroes and of en
couraging them to industry and good conduct by fair and
reasonable rewards for their labor, still, in consequence of
the many difficulties surrounding the subject, we deem it
wholly impracticable at this time to fix any regular stand
ard of wages for labor — each case must necessarily be gov
erned by the circumstances attending it, and in the present
unsettled and prostrated condition of the finances and busi
ness of the country, laborers must be content with moderate
wages or go without employment."*
The small wage fund and the uncertainty of the times
in many parts of Virginia in 1864 and 1866 undoubtedly
rendered liberal wages impossible. Col. Brown, Assistant
Commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau in Virginia, said
on this subject: "Stripped to a great extent of ready
resources by the operations of the war they were unable to
allow those people (the negroes) their just due, much less
charitable assistance.'" Elsewhere he explained the low
^Richmond Times, June 27, 1865, said such was the case in Orange,
Culpeper and Fauquier counties. See Peyton's History of Augusta
County, p. 240.
^In the VaUey counties the demand for laborers at $12 per month as
farm hands exceeded the supply. House Document No. 120, 1st Ses. 39th
Congress. ^Lynchburg Virginian, July 24, 1865. See Whig, Aug. 18, 1865, for
account of such meetings.
'Lynchburg Virginian, Jan. 2, 1866; Agricultural Report, 1865-^66,
pp. 135-136.

Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 35
wages prevailing in Virginia as the result of an excessive
supply of laborers with a small demand. He suggested as
the only solution, the emigration of at least 50,000 negroes
from the State. ^ It is asserted that the wages paid un
skilled white and black laborers were practically the same
at that time and the low wage paid the negroes was in no
sense an effort to wrong them or to discriminate against
them. Nevertheless it was generally felt by the negroes
and by the Federal officers that the purpose of these
county meetings was inimical to the interests of the colored
laborers. The military officers generally disapproved the
proceedings of these farmer meetings on the ground that
"the citizens will not be permitted to band themselves
together for the purpose of agreeing on any certain remun
eration for the labor of the freedmen, that being in the
hands of the Freedmen's Bureau — the officers of which
alone wUl decide in these matters."^ It has already been
mentioned that the Bureau always declined to fix a wage,
but strove to secure for the contracting negro such wages
as "supply and demand would insure."
In one county at least a meeting of farmers, besides
fixing the wage at $5.00 per month, resolved that no land
should be rented to negroes." These meetings and resolu
tions of the planters were regarded by many friends of the
negroes as efforts to keep the colored people a landless and
moneyless class whose condition was, in reality, worse than
the old form of chattel slavery from which they had just
emerged, while it secured to the whites the benefits of
slavery without its inconveniences. It is doubtless true
that a considerable number of people had consciously or
8Col. O. Brown's report for 1865, printed in Lynchburg Virginian,
Jan. 2, 1866
'District Commander's General Order printed in Lynchburg Virgin
ian, July 37, 1865.
"Such was the case in Amherst County. Richmond Times, June IS,
1865; Col. Brown's report, Lynchburg Virginian, Jan. 2, 1866.

36 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6?
unconsciously such an object in view. Many of the people
felt that the negro was hopelessly servile by nature; that
all efforts to elevate him must prove futUe. Entertaining
such opinions, they were ready to assent to a system of
wages that would keep him in the place in society to
which he was, in their opinion, suited. Tet almost all
people frankly and fully accepted the unconditional
abolition of slavery and wished to devise some system of
labor and contract that would secure the rights of both
whites and blacks. Some of the newspapers condemned
the efforts of the planters to fix wages at $5. 00 per month,
declaring that such wages were not sufficient to support
the laborers.^ Notwithstanding the idleness and vagrancy of the
negroes during the years 1865 and 1866 it was hoped by
many that they would settle down to something like their
old industry when the novelty of their condition wore off
and they found themselves face to face with the stern reaU-
ties a free man must meet and conquer, or perish. How to
put the negroes to work in this transitional period and
thus prevent a great scarcity of food, if not a famine, was
the question that had to be solved.
Many things disinclined the negroes earnestly to go to
work on the farms at their old occupations. In the minds
of most of them freedom and idleness were synonymous.
Labor was a badge of servitude. If they must work, they
did not wish to resume their old forms of agricultural
labor; they preferred light and transient jobs about the
towns, and in this way eked out a wretched support.^
The army officers stationed in Virginia during thia
period uniformly strove to impress the colored people with
the true nature of freedom, and informed them that it
iLynchburg Virginian, Dec. 30, 1865, June 13, 1865; Richmond Times,
Aug. 3, May 19, 1865.
2For idleness of negroes ^nd their averyon tq farm labor, see news
papers of 1865-66.

Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 37
would be necessary for them to work as hard, if not harder,
than when they were slaves. Eepeatedly these officers
issued orders urging them to find work where they were
needed and not to hope vain things from freedom. They
were urged to go to work on the ' 'abandoned' ' lands then
in the hands of the officers of the Federal Government.^
On the peninsula between Fortress Monroe and Williams
burg, it is said, sixteen thousand negroes were occupying
lands that the United States Government had seized.* At
various points throughout the State county farms were
established for them where they were furnished food until
they could raise a crop. Some of the army officers sug.
gested that the army mules should be loaned or given to
the negroes to enable them to go to work and support
themselves. These attempts in 1865 and 1866 to find homes and
employment on the "confiscated" land were frustrated by
the gradual restoration of these lands to their former own
ers. While they were in possession of these lands the
freedmen were not very successful. The uncertainty of
their tenure conduced to the failure of these settlements.
The officers of the government divided some of these con
fiscated lands, of which the titles had been perfected by
judical process, into small lots of ten acres or less and sold
them to freedmen on easy terms. But all these efforts to
sSee the foUowing references in regard to the plans of the army offi
cers to put the negroes to work and to settle them on the abandoned
lands: Gen. Howard's report, p. 644, Messages and Documents of the U.
S. Government, 1866-67; Gen. HaUeck thought the 100,000 negroes under
the direction of the Federal Government in Virginia should be given the
use of condemned animals to raise crops, p. 1133, serial 97, Ofiicial Records
of War of RebeUion ; Gen. McKibbin's report, p. 1159, serial 97, Official
Records of War of RebeUion; Gen. Hartsuff's Order, pp. 933-933, 1185,
Official Records of War of Rebellion, serial 97; Messages and Documents
of U. S. Government, 1868-69, pp. 508-509 ; Messages and Documents of U.
S. Government, 1866-67, p. 668; Gen. HaUeck, 1396, 1005, serial 97, Official
Records of War of RebeUion ; Charlottesville Chronicle, Feb. 38, 1867.
<P. 658, Globe, 1865-66. The number was probably not so great.

38 Negroes and Their Treatmen n Virginia, 1865-6?
secure homes for the negroes reached only a very small
number of the hundreds of thousands of restless and unem
ployed colored people of the State.
There was a more or less well defined hope in the
bosom of all the negroes that there were other and better
things to come to them. About Christmas each year the
report was spread abroad amongst the credulous colored
people that they were soon to be given the farms of their
former masters.^ This expectation was strong during the
autumn and early winter of 1865. Very naturally these
expectant landlords did not wish to enter into any perma
nent contract as laborers.
The great body of the negroes in Virginia was engaged
in the cultivation of tobacco. This crop requires regular
and careful attention from the time it is planted until it is
ready for the warehouse, a period of from ten to twelve
sp. 79, App. Globe, 1865-66.
"Reports having been received at these headquarters that the freed
men in some parts of the State refuse to enter into just and reasonable
contracts for labor, on account of the beUef that the United States gov
ernment will distribute lands among them, superintendents and agents
of this bureau wUl take the earliest opportunity to explain to the freed
men that no lands wiU be given them by the government ; that the govern
ment has but a very small quantity of land in the State — only enough
to provide homes for a few famUies, and that this can only be secured by
purchase or lease. They will also explain to them the advantages of at
once entering into contracts for labor for the coming year, and that the
system of contracts is in no way connected with slavery, but is the sys
tem adopted by free laborers everywhere. It is believed that the renting
of smaU tracts of land by the farmer to his laborers would be mutuaUy
beneficial. The laborer's interest in his crops and improvements would
attach him to the plantation, counteract any temptation to break his
contract, and by f uruishing employment for the more dependent mem
bers of his family, increase their contentment and their comforts.
"The plan of renting lands on shares to the freedmen has been suc
cessfuUy tried in some parts of the State, and is believed to be worthy of
a more extended trial. Superintendents will counsel with and assist
both parties in making either of the above arrangements." Instructions
to agents in Virginia, issued Sept. 19, 1865, by Col. O. Brown, Assistant
Commissioner of Freedmen's Bureau, printed in Documents Relating to
Reconstruction, edited by W. L. Fleming, University West Virginia.

Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 39
months. Through spring, summer, and autumn it must
have daily care. Probably no other great agricultural
product in the United States requires such assiduous care
for so long a period. No planter therefore could venture
to plant a tobacco crop unless there was a strong probabili
ty that his laborers would remain with him through the
year. The labor supply was very unsatisfactory during the
season of 1865, and promised to be so for 1866, owing to
the disinclination of the negroes to form long contracts or
to respect them when formed. The issue of rations by the
Freedmen's Bureau to the negroes made it possible for
many of them to live in idleness and was a standing invita
tion to them to flock to various agencies and to find sup
port without work, while waiting for the good the future
was to bring.
With these difficulties confronting them the people set
to work to develop a contract system of labor that would
be fair to all. The attempt on the part of certain counties
to fijx a general rate of wages was a failure both from its
inherent weakness and from the opposition of the Federal
authorities. Duiing the summer of 1865 various plans
were proposed and to some extent put into operation.
One of these plans was to furnish the negroes cabins, some
land for a garden and for a small crop, with the under
standing that the negroes were to work at a stipulated
wage for the owner of the land when their services were
needed. This system proved fairly satifactory to both the
whites and the blacks. There continued, however, to be
considerable complaint on the part of the whites that the
labor was not reliable and that the negroes did not respect
the obligation of their contracts.*
The number of negroes cultivating rented farms on
their own account was not large during the years 1865-67.
sPor form of contract with freedmen, see Whig, Dec. 25, 1865. For
violation of contract. Whig, Nov. 3, 1866. Complaints of violated con
tracts is common in the newspapers of that time.

40 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6?
For this there were several causes. The chief of these was
that the negroes had not sufficient capital to furnish them
selves with food while making the crop, even if the land
owner furnished the land, the tools and the work stock.
In most cases it was necessary for the landlord not only to
furnish land, stock and tools but also to advance a suffi
cient sum in cash or credit to buy food for the negro and
his family while making the crop. This involved a consid
erable outlay of money as well as considerable risk as the
negroes did not prove highly successful farmers and were
usually dissatisfied with the settlement of the account at
the end of the year. Another explanation of the compara
tively small number of renters is that the whites felt that
negro labor without the direction and guidance of white
men would be a failure. ' It has already been mentioned
that in one county of the State it was resolved not to rent
land to negroes.^ Such a feeling, however, was never very
general, and where it did exist it arose chiefly from the
considerations just mentioned and not from any desfre to
oppress the negroes. There was no effort by law or general
public opinion to prevent the freedmen from renting or
owning land, though some few people thought it best not to
rent them land.
Free negroes were allowed to own land before the war.
At the close of the war, in 1865, a considerable number of
negroes in Virginia had bought real estate.^ They were
very anxious to own land, since they thought that owner
ship of the soil was an indisputable mark of freedom. The
number buying land in the three years immediately foUow-
'For reasons why farmers prefer to hire negroes rather than rent
them land, see Bruce, Plantation Negro as a Freeman, p. 212 et seq.
SAmherst County Resolutions, Richmond Times, June 15, 1865. The
Enquirer (editorial) suggests that the freedmen might become fixtures
on the plantations. This is suggested as a solution of the vexed labor
question. ^Col. O. Brown's Report, Lynchburg Virginian, Jan. 2, 1866.

Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 41
ing the war was many times larger than for any three
years since 1868. It does not appear that any negro ex
perienced any difficulty in buying real estate either in the
country or in the city if he had sufficient means to do so.
Neither the whites nor the negroes found it entirely
satisfactory for the negroes to attempt to rent land and
farm on their own account. By the close of 1866 the pre
vailing opinion amongst the farmers of the State was in-
cUned to favor the wage system instead of renting the land
to the freedmen. Eepresentative planters declared the
results of renting was anything but satisfactory. "The
stock loaned was greatly depreciated in value and not
enough was made to remunerate the land owner for ad
vances. The negroes as tenants are worthless.""
A few planters took a little more hopeful view of their
colored tenants. By this time the negroes as a race had
demonstrated their incapacity for independent enterprise
and the direction of their own labor; yet many of them who
were especially endowed by nature or had enjoyed superior
advantages in slavery were successful and respected men of
business. A wage system was being developed during the years
1865 and 1866. It is difficult to determine what was the
average rate of wages actually paid freedmen in the sum
mer and fall of 1865. The conditions prevailing in differ
ent counties were unlike. In some counties the supply of
labor was so abundant and the demand for it so small that
the negroes could be hired for their board and quarters.
Such was the case in Orange county. In other counties
where the demand was active and the number of laborers
compai ati veiy small, negro men were eagerly paid twelve
dollars per month, the supply not being equal to the
demand at that price. This was the case in the VaUey
"See letter of Mayo Cabell in Lynchburg Virginian, Jan. 16, 1867; Gen
Howard's Report, p. 665, Messages and Documents of the U. S. Govern
ment, 1867-68.

42 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67
counties. In addition to this money payment they received
fourteen pounds of bacon, "bone not counted," and one
bushel of meal per month, which was supposed to be suffi
cient to feed a laboring man. In many cases the wages
were much lower than ten dollars per month. The wages
paid for unskilled agricultural labor did not often exceed
this amount. The officers of the Freedmen's Bureau seem
to have regarded these wages as high as the agricultural
condition justified.
The wage paid in 1866 was higher than that of 1865.
The demand for labor was greater, and the number of
laborers was apparently smaller than in the year before.
The agents of the Freedmen's Bureau collected statistics in
1866 that showed a marked diminution of the number of
negroes in Virginia. One of the Eichmond papers deplored
the fact that better wages were drawing off the colored
laborers to the Southern states or to the North while few
whites were coming in to take their places.^ Probably the
emigration of the negroes in 1866 was not nearly so large
as it was estimated, but the alarm caused by a possible
scarcity of laborers and an increased labor demand arising
from reviving industry caused an advance in wages.
Gen. Howard declared that the low wages prevailing
in Virginia were the effect of supply and demand; yet he
thinks that the whites were in many instances unfafr to
the negroes.^ The Freedmen's Bureau officers and the
mUitary officers repeatedly declared that business was pros
trated, that capital had vanished, and that labor could be
employed only at very low wages. The wage paid in 1866
was not much, if any, less than the wage of 1867. For the
year 1867 the rep )rt of the Department of Agriculture
gives a table showing the wages in Virginia in 1860 and in
1867. The average annual wage for a negro man in 1860
iP. 765, American Annual Cyclopaedia, 1866.
2P. 671, Messages and Documents of the U. S. Government, 1866-67; p.
79, App. Globe, 1865-66.

Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 43
was $105; in 1867, $102; for a woman in 1860, $46; in 1867,
$43; for a youth in 1860, $39; in 1867, $46. In the pre
ceding table of wages per annum, rations and clothing are
included with the money of 1860, rations without clothing
in 1867. The clothing comprised two suits of summer
clothes, two pairs of shoes or one pair of boots, and some
times a pair of blankets.^
A comparison of the wages of 1860 with those of 1867
shows that the labor of a free negro in 1867 was not as well
paid as was the labor of a slave in 1860. The service of a
slave was undoubtedly worth more than that of an excited
and restless freedman, who was, according to all testimony,
much less efficient as a freedman than as a slave. It is
proper to mention that wages in Vfrginia were lower than
in any other of the seceding states except South Carolina.
The feverish excitement in cotton planting in 1866 was
responsible for the much higher rate of wages prevailing in
most of the cotton states.
The wages paid freedmen in Virginia during this
period were severely criticized by the friends of the negroes
outside of the State. The Secretary of the Treasury, Mr.
Fessenden, had, July 29, 1864, fixed a scale of wages as
follows: Prom eighteen to forty years of age, males, $25.00
per month; females, $18.00. From fourteen to eighteen
and from forty to fifty-five, males, $20.00; females, $14.00.
Over fifty-five and from twelve to fourteen, males, $15.00
per month; females, $10.00. The wages were not for
skilled labor alone, but for all able-bodied colored persons.*
The proposal of such a scale of wages disinclined the
negroes to take work at the wages current in the State. A
feeling grew amongst them that they were entitled to three
or four times as much as they were getting for their work.
In the "Hunnicutt Convention," assembled at Eichmond in
sp. 416, Annual Report of the Department of Agriculture, 1867.
*F. 888, American Annual Cyclopaedia, 1864.

44 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6?
April, 1867, there were about two hundred and fifty dele
gates, of whom about fifty were whites. In this conven
tion there was much talk of "confiscation" and it was de
clared that wages were entirely too low. The speeches in
this convention show that it was thought that about forty
dollars per month was the right figure for ordinary farm
labor. ^
The different attempts to settle the labor question had
in the spring of 1867 proved only partiaUy successful. The
wage system was winning its way. The negroes were dis
satisfied with the current rate of wages and the terms of
employment. Their friends outside of the State and their
"scalawag" leaders in the State were encouraging them to
demand higher wages than have ever been paid to unskUled
farm labor, white or black, in the history of Vfrginia.

CHAPTEE VI.
Vagrancy and Vagrancy Laws.
The efforts to induce the negroes to take up the forms
of labor for which there was a demand and for which they
had been trained were not entirely successful. They
either declined to enter into contracts for labor or ignored
them when formed. Many pilfered from the kitchens of
the white employers of thefr friends or lived on the rations
drawn from the Federal Government. As late as Septem
ber, 1865, the Bureau issued to freedmen in Virginia in
one month 275,887 rations. In December, 1865, 12,058
negroes were receiving daily rations; about 15,000 were
sCharlottesville Chronicle, April 20, 1867.

Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 45
daily fed through the winter.* They sometimes adopted
bolder tactics, gathered into crowds in remote parts of the
counties, killed the hogs, sheep and cattle of the white
farmers and plundered their orchards and fields. In Meck
lenburg County, in August, 1865, "the negroes congregated
at one or two points, killed the poultry, sheep and hogs
and devastated the cornfields and melon patches of the
farmers.'" The most common theme of the editorials of
the State press during the summer and fall of 1865 was the
idleness and vagrancy of the freedmen.
How to deal with the vagrancy and petty thieving of
the negroes was one of the most serious questions of that
time. The Eichmond Times, June 21, 1865, says: "If
severe penal legislation shall become necessary to prevent
the free negro from becoming a vagabond and idle thief,
the Legislature will provide the remedy." Many news
paper correspondents were of the opinion that some system
of "force" was necessary to break np vagrancy amongst
the freedmen. The Lynchburg Virginian, June 12, 1865,
said: "Large numbers have deserted the plantations and
seek to congregate in the cities, so that the most stringent
police regulations may be necessary to keep them from
overburdening the towns and depleting the agricultural
regions of labor. The military authorities seem to be alive
to this fact and are taking measures to correct the evil.
But the civil authorities also should be fully empowered to
protect the community from this new imposition. The
magistrates and municipal officers everywhere should be
permitted to hold a rod in terrorem over these wandering,
idle creatures. Nothing short of the most efficient police
system will prevent strolling, vagrancy, theft, and the
ntter destruction of or serious injury to our industrial sys-
sp. 79. App. Globe, 1865-66. Messages and Documents of the U. S.
Government, 1866-67, p 661, 672. P. 378, American Annual Cyclopaedia,
1865. raichmond Times, Aug. 16, 1865.

46 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6?
tem." Nov. 4, 1865, the same paper said: "Therefore to
prevent the influx of this population to our towns and cities
the Legislature will be obliged to pa.ss laws of sweeping
character. A system of registration must be adopted and
the vagrant laws must be revived and rigidly enforced.
Apprenticeship, to prevent young negroes from growing up
in idleness and vagrancy, should be a settled policy, to be
regulated upon some system of justice and fair dealing
between both parties. The penalty of vagrancy should be
virtual servitude and apprenticeship to labor of some kind
tor a limited period, for only by some such means as these
will we be able to make this character of labor available.'"
In September, 1865, the Lynchburg Virginian, in an
editorial, says: "Already measures are being taken to
compel the newly freed man to labor, and we hope, little
confidence as we have in the inclination of the negro to
labor without the application of some kind of force, that a
system will be adopted to supply the lack of labor that is
now experienced."
In September, 1865, the agent of the American Bible
Society, in compliance with Governor Pierpont' s request,
after visiting Petersburg, Farmville, Lynchburg, Bedford
City and the country surrounding these cities, says, in re
gard to the negro: "The number of able-bodied men is
small; in respect to labor a goodly number of the able-
bodied are industrious and doing well for themselves and
families; numbers must perish unless aided by charity —
some estimates make one-half, some one-third, some a very
few as dependent on charity; some negroes everywhere
feel that they have no responsibility in caring for their
wives or children or their own personal wants and live to
some extent on what does not belong to them."^
'Daily Dispatch, Jan. 4, 1865, had said that the condition of the free
negro will be more pitiable than that of the slave and that a new slavery
will arise.
^These quotations are taken from the brief inf ormal report Jeft yi the
Governor's office. See Lynchburg Virginian, Sept. 9, 1865,

Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 47
In denial of all these charges Senator Sumner read in
the United States Senate the following letter "from a gov
ernment officer of Virginia:" "With regard to the freed
men there is every disposition on their part to make them
odious. They constantly talk of insurrection, insubordina
tion, thieving, idleness and every species of crime and vice,
all of which I assure is entirely false, for all cases of thiev
ing certainly, I am sorry to say, are done by whites.""
It is surprising to read that "a government officer of
Virginia" ever reported that "all cases of thieving are
done by whites;" yet ao excited and credulous were the
partisans of the negro that such sweeping statements were
solemnly read in the United States Senate by such senators
as Sumner, Wilson, and others of almost equal intelligence.
On the other hand the wildest reports of the licentious
ness, vagabondage and starvation of the freedmen were
believed. Senator Doolittle, in a speech at New Haven,
Connecticut, in 1865, declared that at least one million
negroes had perished from 1860 to 1865; he did not doubt
that the census for 1870 would show that at least two-fifths
of the negroes had perished from disease, starvation and
vice.^ A writer in Blackwood's Magazine declared in
1866 that almost one-half of the negroes in the United
States had perished in the last six years. ^ In some places
in the South the mortality was thirty per cent, of the sick.'
Some thought the negroes as freemen would disappear as
the Indians and buffaloes were disappearing. Many were
alarmed at the drunkenness prevailing amongst aU classes
and sexes of the colored people.*
"P. 93, Globe, 1865-66.
ip. 810, American Annual Cyclopaedia, 1865.
^Blackwood's Magazine, May, 1866, p. 532.
sp. 376, American Annual Cyclopaedia, 1865.
IRichmond Times, July 8, 1865.
Mr. Dawson's speech. Congressional Globe, 1865-1866, p. 543.
For vagrancy and mortality of the negroes, see Enquirer, Nov. 15,
1865. March 22, Sept. 18, 1866, AprUlS, 1867; Whig, Dec. 1, 1865, Oct. 2,
Nov. 5, 1866; Republic, Aug. 10, 1865.

48 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6?
It is now well known that the negro did not suffer so
severely from idleness, dissipation and disease as was be
lieved to be the case at that time; nevertheless he suffered
much. The army officers were alarmed at the prevalence of
vagrancy during the year 1865. In an order of June 1,
1865, General Gregg, stationed at Lynchburg, says: "No
freedman can be allowed to live in idleness when he can
obtain any description of work. Should he refuse to work
he will be treated as a vagabond." June 2, 1865, he issued
the following order: "Able-bodied men will be prevented,
as far as it is possible to do so, from deserting the women,
children and aged persons; and where there is no good
cause shown why they left, they will be sent back." Gen.
Wright, in an order issued at Danville, speaks of the dan
ger "from vagrant negroes." Gen. Duval, at Staunton,
June 12, 1865, gave notice ' 'that all negroes now roaming
the country will be made at once to break up their idle
pursuits and seek employment."
In his report for 1865 Gen. O. O. Howard, Commis
sioner of the Freedmen's Bureau, says there was much
unnecessary idleness amongst the negroes in Virginia. He
thinks this vagabondage arises in part from the meagre
wages paid the freedmen. Col. O. Brown, Assistant Com
missioner of the Freedmen's Bureau for Virginia, in an
order of November 10, 1865, says in regard to the vagran
cy of the negro: "Where employment is offered on terms
that will provide for the comfortable subsistence of the
laborers, removing them from the vices of idleness and from
dependence on charity, they should be treated as vagrants
if they do not accept it, and the rules of the Bureau appli
cable to such cases should be rigidly enforced ; while the
freedmen must and will be protected in their rights, they
must be required to meet these first and most essential con
ditions of a state of freedom, a visible means of support
and fidelity to contract." In his report of Jan. 2, 1866,

Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 49
Col. Brown said: "In the neighborhood of Norfolk, For
tress Monroe and Yorktown about seventy thousand negroes
had been collected during the war." * * * * "in other
districts thousands of freedmen were roaming about, with
out settled employment and without homes. In localities
least disturbed by the pressure or confiict of armies and
where the average amount of land was under cultivation
the crops were suffering from want of proper attention."*
Col. Brown thought that the vagrancy prevaiUng during
the year 1865 was owing to an excessive supply of laborers
and inability of the whites to employ and co-operate with
free labor, since they had been accustomed to deal only
with slaves.
In August, 1865, the Freedman' s Journal, of Alex
andria, declared there would be intense suffering amongst
the negroes in large numbers who were not laying up any
thing for the coming winter, but were either idle and
unemployed, or dissipating their earnings for drink or
trifles.^ The actual vagrancy was not as great as it appeared
to many people at that time. Befoie the war nearly all
the negroes in Vfrginia had been slaves and had conse
quently been kept closely employed on their owners' plan
tations. People were unaccustomed to the sight of loung
ing, idle negroes, and were therefore the more alarmed at
the idleness and vagrancy of the late slaves. It is the
opinion of some citizens who lived through that period
that the negroes were not less industrious than at present,
yet the people were alarmed at the unwonted idleness of
the freedmen and demanded remedial legislation of the
General Assembly.
The Legislature met early in December, 1865, and
Lynchburg Virginian, Jan. 2, 1866.
6Lynchburg Virginian, August 85, 1866.
4

50 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67
passed, on January 15, 1866, the following preamble and
act:' "Whereas it is represented to the General Assembly,
Tliat there hath lately been a great increase of idle and
disorderly persons in some parts of this Commonwealth,
and, unless some stringent laws are passed to restrain and
prevent such vagrancy and idleness, the State will be over
run with dissolute and abandoned characters to the great
detriment of the public weal: For remedy whereof,
"1. Be it enacted by the General Assembly, That the
overseers of the poor, or other officers having charge of the
poor, or the special county police, or the police of any
corporation, or any one or more of such persons, shall be
and are hereby empowered and required upon discovering
any vagrant or vagrants within their respective counties
or corporations, to make information thereof to any justice
of the peace of their county or corporation, and to require
a warrant for apprehending such vagrant or vagrants, to
be brought before him or some other justice; and if, upon
due examination, it shall appear that the person or persons
are within the true description of a vagrant, as hereinafter
mentioned, such justice shall, by warrant under his hand,
order such vagrant or vagrants to be employed in labor for
any term not exceeding three months, and by any constable
of such county or corporation, be hired out for the best
wages that can be procured; to be applied, except as here
after provided, for the use of the vagrant or his family, as
ordered by the justice. And if any such vagrant or
vagrants shall, during such time of service, without suf
ficient cause, run away from the person so employing him
or them, he or they shall be apprehended, on the warrant
of a justice, and returned to the custody of such hirer, who
shall have, free of any further hire, the services of said
vagrant for one month in addition to the original term of
hiring; and said employer shall then have the power, if
'Acts 1865-66, pp. 91-98.

Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 51
authorized by the justice, to work said vagrant, confined
with ball and chain; or should said hirer decline to receive
again said vagrant, then said vagrant shaU be taken by
the officer upon the order of a justice, to the poor or work
house, if there be any in said county or corporation, and be
delivered to the overseer or superintendent, who shall work
said vagrant for the benefit of said county or corporation;
or, if authorized by the justice, to work him, confined with
ball and chain, for the period for which he would have
had to serve his late employer, had he consented to receive
him again; or should there be, when said runaway vagrant
is apprehended, any public work going on in said county
or corporation, then said vagrant, upon the order of a
justice, shall be delivered over by said officer to the super
intendent of such public work, who shall, for the like last
mentioned period, work said vagrant on said public works,
confined with ball and chain, if so authorized by the justice.
But if there be no poor or work house in said county or
corporation, and no public work then in progress therein,
then, in that event, said justice may cause said vagrant to
be delivered to any person who will take charge of him.
Said person to have his services free of charge, except
maintenance, for a like last mentioned period, and said
person so receiving said vagrant is hereby empowered, if
authorized by the justice, to work said vagrant confined
with ball and chain; or should no such person be found,
then said vagrant is to be committed to the county jail,
there to be confined for the like period, and fed on bread and
water. But the persons described as the fifth class of vag
rants, in the second section of this act, may be arrested
without warrant by the special county or corporation police,
and when so arrested shall be taken before a justice, who
shall proceed to dispose of them in the mode prescribed in
this section, or may at ouce direct them to be committed
to prison for a period not exceeding three months, to be
kept in close confinement and fed on bread and water.

52 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6?
"2. The following described persons shall be liable to
the penalties imposed by law upon vagrants:
"First — All persons who shall unlawfully return into
any county or corporation whence they have been legally
removed. "Second — AU persons who, not having wherewith to
maintain themselves and their families, live idly and with
out employment, and refuse to work for the usual and
common wages given to other laborers in the like work in
the place where they then are.
"Third— All persons who shall refuse to perform the
work which shall be allotted to them by the overseers of
the poor as aforesaid.
"Fourth — All persons going about from door to door,
or placing themselves in streets, highways or other roads,
to beg alms, and all persons wandering abroad and beg
ging, unless disabled or incapable of labor.
"Fifth — All persons who shall come from any place
without this commonwealth to any place within it, and
shall be found loitering and residing therein, and shall
follow no labor, trade, occupation, or business, and have
no visible means of subsistence, and can give no reasonable
account of themselves or their business in such place.
' '3. All costs and expenses incurred shall be paid out
of the hire of such vagrant, if sufficient, and if not suf
ficient, the deficiency shall be paid by the county or
corporation." The language of this ace applies alike to all persons,
both white and black, but it was enacted primarily to sup
press vagrancy among the negroes.
This statute was annulled by Maj. Gen. Terry, then in
command in Virginia, in an order issued only nine days
after its passage. In this order Gen. Terry sums up the
provisions of the act and declares: "The ultimate effect of
the statute will be to reduce the freedmen to a condition of
servitude worse than that from which they have been

Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 53
emancipated, a condition which will be slavery in all but
its name." In conclusion of his review he says : "It is
therefore ordered that no magistrate, civil officer, or other
person shall, in any way or manner, apply or attempt to
apply, the provisions of said statute to any colored person
in this department."^
Carl Schurz had said in his report to President John
son: "Although the freedman is no longer considered the
property of the individual master he is considered the
slave of society, and all independent state legislation will
share the tendency to make him such."' It was declared
that the vagrant act of January 15, 1866, was only the first
step toward enslaving all negroes to the community, which
it was alleged had afready practically been done in some
of the Gulf States."
This statute was not in force long enough to be tested
in its practical workings. It was liable to grave abuses ;
yet it cannot be said, in view of all the facts narrated on
the preceding pages, that it was enacted to re-enslave the
negroes, either to an individual or to society. This was
the only act touching the negroes that was annulled by the
military authorities. With the exception of the Contract
Law, the Vagrant Act was the only positive enactment
of the Legislature that was seriously criticised by the
negroes or their friends.
8Pp. 908, 1305, Globe, 1865-66.
sCongressional Globe, 1865-66, p. 1305.
"See the Congressional debates on the Freedmen's Bureau BiU, CivU
Rights BiU and the Reconstruction Acts, Congressional Globe, 1865-67.
For comparison of the "Black Laws" passed by the Southern Legislatures
in 1865-66, with simUar laws in the Northern states, see Herbert, SoUd
South. For fuU account of these laws, see Burgess, Reconstruction, and
Garner, Reconstruction in Mississippi. For partisan account, see Blaine,
Twenty Years in Congress, and McCaU, Thaddeus Stevens.

54 Negroes and Their Treat^ment in Virginia, 1865-6?
CHAPTEE VII.
Contract Laws.
During the year 1865 almost all the contracts between
white and colored men for labor were verbal agreements.
In many cases they were indefinite in thefr terms and led
to much misunderstanding between the employer and the
employee. The negroes, after the lapse of a few months,
were surprised to find how much they had received on
thefr wage account and how small an amount was due
them. They therefore became discontented, abandoned
their work and made complaint of their wrongs before the
Federal authorities, aUeging that they were denied the
wages promised them or were wronged in the payment of
the same. Since the contracts were verbal, it was impos
sible for the courts to determine who was in the i^ong.
To obviate this source of dissatisfaction and litigation,
the Legislature, February 20, 1866, enacted: "That no
contract between a white and a colored person for the
labor or service of the latter for a longer period than two
months shall be binding on such colored person unless the
contract be in writing, signed by such white person, or his
agent, and by such colored person, and duly acknowledged
before a justice or notary public or clerk of the county or
corporation court, or overseer of the poor, or two or more
credible witnesses in the county or corporation in which
the white person resides or in which the labor or service is
to be performed. And it shall be the duty of the justice,
notary, clerk, or overseer of the poor, or the witnesses to
read and explain the contract to the colored person before
taking his acknowledgment thereof, and to state that this
has been done in the certificate of the acknowledgment of
the contract.""" In this section of the statute there is no
""Acts 1865-6S, p. 83.

Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 55
discrimination against the freedman, since he can enforce
his contracts whether verbal or written, while the white
man can enforce his contract with a negro only when it is
written and properly acknowledged.
In the account of the evolution of a wage system fre
quent references were made to the uncertainty and unre
liability of the colored labor of the State. It was shown
that the planting of a tobacco crop, the leading staple in the
section of the State occupied chiefly by negroes, was a great
risk on account of the transient and uncertain character of
labor. Since the restraints of slavery had been removed
from them the negroes seemed to have the idea that they as
freemen were bound by no contract or promise, if interest
or fancy invited them to violate it. The offer of a slight in
crease for a day or two in the daUy wage would induce the
laborers to desert, at the most critical time of planting or
harvesting, the planters in whose service they had been
engaged at the less critical season of the year under contract
to remain until the crop was harvested or the work finished.
Frequently no inducement in the form of better pay was
necessary to cause them to drop their work and wander
away. The advent of a circus or the announcement of a
revival meeting meant a more or less protracted holiday for
the negroes, regardless of their contracts or the urgency of
the work they had agreed to perform.
The Eichmond Times, in an editorial of June 10, 1865,
says: "The contract, however, does not weigh a feather
with the negro. He deserts his employer without a
moment's warning, and does not deign to assign a reason for
his conduct. He leaves the plow in the unfinished furrow,
the dinner half cooked, the half washed linen in the suds,
and the patient whom he has contracted to nurse in the
midst of the fierce delirium of fever. He laughs at the
obligation of his contract, and does not care a farthing for
the injury which his conduct inflicts upon his employer.
Is there no remedy for this? Until laws regulating con-

56 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6?
tracts between our citizens and the negro are enacted, we
hope the military authorities will see that all parties are
protected and forced to observe their contracts."
During the year 1865 negro labor remained very fickle.
It was urged by county meetings of the farmers that the
Legislature should at an early date do something to regulate
and protect contracts between white men and negroes for
labor. Otherwise it was declared that no one could ven
ture to plant extensively or to undertake any great indus
trial enterprise.^
When the Legislature convened in December, 1865, it
took up the contract labor question. We have seen that by
the first section of the act of February 20, 1866, it was pro
vided that no contract between a white and a colored man
for labor for two months or longer was enforceable against
a negro unless it was in writing. By the second section of
this a«t penalties were provided for enticing away or em
ploying a negro under contract in writing according to the
statute.^ The second section reads as follows: "If any
person shall entice away, from the service of another, any
laborer employed by him under a contract, as provided by
this act, or shaU knowingly employ a laborer bound to ser
vice to another under such contract, he shall forfeit to the
party aggrieved not less than ten nor more than twenty
dollars for every such offense; to be recovered by warrant
before any justice of the peace."
This section provided no dfrect penalty for the viola
tion of his contract by the negro; yet the indirect conse
quences to him were very severe. If a negro did not seek
and find employment, the statutes of 1866 regarded him as
a vagrant and provided for his arrest and forced labor.*
^For facts in regard to uncertainty and unreUabUicy of negro labor
in 1865 and 1866, see the preceding chapter on the evolution of a wage
system. SActs 1866-66, p. 83.
8Aot8 1866-66, pp. 91-93.

Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 57
Pew farmers, as dependent on hired help for long seasons
as were the tobacco planters in the eastern section of the
State, would employ negroes as agricultural laborers for
shorter periods than two months; it was therefore necessary
for the great body of negro laborers to enter into long con
tracts for labor or remain unemployed. If they remained
unemployed, they were subject to the penalties for vagran
cy; if they entered into contracts for labor for two months
or longer, they were practically forced to remain with their
employer, since it was unlawful for any other planter to
employ them whUe under contract.
Within two weeks after the passage of this act regu
lating and protecting contracts between white and colored
persons, the Legislature, in the fourth section of an act en
titled,* "An Act to encourage Immigration and protect
Immigrant Labor" enacted: "That any immigrant,
bound by contract as aforesaid, who shall, without good
and sufficient cause, abandon or leave the service of his or
her employer, shaU be liable to said employer for double
the amount of wages for the unexpired term of service; and
any immigrant who shall fail to enter the service of an
employer agreeable to contract, shaU be liable in like man
ner and for a like amount; and the claim for all such liabil
ities shall be a lien on all future wages of such immigrant,
wherever earned, or from whomsoever due, until the same
be repaid: and any person who shall employ any immi
grant, or otherwise entice any immigrant from his or her
employer, shall be deemed guUty of a misdemeanor, and on
conviction thereof, shall be fined in a sum not less than the
amount of wages for the unexpfred term of the contract,
and may be imprisoned, at the discretion of the jury trying
the case, for a period not longer than six months."
This act in the first three sections legalized labor con
tracts between citizens of Vfrginia and Europeans desiring
to emigrate to Virginia, by declaring that aU such contracts,
4Acts 1865-66, pp. 334-236.

58 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6?
even if made in Europe, were enforceable in Virginia.
The fourth section above quoted provided penalties for the
violation of such contracts more severe than were inflicted
on negroes for violating labor contracts. It was hoped
that most of the immigrants would come from England and
Scotland.' There was certainly no wish on the part of the
people of Virginia to enslave these white Europeans whom
they were urging by all possible means to come to the State."
It was felt that the employer of labor had certain rights to
the service of the employee under contract for long service
that ought to be protected by positive statute.
The act of February 20, 1866, regulating and protect
ing negro labor contracts, and the act of March 3, 1866, reg
ulating and protecting immigrant labor contracts, were both
susceptible of abuse; yet it does not appear that it was the
intention of the Legislature to imperil the rights of the
freedmen or the immigrants, but to force them to respect
their contracts. The uncertain character of colored labor
in Virginia at that time rendered some drastic contract
labor law necessary. It is difficult to propose any that
would be more effective or subject to fewer abuses than
the act of Feb. 20, 1866.

CHAPTEE VHI.
The Slave Code Eepealed.
The General Assembly of Virginia, in a sweeping biU
Peb. 27, 1866, recognized the new condition of the former
slaves and free negroes by repealing the chief features of
•Acts 1865-66, p. 235.
'Acts 186S-6B, pp. 287-293.

Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 59
the old slave code. All "acts and parts of acts relating to
slaves and slavery" were expressly repealed.'
Chapter one hundred and seven of the Code of 1880
relating to free negroes was repealed. This chapter con
tained very minute provisions for the regulation of free
negroes, for control of their movements and for thefr
expulsion from the State if they failed to comply with
certain legal requirements in regard to registration. All
these provisions were deUberately swept away by this act.
Likewise chapter two hundred of the Code of 1860,
which provided punishments for offenses by negroes, was
repealed. This chapter defined the penalties for a numer
ous class of crimes by negroes, such as assaults on white
men; delivering to a slave a copy of the register of freedom;
plotting or conspiring to rebel or make insurrection; mak
ing use of "provoking language or menacing gestures to
white men;" furnishing "any pass'' to a negro; keeping
firearms or other weapons; "engaging in a riot, rout, un
lawful assembly or making seditious speeches;" selling,
preparing or administering any medicine, except a slave
administering medicine by his master's orders, or a free
negro to his own family or the family of another person with
the consent of that person. Under certain conditions a
free negro could be sold into slavery. This whole chapter
with its long list of special crimes and punishments for
negroes was repealed.
Chapter ninety- eight of the Code of 1860 relating to
patrols was repealed.^ The repeal of this patrol statute in
dicates a distinct purpose on the part of the Legislature to
deal with the negroes as free men.
The Legislature repealed chapter two hundred and
twelve of the Code of 1860 relating to the proceedings
against negroes. In this act it was declared that, "All
laws in respect to crimes and punishment and in respect to
'Acts 1865-66, p. 84.
SActs 1865-66, pp. 84-85.

60 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6?
criminal proceedings, applicable to white persons shall ap
ply in like manner to colored persons (and to Indians)
unless when it is otherwise speciaUy provided."*
Sections twenty-five to forty-seven, both inclusive, of
chapter one hundred and ninety-two, providing penalties
and punishments for persons assisting slaves to escape from
their masters and to leave the State, were repealed, since
the whole slave system was recognized as destroyed.'
The Code of 1860, chapter one hundred and ninety-
eight, sections twenty-six to twenty-nine, inclusive, made
it unlawful for any free person, by speaking or writing, to
maintain that the owners had not the right of property in
their slaves; or to encourage the slaves to rebel or to make
insurrection or to resist their masters. This chapter also
provided that postmasters should exercise the utmost pre
caution to see that nothing of an inflammatory nature in
regard to slavery should pass through the mails. All these
provisions were repealed by the Legislature Feb. 27, 1866.
By this same act, section thirty of chapter one hundred
and ninety-eight of the Code, forbidding free negroes to re
main in the State without permits of the county court
where the negro was a resident, was repealed.
But section thirty-one of chapter one hundred and
ninety-eight of the Code of 1860 was not repealed. It reads
as follows: "Any free person who shaU bring a free negro
into this State shall be confined in jail not more than six
months and fined not exceeding five hundred dollars. This
section shall not apply to a person traveling into, or
through, the State with a free negro as a servant, nor to a
master or skipper of a vessel or steamboat, with a free
negro on board, who shall depart therewith; but any such
free negro who shaU be found away from such vessel or
boat, or from the lodging of his employer, except on busi
ness or with the written permission of such master or em
ployer, shall be punished with stripes."
SActs 1865-66, pp. 84-85.

Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 61
Section thirty- two of chapter one hundred and ninety-
eight of the Code of 1860 declared that: "No free negro
shall migrate into this State." "For such voluntary
migration on the part of a free negro a penalty of stripes
and cost of prosecution was to be infiicted on such free
negro from time to time until he should leave the State."
This section was not repealed.
It is difficult to determine to what extent these unre
pealed provisions were executed in Virginia during the
period from April, 1865, to April, 1867 . The writer has
found no weU authenticated instance in which any free
negro or white man was punished for violation of either of
these provisions. Besides, it is expressly stated in the
act of February 27, 1866, repealing other sections of
chapter one hundred and ninety-eight of the Code,
that, "All acts and parts of acts imposing on negroes
the penalty of stripes where the same penalty is
not imposed on white persons," are repealed.^ These
sections of the Code of 1860, impafring the move
ment of free negroes into the State, were allowed to remain
on the statute books while the penalty for violation of them
was repealed by the part of the act just quoted, since no
white persons were subject to stripes for migrating into the
State. By this same act of Feb. 27, 1866, the statute prohibit
ing harboring negroes, the assembling of negroes for wor
ship when such worship was conducted by a negro, and
every assemblage of negroes for the purpose of instruction
in reading and writing, or in the night time for any pur
pose, was repealed. The laws prohibiting white men from
meeting with negroes to instruct them, or to participate
with them in any assembly, were repealed. At the same
time all restraints on the freedom of buying and selling agri
cultural produce were removed from the negro population."
»Acts 1865-66, p. 85.
"Acts 1865-66, p. 85.

62 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6?
A marked advance toward the full recognition of the
negro as a freeman was made when the Legislature repealed
the statute prohibiting negroes from owning firearms,
swords or other weapons or ammunition.^ This statute
was repealed despite the fact that many people in the State
felt that it was unsafe and unwise to allow the negroes to
possess arms^ in such an unsettled state of affairs as pre
vailed from 1865 to 1867, when it was feared that the
negroes would reproduce the horrible excesses of the West
Indian freedmen.

CHAPTEE IX.
Outrages on Frbedmen, and the Civil Courts
Prom 1865 to 1867.
The emancipation of more than one-half million slaves
in Virginia at the close of a prolonged war presented many
serious problems for solution. Tens of thousands of soldiers
familiar with violence were returning to their homes. A
laxity, a lawlessness, a proneness to commit crime and in
dulge in deeds of violence are the unfaUing consequences of
war, and especially of civil war. This disposition did not
exist in Virginia alone but was felt throughout every state
in the Union, even in the Northern states farthest re-
'Acts 1865 66, p. 85.
^Whig, Jan. 4, Jan. 15, Aug. 4, 1866. The Confederacy had taken
steps to enroll slaves as soldiers in the Confederate army in the spring of
1865. Examiner, March 18, 1865; Dispatch, March 25, 1865; Schwab, Th«
Confederate States of America, page 1 94.

Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 63
moved from the theatre of the war.* The presence of a
lately emancipated race, excited by their new-found free
dom and insolent toward their former masters, aggravated
the otherwise serious problem of restoring law and order in
the prostrate State. There were many acts of violence and
many personal encounters between whites and blacks, yet
the surprising fact is that there were not more. The expla
nation of this is that the great mass of the whites felt no
bitterness toward the negro for the events of the four pre
ceding years. They felt that the colored people had done
little or nothing to secure their freedom. They did not
hate them or wish to do violence to them, but simply re
garded them as an inferior race for whom they felt a kindly
contempt.* Very few, if any, were outraged or murdered
from any effort or disposition on the part of the whites to
undo their emancipation or to deny them the enjoyment of
their freedom.' The disputes and frays between the whites
and blacks were generally the difficulties that are likely to
accompany the intermingling of races radically different.
Senator Cowan of Pennsylvania, after an examination
of the charges made by Senator Wilson, said in the United
States Senate in regard to the aUeged outrages on negroes:
"Testified to by nobody either, except agents of the Freed
men's Bureau, and other fellows of an equally interested
stripe, who, like the hair worms, only wriggle in muddy
water. These fellows, male and female, have found the
woes of the negro such an easy and profitable way to fame
and consideration that, like the dogs of Lazarus, they live
by licking his sores; and to hear and see them we would

^President Johnson's message, December, 1865, on returning Housef
BiU No. 613, p. 3839, Congressional Globe, 1865-66.

¦•Gen. Terry's opinion, Congressional Globe, 1865-66, p. 1833 ; Ibid, p
11S6 ; Julian's speech, Ibid, p. 3210 ; Blackwood's Magazine, May, 1866 ,
p. 598. I
^CharlottesviUe Chronicle, Feb. 28, 1867 ; Lynchburg Virginian, Ja; 4.
2, 1866, Col. Brown's Report. !

64 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6?
think the world was exceedingly wicked, wholly on ac
count of the negro, and for no other reason. * * * * I
am inclined, therefore, to think that in the first place these
killings, if done at aU, are not done by any but common
offenders. Everybody knows the tribal antipathy exist
ing between the lower sort of white men and negroes,
and no one expects that it will not be the source of
frequent brawls and quarrels, especially since the
blacks have now no masters either to advise or protect
them. And the false and foolish notion of equality
which you have lately put into the head of the negro
amounts only to a standing invitation to every white
man to break that head as soon as it insults him.
These tales are too monstrous for belief, have no founda
tion upon which to rest, and the few cases which give rise
to them would no doubt show, as usual, that neither of the
parties are wholly innocent or whoUy guUty. In nine
cases out of ten they would turn out mutual brawls, the
consequence of which is often the most fitting punishment
for those engaged in them." One man out of ten thousand
is brutal to a negro, and that is paraded here as a type of
the whole people of the South, whereas nothing is said of
the other nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine men
who treat the negro well."'
At present nothing seems clearer than that most of the
conflicts had no political significance and were only com
mon brawls and combats, such as are summarUy disposed
of by a police judge or a justice of the peace; yet this long
list of disputes and confiicts was paraded in Congress as a
justification of the Freedmen's Bureau and as a proof of the
" insecurity of the rights of freedmen.' The number of such
6App. Congressional Globe, 1866-67, p. 154.
'Congressional Globe, 1865-66, p. 96.
gt, 8Gen. Howard's report, p. 671, Messages and Documents, 1866-67 ; Rev.
.s,Rickmond's speech, CharlottesvUle Chronicle, AprU 35. 1867. See speeches
of Senator WUson, Representative Julian and other radical leader, C<jn.-
CogresBional Globe, 1865-67.

Negroes and TheirlTreatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 65
difficulties was small, when it is remembered that there
were more than one-half mUlion negroes in the State of
Vfrginia. It was never claimed that freedmen in Virginia
experienced any difficulty in securing justice from the State
courts in suits involving money or property.^ It was,
however, asserted that juries were inclined to inflict on
negroes the maximum penalties of the law, in cases of
theft, burglary or such offenses; that they were too rigor
ous in thefr condemnation of comparatively mild offenses;"
but it was not charged that the proce«ses of the courts and
the decision of the jurors were not strictly according to the
statutory provisions of the Code of 1860, which the Legisla
ture in is session of 1865-66 had made applicable to whites
and blacks alike. ^
It was declared, moreover, very difficult, if not impos
sible, to secure a verdict against a white man for assaulting
or murdering a black. ^ The great mass of the whites were
not disposed to permit any insolence on the part of the
negroes. The deep-seated conviction m the minds of the
whites that the negroes were an inferior race and should be
subordinate to white men in the community, made the
whites less tolerant of any independence and aggressive
ness on their part, and rendered conflicts between the two
races more frequent. It was often said: "The negro is all
right in his place." Of course this means that he is all
'Gen. Schofield's opinion, App. Congressional Globe, 1866-67, p. 95 ;
Ibid, Messages and Documents of U.S. Government, 1866-67, p. 240. Judge
Sheffey, in his charge to grand juries, urges that equal and impartial jus
tice shaU be given to freedmen. This charge was pubUshed by special
request of the bar of Amherst and Rockbridge counties. Whig, AprU 23,
1866. For simUar charge by Judge Christian, in Henrico county, and for
editorial comment on these charges, see Whig, April 38, 1866.
"Col. O. Brown's Report, Congressional Globe, 1866-67, p. 1569; Senator
Van Winkle's statement. Ibid, p. 1466; Gen. Howard's Report, pp. 663-664,
Messages and Documents, 1867-68.
iSenator Van Winkle's speech. Congressional Globe, 1866-67, p. 1465.
2App. Congressional Globe, 1866-67, p. 96.
5

66 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6?
wrong out of his place.' Most of the Virginians had, and
still have, very definite ideas of what a negro's place is.
If a negro attempted to cross this more or less well-defined
limit and to use insolent and insulting language to a white
man, he was liable to suffer the consequences, and juries
were not disposed to impose on his assailant the maximum
penalties of the law. On the other hand the wanton assault
of a freedman by a white man was severely condemned by
the great mass of the whites. For such offenses white
juries and courts manifested no sympathy and punished the
aggressor with the full penalties of the statute.
The trial of Dr. Watson for the alleged cold-blooded
murder of a negro in the summer of 1866 and his acquittal
by a white court of his county was the mo.st famous case in
the criminal courts of Virginia during this period. It was
said that, on very slight provocation, he had, after a lapse
of nearly twenty-four hours, shot and killed a negro, the
coachman of one of his neighbors. In November, 1866,
Dr. Watson was tried and acquitted in Eockbridge county.
Thereupon Gen. John M. Schofield, the military officer in
command in Virginia, ordered him rearrested and tried by
a military commission under the congressional act of July
16, 1866. On the assembling of the Commission Court a
writ of habeas corpus was sued out before the Circuit Court
of Eichmond, to which General Schofield declined compli
ance, Dec. 19, 1866. In the meantime the Attorney Gen
eral of the United States had investigated the case and de
cided that the Commission Court had no jurisdiction. The
President then ordered Dr. Watson discharged.*
Gen. Schofield declared the Watson case "a fair type
of a large number of cases in Virginia."' If this case was
'Blackwood's Magazine, May, 1866, p. 595.
¦•American Annual Cyclopasdia, 1866, p 765; Richmond Dispatch, Jan.
4, 1867; Congressional Globe, 1866-67, p. 1565; App. Congressional Globe,
1866-67, p. 95; Whig, Dec. 20, 1866; Enquirer, Dec. 18, 1866; Dispatch,
Jan. 4, 1867.
OGen. Schofield's statement, App. Congressional Globe, 1866-67, p. 95.

Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 67
such as he represented it, the declaration that it was a
"fair type" of many other cases in the State is entirely too
strong. Hon. S. McD. Moore, of Lexington, Eockbridge
county, Virginia, in a letter read by Senator Doolittle in
the United States Senate, Feb. 19, 1867, says: "As good
order prevails and the laws are generally as well admin
istered as I have known to be the case for the
last fifty years."* He declares that most of the reports
in regard to the unjust administration of the laws had
arisen from two cases in that section of the State.
One of the two cases was the Watson affair. A few such
cases as this is said to have been did much to create
the impression in the North that the murder of a negro
was in Virginia considered perfectly justifiable if the negro
had been insolent or insubordinate.
Many in Congress and in the North believed that the
average Virginian entertained a deadly hatred of the ne
groes whom they were anxious to kill as having no longer
the place or value of chattel slaves. Entertaining these
opinions, they confidently declared that every murder of a
negro by a white man and every failure of a court to pun
ish the white man was confirmation of their opinions and
rendered vigorous intervention by the Federal Government
the only salvation of the freedmen. In their opinion the
Freedmen's Bureau, the Freedmen's Court, the Civil
Eights Bill, the Military Commissions, and the Eeconstruc
tion Acts were necessary to protect the lives of the negroes.
The number in the United States actually entertaining these
opinions was not large, but they were earnest and aggres
sive. The politicians and the unscrupulous made use of
the sincerity of this class for purposes purely personal or
for party advantage.
The number of actual outrages was never large.' The
eCongressional Globe, 1866-67, p. 1567.
^Enquirer editorial, July 24, 1866; Whig, March 23, Nov. 22, Nov. 28,
1866. It was alleged by the negroes and their friends that tbe whites bad,

68 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67
press of the State generally declared that good order pre
vailed throughout Vfrginia at that time. The Charlottes
viUe Chronicle, February 28, 1867, says: "We can speak
for Virginia, there never was less crime (except thieving
on the part of the freedmen) in this State. There have
doubtless been negroes killed by white men and white men
killed by negroes, but on the whole, a more orderly and
law-abiding community does not, in our opinion, exist on
this continent, if anywhere." The Eichmond Dispatch
considered that the administration of justice in Virginia
was at that time approximately fair and equal.
The freedmen had learned that theu most trivial
charges against each other or the whites would receive a
ready hearing by the agents of the Freedmen's Bureau, and
they did not allow the Bureau agents to eat much idle
bread. No report of outrages, however absurd or poorly
attested, was neglected. The most trivial brawl was mag
nified into a riot in which many were wounded and kiUed.
By the time these disturbances had been reported in the
radical press and announced in the United States Congress
by Senator Wilson, or some equally imaginative member
of the House, they absolutely defied recognition even by
the parties to the original brawl. The "scalawags,"
"carpetbaggers" and newspaper correspondents industri
ously gathered and disseminated the reports of outrages on
colored people.
Amongst so large a number of people many brawls
and petty disturbances would occur in the most peaceful
times, and under the most ideal conditions; yet the con
gressional radicals shut thefr eyes to these facts and made
no aUowances for the fact that the State was just emerging
from a prolonged war, and was further embarrassed by the

in various places in the South, burned or destroyed negro churches and
school houses, Very few, if any, such buUdings were destroyed by the
whites in Virginia. The Whig, May 7, 1866, declares that no negrq
churches had been burned hj the whjtes in Virginia,

Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 69
presence of the lately emancipated slaves. Senator Wilson
and other radical members of Congress brought forward the
long list of suits, brawls and outrages as a justification of
the various acts passed by Congress for the protection of
the negroes. In reply to these charges Senator Davis, in a
speech in the Senate, after full examination of the lawless
acts reported by the congressional radicals, declared that
in his deliberate opinion there was not as much lawless
ness and violence in any six of the states lately in rebellion
as in the single state of New York.^ Other members of
Congress who had investigated the matter were almost
equally strenuous in their denial of the alleged outrages.
The evidence in support of the truthfulness of these
charges is to the highest degree unsatisfactory and uncon
vincing.' They were in many cases entire fabrications
without the slightest basis of fact. As a single instance of
their utter unreliability, it was reported in the radical
papers that several negroes had been shamefully outraged
at Lynchburg, Virginia. The details of the affair were
given with great minuteness; the name of the Freedmen's
Bureau agent at that place, making the official report of
what he had seen and learned by investigation, was given.
When these reports finally reached Lynchburg no one
there had heard of the outrages or anything like them.
The Bureau agent declared that no one having the name of
the reporter of these lawless acts had ever been connected
with his Bureau in Lynchburg; that no such acts had
occurred, and that the very best of order prevailed in his
entfre sub-district."
This report is a fair sample of hundreds that were
published in the radical papers outside of the State.
sCongressional Globe, 1866-67, p. 1466.
'For evidence of the unreliable character of many of the reported
outrages and the effect of such reports on Northern public opinion, see
Congressional Globe, 1865-66, pp. 1407-1411; Whig, Nov. 3, 1866.
"Lynchburg Virginian, Aug. 10, 1866.

70 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6?
Most of the writers of these letters giving accounts
of the assault and murder of negroes asked to have
thefr names kept secret, declaring that it would imperil
their lives to have it known that they had reported these
outrages. Thefr wishes were respected, ahd they were
thus emboldened to flood the Congressional Committee on
Eeconstruction with such reports as malice or party inter
est could invent.
General O. O. Howard, the Commissioner of the Freed
men's Bureau, in his annual report for 1866, declared that
the number of conflicts between whites and blacks in Vir
ginia constantly grew less, and that the position of the
negroes was improving, yet the complaint was made that
in some parts of the State the negroes were occasionally
outraged and that the offenders usually were not punished
by the minor judicial tribunals of the State, if it was
charged that the negro had been insubordinate or insolent
to a white man.'
In his report of November, 1866, General O. O. How
ard said in regard to the six counties bordering on the
Potomac which were included in the military district of
Maryland: "The condition of the freedmen in the portion
of Virginia included within this district, as shown by the
report of General Stanard for the months ending May and
June, 1866, and the official records for succeeding months,
has been generally satisfactory. No complaints of a serious
nature were received."^
In reference to the condition of affairs in Virginia,
in the same report he says: "Some improvement is re
ported in the feeling of the whites towards the freedmen,
and yet the numerous murders and robberies of which this
office is notified are evidences of bad feeling or weakness
'Gen. Howard's Report, Messages and Documents, 1866-67, p. 671.
Gen. Schofleld's opinion, App. Congressional Globe, 1866-67, p. 95.
^Messages and Documents, 1866-67, p. 688.

Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 71
on the part of the State officials whose duty it is to pre
serve the peace and to punish crime. "^
The number and character of the outrages on negroes
reported to the Freedmen's Bureau were grossly exagger
ated. As a rule the Bureau officials did not examine the
evidence in support of these chaiges, but reported and in
a large measure acted on ex parte testimony. In times of
great pubic excitement the wildest reports gain credence.
At that time the air was full of reports of outrages and
riots, most of which had not the slightest foundation in
fact. Most of the "numerous murders and robberies" to
which General Howard refers in his report were of this
class. He made this report about the time the excitement in
regard to the Dr. Watson case was highest, and doubtless
had that particular case in mind when speaking of the
"bad feeling or weakness" of the courts.
General Terry, the military commander in the Depart
ment of Virginia, declared that it would be unsafe to en
trust the great body of the freedmen in Virginia or else
where in the South to the care of the local authorities or
the local legislation.
His chief grounds for this opinion was that the whites
hated the negroes on account of their attachment to the
"Union," and if the protecting hand of the United States
Government were withdrawn would soharrassand embitter
their lives that they would rise in bloody insurrection
against their oppressors.* It seems never to have been
clear to many of the army officers that the white people of
the State did not hold the negroes responsible for the war and
its consequences and did not entertain for them any feeling
of personal hostility on account of their changed condition.
^Ibid, p. 671. See Col. O. Brown's Report, Congressional Globe,
1866-67, p. 1569.
•Testimony of Gen. Terry given before the Reconstruction Commit
tee,?. 1833, Globe, 1865-66; Enquirer, March 31, 1866.

72 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6?
Whatever feeling there was that the negro should not enjoy
full civil or political privileges did not arise from any
hatred of him as a race or as an individual, but from a fixed
and firm conviction that he was an inferior race, incapable
of the highest duties and privileges of citizenship in a dem
ocratic commonwealth.
The whites were always ready to resent any attempt
by a negro to force himself into a position of social equality
or to assume the political leadership of the community.
From these causes arose many of the conflicts between the
two races. The number of such conflicts was considerably
increased after the passage of the Eeconstruction Acts of
1867 and the enfranchisement of the negroes.'
Before the passage of the Eeconstruction Acts in the
spring of 1867, the Ku Klux Klan was unknown in Vir
ginia. No mention is made in the Bureau reports of such
an organization until 1868. It was then declared that the
operations of these organizations "have been very rare in
this State." The word "Ku Klux" as used at that time
was a generic term for aU lawless secret combinations or
ganized to frighten or maltreat negroes.
Colonel Brown in his report of the operations of the
Freedmen's Bureau in Virginia for the month of April,
1868, says: "The secret organization known as the Ku
Klux Klan have made thefr appearance in various locali
ties, visiting the houses of colored men, at night in some
cases, placing ropes around their necks and threatening to
hang them on account of their political opinions. No
further violence has been offered. The object of these mid
night demonstrations, which have been very rare in this
State, appears to be to intimidate and control the freedmen
in the exercise of thefr right of franchise."*

'See newspapers of the State for increased number of conflicts be
tween whites and blacks after the enfranchisement of the freedmen.
«P. 510, Messages and Documents of U. S. Government, 1868-69.

Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 73
This is his first reference to such lawless bands.
Prom this report it is seen that the object of these organi
zations in Virginia was not to plunder or murder negroes
but to deter them from exercising "their right of fran
chise." The negroes were subjected to some outrages from a
very unexpected source. Some of the Federal soldiers in
Virginia in 1865 "took considerable liberties with them and
their belongings." In some instances they "plundered"
them.' They "spread the tents and threw up the negroes. "
In this way many were hurt and some were reported kUled.
A Federal soldier at Charlottesville relieved Eev. Fairfax
Taylor, a prominent colored leader, of his watch. The
soldiers stationed in Virginia after the war were frequently
engaged in brawls and personal encounters with the freed
men. Some negroes were "tied up" by army officers to
force them to tell the truth.* These troubles between
negroes and soldiers were of the same kind and originated
from the same causes that brought on similar altercations
and contests between blacks and native Virginians.
Many agents of the Freedmen's Bureau oppressed and
swindled the freedmen. Other persons went about from place
to place assuring them that they were soon to be given the
land of the former slaveholders. In some instances they
went so far as to stake off the farms into sections of about
forty acres each. These lands were to be given them as
pay for their past services as slaves and for their devotion
to the Union. Frequently these impostors pretended to
put the credulous negroes in possession of the land, and
collected a fee to pay for the title deed which they gave
them to establish their ownership. One of the deeds given
to an Albemarle county negro read as follows : "As
7 WaddeU, History of Augusta County, pp. 319, 325; Ibid, 337-338.
^Messages and Documents of U. S. Government, 1867-68, p. 289.

74 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6?
Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so have I
lifted five dollars out of this nigger's pocket."^
The belief that they were to be given the lands of the
late Confederates persisted in the minds of the freedmen
for several years after the close of the war. The fact that
the lands seized by the United States Government, the
so-called abandoned lands, were then occupied by the
negroes under the direction of the Freedmen's Bureau, led
the great mass of them to believe that they, too, would
soon secure their share of land. This credulous and
expectant attitude of mind rendered them ready victims of
the unscrupulous "scalawags" and "carpetbaggers," who
did not neglect the opportunity to enrich themselves at the
expense of their dupes. Their ingenuity in devising
plausible schemes for swindling the negroes was truly
admirable. Many of them represented themselves as con
fidential agents of infiuential government officials, or as
friends and representatives of philanthropic individuals or
societies in the North, who were said to be preparing great
things for the negroes. After winning the ready confi
dence of the freedmen they received from them, under
various pretexts, considerable sums of money, and created
expectations that could never be realized.
Quite a serious riot broke out in Norfolk in the night
of AprU 16, 1866. The freedmen met to celebrate the
passage of the CivU Eights Bill. About twelve o'clock a
shot was fired on Nicholson street. A general row fol
lowed. An innocent white spectator named Whitehurst
was shot dead; Mrs. Whitehurst (a white woman) was
mortally wounded; several others were hurt, and one negro
was shot in the eye. There was much drinking amongst
the colored people that night. One colored woman was
arrested on account of her inflammatory and threatening
language. Major Stanhope, of the United States army,
'Most of the facts in regard to these impostors were obtained from
negroes who knew them from personal experience. See Documents
Relating to Reconstruction, (passim), edited by Fleming.

Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 75
immediately sent out an armed force and dispersed the
mob. In a short time four arrests were made." In regard
to this tumult there were various confiicting reports.'
From this review of the "outrages on negroes and the
action of the courts" it is seen that the actual number of
outrages was small when it is considered that more than
one-half million freedmen were turned loose amongst a
white poptUation of more than seven hundred thousand,
at a time when society was demoralized by the results of
war; that the whites did not cherish any hatred toward the
negroes on account of the events of the preceding four
years; that the combats between whites and blacks did not,
in most cases, arise from any attempt to undo or minimize
the results of emancipation, but were generally the results
of mutual brawls; that some of the attacks on negroes by
white men were provoked by insolence or insulting lan
guage on the part of the blacks; that in such cases the
courts of Virginia sometimes refused to find the white
aggressors guilty of any offense; that the courts had little
disposition to excuse or acquit a white man who had
assaulted or murdered a negro who had not been insolent
or insulting and had conducted himself in the manner
which most white people thought becoming a free negro;
that freedmen in the Virginia courts experienced little or
no difficulty in securing justice in money or property mat
ters; that in proceedings against negroes charged with
thefts, burglaries, and murders, juries usually imposed some
thing like the maximum penalties. It has been seen that
they were sometimes wronged by their supposed friends,
the soldiers, "the scalawags" and "carpetbaggers." From
the reports of the officers of the Freedmen's Bureau and
the press, it is seen that the condition of the freedmen was
constantly improving from 1865 to 1867; that lawlessness
in the State was rapidly decreasing, and that the decisions
of the civil courts were approaching fairness.
"Lynchburg Virginian, AprU 20, 1866.
^According to some reports two negroes were kiUed.

76 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6?
CHAPTEE X.
Freedmen and Civil Eights in 1865 and 1866.
The Legislature that convened in Eichmond in Decem
ber, 1865, met under the provisions of the constitution pro
mulgated at Alexandria, in 1864, by the ' 'restored govern
ment" of Virginia. The constitution of the State in force
before and during the war had fallen with the State gov
ernment at Eichmond.
The Alexandria constitution had abolished slavery
by the following provisions: "Slavery and involuntary
servitude (except for crime) is hereby abolished and pro
hibited in the State forever." "The General Assembly
shaU make no law establishing slavery or recognizing prop
erty in human beings." The Legislature of "restored Vfr
ginia" had, however, enacted but few laws in regard to
negroes. At the close of hostilities in Virginia people recog
nized that the results of the war had effectually freed the
slaves; yet there had been no State legislation to define
their status. The old "free negro" laws of the Code of
1860 were still ou the statute book.'' The slaves had, so far
as State legislative enactments are concerned, succeeded to
the status of "free negroes" as defined by the Code of 1860,
but the war had done more than this for them. The white
people of the State knew that the Legislature would have
2A delegation of negroes from Richmond called on President Johnson
in June, 1865, and claimed that their condition as freedmen was worse
than it was when they were slaves. They stated that passes were re
quired of them in Richmond; that the old free negro laws stUl prevaUed;
that they experienced difficulty in holding their church property ; that
they could not appeal to the courts for justice and protection, and that
they suffered numerous other wrongs. President Johnson told them that
matters were iu a state of transition and that many things must be en
dured until they could be remedied. RepubUo, June 19, 1866.

Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 77
to define anew the rights of free colored men, and sooner or
later grant to them the whole list of civil rights and some
political rights.
Owing to the peculiar situation in Virginia it was dif
ficult to effect an early meeting of a representative law
making body to adjust the laws of the State to the changed
conditions. A representative General Assembly of the
State convened in December, 1865, and immediately took
up the question of the freedmen.
In a joint resolution the Legislature, February 6, 1866,
expressed its opinion on slavery and the future position of
the freedmen in the following language:' "That involun
tary servitude, except for crime, is abolished, and ought
not to be re-established; and that the negro race among us
should be treated with justice, humanity and good faith;
and every means that the wisdom of the Legislature can
devise, should be used to make them useful and intelligent
members of society."
"That Virginia will not voluntarily consent to change
the adjustment of political power as fixed by the Constitu
tion of the United States; and to constrain her to do so in
her present prostrate and helpless condition, with no voice
in the councils of the nation, would be an unjustifiable
breach of faith."
This resolution expressed about what the white people
of the State felt. The statement that Virginia would not
voluntarUy consent to change the adjustment of political
power was intended as a declaration of hostility to the
enfranchisement of the freedmen, which the people wer©
unwilling to accept, either in 1866 or in 1867, when it was
thrust upon the State by congressional legislation.
In January and February, 1866, several important
bills touching the freedmen were enacted into laws. About
nine months had by that time passed since the close of
hostilities in Virginia and the practical emancipation of
SActs, 1866-66, p. 449.

78 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6?
every slave in the State. In the meantime, the legal posi
tion of the freedmen was very indefinite.
March 3, 1865, Congress had passed a very mild
Freedmen's Bureau Bill, which lacked aU the drastic fea
tures of the Freedmen's Bill of 1866. The purpose of this
bill in 1865 was only to assume charge of all ' 'abandoned
lands" and the control of all subjects relating to freedmen.
There was a real need of some such agency as this bill pro
vided to advise and protect the freedmen during the sum
mer and fall of 1865. The opposition to the presence and
work of the Bureau agents was not so bitter in 1865 as it
was in the years following, when they were invested with
much greater power, and the necessity for their inter
ference no longer existed.*
By the Code of 1860 free negroes were allowed to testify
only in the case of the Commonwealth for or against a
negro or an Indian, or in a civil case to which negroes or
Indians only were parties. They were not allowed the
right of trial by jury, to carry arms, or to be away from
their place of abode later than ten o'clock at night. They
were also subject to many other minor restraints that were
unnecessary and impracticable in the changed state of
affairs in the summer and fall of 1865.
Although there had been no statutory change, the
people felt that the status of the free negro had in fact been
revolutionized. In the Alexandria County Court a negro
was put on trial without a jury in September, 1865, and
sentenced to two years in the penitentiary. The negro's
counsel moved to arrest the judgment on the ground that
the negro, being a freeman, had the right of trial by jury.
The opposing counsel contended that the free negro pro
ceedings were legal, the Code of Virginia providing that a
free negro should be tried for a felony by a court of five
justices of the peace and not by a jury. The court com-

<Compare Act of March 3, 1865, (p. 141, App. Globe, 1864-66,) witU
that of July 16, 1866, (pp. 366-367, App. Globe, 1865-66).

Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 79
posed of five justices of the peace sustained the negro's
counsel in his appeal.'
From this decision and similar ones it is seen that,
while the letter of the law remained unchanged, the spfrit
of the times had swept away many of the legal discrimina
tions against free colored men.
In the same county, in October, 1865, a justice of the
peace had a negro deprived of a fowling piece, on the
ground that the statutes of Virginia did not allow negroes
to bear arms. A provost judge revoked this action, declar
ing negroes had "all the rights of whites and no less."*
There was on the part of the whites no serious effort to
enforce most of the old "free negro" laws. There were few
attempts to disarm freedmen in accordance with the pro
visions af the Code. General Terry was petitioned by the
whites to disarm the negroes in certain sections because
they were threatening to make an insurrection against the
whites.' On the whole, there was comparatively little
opposition to the negroes' owning and carrying arms, or to
thefr conducting themselves as free men, as long as they
were not "saucy" or "insolent" to the whites.
In discussing the social position of the freedmen in
October, 1865, the Lynchburg Virginian says: "His social
condition is not so much changed after all. The negro is
the laborer and menial after all. He now collects his own
wages with which to pay his own rent, clothing, taxes and
doctor bills. In other respects, his relation to his master
has undergone very little alteration."
February 28, 1866, the General Assembly passed the
'Lynchburg Virginian, September 14, 1865.
«Lynchburg Virginian, October 14, 1865. Nevertheless license author
izing a negro to perform the marriage ceremony was refused by the Court
of Hustings, in Richmond, on the ground that there was no law for grant
ing such license. Enquirer, November 16, 1865.
'General Terry's testimony before the Reconstruction Committee, p.
1834, Globe 1865-66.

80 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6?
following act in regard to negroes as witnesses:* "That
colored persons and Indians shaU, if otherwise competent
and subject to the rules applicable to other persons, be
admitted as witnesses in the following cases:
"1. In all civU cases and proceedings, at law and in
equity, in which a colored person or an Indian is a party,
or may be directly benefitted or injured by the result.
"2. In aU criminal proceedings, in which a colored
person or an Indian is a party, or which arise out of an
injury done or attempted or threatened to the person,
property or rights of a colored person or Indian, or in
which it is alleged in the presentment, information or
indictment, or in which the court is of opinion, from other
evidence, that there is a probable cause to believe that the
offense was committed by a white person, in conjunction or
co-operation with a colored person or Indian.
' '3. The testimony of colored persons shall, in aU cases
and proceedings, both at law and in equity, be given ore
tenus and not by deposition; and in suits in equity, and in
all other cases in which the deposition of the witness would
regularly be part of the record, the court shall, if desired
by any party, or if deemed proper by itself, certify the
facts proved by such witness, or the evidence given by him,
as far as is credited by the court, as the one or the other
may be proper under the rules of law applicable to the case;
and such certificate shall be made part of the record.' '
Before the war a negro or an Indian was a competent
witness only in the case of the Commonwealth for or against
a negro or an Indian or in civil cases to which
negroes or Indians only were parties.' This new
statute of Feb. 28, 1866, declared that they should be
heard as witnesses in any and all suits to which any colored
person was a party or in which the interest, dfrect or indi-
8Acts 1865-66, pp. 89-90.
'Code of Virginia, p. 724.

Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 81
rect, of a colored person was involved, or in which any
crime had been done or attempted to be done or threatened
to the person, property, or rights of a colored person.
At the time of the passage of this act almost aU the
cases involving the interests of colored people, or crimes
against their person, property or rights were adjudicated in
the Freedmen's Court or in other judicial tribunals of Fed
eral creation. Before these courts there was no distinction
of witnesses on account of race and color. These courts
from the first recognized that the negroes were entitled to
as "full and equal benefit of aU laws and proceedings for
the security of person and property as is enjoyed by white
citizens, and are subject to like punishments, pains and
penalties and to none other, any law, statute, ordinance,
regulation or custom to the contrary notwithstanding."
It cannot be said that the limitation of negroes as wit
nesses to cases directly or indirectly concerning the interest
or welfare of some colored person was a denial of any
"right," since the power to "testify" in cases in which the
witness is not a party interested in the outcome of the suit,
cannot be claimed as a right; but it is to be regarded either as
a privilege conferred by the community on the would-be wit
ness, or as a duty imposed on him for the good of society.
Tet whatever may be the abstract philosophy of the matter
it was in fact a discrimination against negroes to limit thefr
testimony to particular cases.
While the General Assembly at Eichmond was repeal
ing the old slave code and trying to define the rights
and privileges of the freedmen. Congress was debating the
Civil Eights BiU, which was passed over the President's
veto, April 9, 1866. This bill declared "all persons born
in the United States and not subject to any foreign power,
except Indians not taxed," citizens of the United States;
and, in addition to the right to testify in all cases on the
same terms as whites, it conferred on the negroes about all
the rights enjoyed by white men except the right to sit on

82 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67
juries, to vote, and to hold office. It also provided penal
ties for any attempt, on the part of any individual or any
municipal or State officer, to curtail or deny these rights."
The effect of this biU was very far-reaching. It em
boldened the negroes to demand various privileges they
had not yet enjoyed. As a single instance of this it may
be well to mention that, for about one year after the close
of the war, it was unsettled 'whether negroes had the right
to ride on public street cars. After the passage of the
CivU Eights BUl the negroes toward the last of April, 1866,
decided to test their right to ride on the Eichmond street
cars. This led to some riotous demonstrations, but the
president of the road, after an interview with General
John M. Schofield, the mUitary commander in Vfrginia,
determined to recognize the privilege. Many of the citi
zens were dissatisfied with the concession, yet peaceably
acquiesced in it.^ For some time the cars were divided
into two classes, one of which, indicated by a white ball,
was for white ladies and gentlemen with ladies, the other
for all classes. This arrangement continued until May,
1867.2 The Legislature, February 27, 1866, passed an act
declaring: "All laws in respect to crimes and punish
ments, and in respect to criminal proceedings, applicable
to white persons, shall apply in like manner to colored
persons and to Indians unless it is otherwise specially pro
vided."' By this act all special punishments and proceedings
peculiar to negroes, except the minor discriminations
against negroes previously mentioned in connection with
"Pp. 315-316, App. Globe, 1865-66.
^American Annual Cyclopaedia, 1866, p. 759.
^CharlottesviUe Chronicle, May 4, 1867.
A colored preacher and his wife were ejected from the cars at Rich-
niond in September, 1867. Lynchburg Virginian, Sept. 26, 1867.
SActs 1865-66, p. 84.

Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 83
"the repeal of the slave code," were abolished. Whites
and blacks were thenceforth put on an equality before the
law in respect to crimes and punishments.
The Federal military authorities in the State soon
after the passage of the acts of Februaiy 27 and 28, 1866,
transferred to the civil courts full jurisdiction in all cases
in nearly all the counties of the State.* In a few places
society was so unsettled and the conflicts between whites
and blacks so frequent that the Federal authorities did not
feel justified in closing the Provost or Freedmen's courts.
In the fall of 1866, General Terry reported that in three
counties it had been necessary to restore Bureau courts
after they had been abolished.' These courts remained in
York County until the close of 1867."
After the restoration of the full authority of the civil
tribunals in all cases, the agents of the Bureau were
required by the order of the Assistant Commissioner of the
Freedmen's Bureau in Vfrginia to be present and to aid the
colored litigants by their counsel and advice in all trials
within their jurisdiction, including criminal trials or pre
liminary hearings before justices of the peace, to which a
colored person was a party. It was the duty of these
agents to make an immediate report of "any instance of
oppression or injustice against a colored party, whether
prosecutor or defendant, and also in case the evidence of a
colored person should be improperly rejected or neglected."
"They were also requfred to examine and report if in any
instance a justice of the peace, attorney for the common
wealth, grand jury, or other authority refused justice to a
colored person by improperly neglecting a complaint or
declining to receive an oath or sworn information tendered
*F. 671, Messages and Documents of U. S. Government, 1866-67, p. 663;
Ibid, p. 65 ; House Document No. 120, 1st Session 39th Congress.
6P. 671, Messages and Documents of U. S. Government, 1866-67.
PP. 664, Messages and Documents of U. S. Governmept, 1867-68.

84 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6?
by such a person whereby a trial or prosecution might be
prevented through partiality or prejudice."
After the passage of the act of February 28, 1866,
negroes were in some instances denied the right to testify
in cases in which they were interested. A flagrant example
of such denial was reported of the York County Court at
its session held May 19, 1866. The proceedings of this
court were report.ed by the Freedmen's agent, but it does
not appear that either the Federal or State authorities took
any steps to punish the offenders.'
In the Cfrcuit Court of Alexandria Judge Thomas, in
1866, decided in a case in which it was attempted to intro
duce colored testimony, that such testimony was inadmis
sible and that congressional action could not make it admis
sible, since the State had a right to decide who were com
petent to testify and had decided that colored testimony
was not admissible in civil suits to which white raen alone
were parties. This decision of Judge Thomas was accord
ing to the law of Virginia as laid down in the Act of Feb
ruary 28, 1866, in regard to negroes as witnesses, but it
was declared to be an infringement of the Civil Eights BUl.
The case was therefore removed to the United States Dis
trict Court.*
A little later five magistrates of thfe' Corporation Court
of Norfolk refused to receive the testimony of a negro. A
process was issued under the Civil Eights BiU in accord
ance with which the offending officials were arrested and
held to bail to appear at the following terni'of the United
States District Court.'
It does not appear that there were many attempts in
Virginia to infringe the Civil Eights Bill in form, though
it was often infringed in spirit, the two cases above men-
Tp. 46-47, House Document No. 120, 1st Session 39th Congress,
sp. 765, American Annual Cyclopsedia, 1866.
9p. 759, ArneTican Annual Cyclopaedia, 1867,

Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 86
tioned being the most prominent instances of its formal
infringement. The Civil Eights Bill and the new Freedmen's Bureau
Bill passed July 16, 1 866, encouraged the negroes in their
demands for equal rights with the whites. They were
therefore not content with the Act of February 28, 1866,
allowing them to testify in all cases in which a negro was
in any way interested.
April 20, 1867, the Legislature of Virginia passed the
following act in regard to negroes as witnesses:"
' '1. Be it enacted by the General Assembly of Virginia,
That the act passed February 28, 1866, entitled an act in
relation to the testimony of colored persons; and the
twentieth section of chapter one hundred and seventy-six
of the Code of 1860, concerning the competency of wit
nesses, be and the same are hereby repealed.
"2. Be it further enacted. That hereafter colored per
sons shall be competent to testify in this State as if they
were white."
This act declared colored persons competent to testify
"as if they were white." The partisans of the freedmen
declared that this concession was not made from an enlarged
sense of duty to the negro, but was the result of external
pressure in his behalf.
Whatever may have been the motive of the Legisla
ture, this act came too late to be of any practical value.
Seven weeks before its enactment, Virginia had, by the
passage of the Eeconstruction Bill of March 2, 1867, been
reduced to a military district, and placed under the con
trol of a Major-General of the United States army.
The State authorities had, in the spring of 1867, con
ceded to the negroes freedom, religious liberty, the security
of property and person, trial by jury, and the right to
testify and to hold land. They also enjoyed the rights of
"Acts 1866-67, p. 860.

86 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67
assembly and petition, of freedom of speech and the press,
and of owning and bearing arms. They were therefore in
possession of almost all the rights enjoyed by whites,
except the privilege of serving on juries, voting, and hold
ing office.

CHAPTEE XI.
Enfranchisement of the Freedmen.
The constitution formed by the "restored govern
ment" of Virginia at Alexandria in April, 1864, Umited
suffrage to "white male citizens of the commonwealth."
The pressure of the events of the war and the political
sympathy of the government at Alexandria had not been
sufficiently strong to prompt Governor Pierpont and his
Constitutional Convention to enfranchise the negro. ^ It
was therefore not to be expected that the great mass of the
people of Virginia, who felt they had nothing to gain and
much to lose by such a step, would consent to put the bal
lot in his hands.
It was generally felt that it was necessary to confer on
the freedmen all the civil rights and the political rights
enjoyed by women and minors; but that was as much as the
whites were willing to concede. Meetings were held
throughout the State accepting emancipation, but protest
ing against the enfranchisement of the negroes. ^ The rep
resentative candidates for office were agreed that Virgirua
QFot account of the Constitution of Virginia and the Pierpont Legis
lation at Richmond in June, 1865, see Globe 1865-66, pp. 1633-34.
Richmond Times, August 32, 1865.

Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 87
was a "white man's" government. Mr. Johnson, one of
the most prominent candidates for Congress in the Lynch
burg district, declared that he "would keep Virginia out
of the Union (unrepresented at Washington) forty years
rather than tolerate negro suffrage."^ The General Assem
bly of "restored Virginia" was in session in Eichmond
June 19-23, 1865. Speaker Downey, addressing the Legis
lature just before adjournment, said: "Whatever they
may do to other states, thank God, they cannot saddle
negro suffrage upon us."
The press of the State almost universally opposed
negro suffrage.* The Eichmond Times, June 21, 1865,
says: "The former masters of the negroes in Virginia
have no feeling of unkindness toward them, and they will
give them all the encouragement they deserve, but they
will not permit them to exercise the right of suffrage, nor
will they treat them as anything but 'free negroes.' They
are laborers who are to be paid for their services and pro
tected as are unnaturalized foreigners, infants and women,
but vote they shall not." The Enquirer, January 25, 1866,
opposes negro suffrage, "miscegenation, and negro equal
ity," and declares that it does not like a plan by which
"the vote of a white man can be killed by that of a negro."
March 24th of the same year it opposes negro suffrage under
any condition. The Whig, December 24, 1866, predicts enfranchise
ment of the negroes, and urges the whites to make the
negroes their friends. A week later it says that the enfran
chisement of the blacks will only add to the Southern repre
sentation in Congress if the whites are prudent and wise.
This newspaper consistently opposed negro suffrage, but
urged the whites to keep the negroes from falling under
^Lynchburg Virginian, September 14, 1865.
^Times, June 21, 1865; Enquirer, June 25, 1866, October 15, 1865, Octo
ber 26, 1866; Whig, January 35, 1866, December 24, 31, 1866; Dispatch,
January 8, 1867.

88 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6?
the influence of "scalawags" and "carpetbaggers," if they
should be enfranchised by congressional act.
In February, 1867, the Lynchburg Eepublican main
tains that ultimately the ballot must be given to respecta
ble and worthy negroes, and suggests that those paying
taxes on two hundred and fifty dollars worth of property
be enfranchised. By this qualified suffrage, it was said,
the State might escape unqualified suffi-age, which the
Jacobins in Congress were threatening to impose.
The enfranchisement of the negroes began to be dis
cussed shortly after the war. In June, 1865, a Eepublican
organization formed at Alexandria resolved, amongst other
things, "that the Constitution of Virginia should be
amended so as to confer suffrage upon, and restrict it to,
loyal male citizens without regard to color.'" This was the
first time the Eepublican party committed itself to negro
suffrage in Vfrginia, but unqualified negro suffrage was
not yet advocated. A meeting of the radical Union men
of Frederick county, at Winchester, June 28, 1865, opposed
the entire exclusion of the colored race from the ballot box.
A negro meeting in Petersburg, June 7, 1865, resolved,
"That representation and taxation go hand in hand, and it
is diametrically opposed to republican institutions to tax
us for the support and expense of the government and
deny us, at the same time, the right of representation.""
In November, 1865, a convention of colored men met
at Alexandria, severely arraigned the whites of the State
and the Pierpont government which had been transferred
from Alexandria to Eichmond in the early summer of 1865,
and asserted thefr purpose to claim all the rights of white
men, including the franchise.'
May 17, 1866, the "Unconditional Union Convention"
'RepubUc, June 19, 1865.
6RepubUc, June 10, 1865.
'Lynchburg Virginian, Nov. IS, 1865.

Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 89
met at Alexandria. About sixty delegates representing
seventeen counties were present. Many of them were self-
appointed. John Minor Botts, a prominent and infiuential
old time Whig, presided. After much debate, a resolution
favoring qualified suffrage for both races was adopted.
Botts opposed negro suffrage, but would have voted for it
if he had believed the people of Virginia would sanction it.*
In the radical convention held in Philadelphia, Sep
tember, 1866, Botts vigorously opposed universal manhood
suffrage. The other delegates from Virginia favored it.
Eev. James W. Hunnicutt, a delegate from Virginia who
afterwards achieved notoriety as a leader of the radicals
and negroes, favored the enfranchisement of all men except
"rebels." The convention adopted a report favoring
"manhood suffrage." Thereafter the Eepublican party
was committed to unqualified negro suffrage.
Various motives influenced the advocates of negro
enfranchisement. Many of the radicals were sincere in
their efforts, believing that the ballot only would protect
the late slaves and fit them for the responsibilities of citi
zenship. Many white agitators were seeking their own
advancement through the black voters. Others wished to
avenge themselves upon the former ruling class. The
negroes themselves came to believe that freedom without
the privUege of voting and holding office was a failure.
The hostility to negro suffrage was not perceptibly
mitigated during the year 1866. February 16, 1867, the
CharlottesviUe Chronicle, one of the most careful and con
servative papers of the State in all its editorials, said:
' 'The people of Virginia prefer military law — very harsh
est military law, yes even Tiberius himself" rather than
the negro suffrage laws then being discussed by Congress.
The Legislature in a joint resolution, February 6, 1866,
declared: "That Virginia will not voluntarily change the
^Enquirer, May 22, 1866. American' Annual Cyclopaedia, 1866, p. 766.

90 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6?
adjustment of political power as fixed by the Constitution
of the United States.'" February 9, 1865, the "restored
government" of Viginia at Alexandria had promptly rati
fied the thirteenth amendment of the Constitution of the
United States." A reaUy representative Legislature of all
Virginia had by their resolutions of February 6, 1866,
accepted the abolition of slavery as an accomplished fact."
The Constitution as amended by the legislative ordinance
of February 24, 1866, limited suffrage to the white male
citizens of the Commonwealth of the age of twenty-one
years.^ The Legislature on January 9, 1867, unanimously
in the Senate, and with one dissenting vote in the House,
refused to ratify the fourteenth amendment.^ These votes
of the Legislature on the different phases of the negro ques
tion indicate very accurately the prevailing sentiment in
Virginia. The white people of Virginia were in the spring of
1867 almost unanimously opposed to "immediate universal
manhood suffrage," which was thrust upon the State by
the congressional Eeconstruction Acts.* They never be
came reconcUed to unqualified negro suffrage, and by the
Constitution of 1902, practicaUy disfranchised most of the
blacks. In Congress it was frankly avowed that the purpose of
enfranchising the negroes was to secure the perpetual
ascendency of the Eepublican party in the nation through
the support of these black allies.* If there had appeared

'Acts, 1865-66, p. 449.
"Acts (Alexandria) 1865, p. 30.
"Acts 1865-66, p. 449.
lActs 1865-66, p. 226.
2Acts 1866-67, p. 508; Whig, January 10, 1867; WaddeU, History of
Augusta County, p. 346.
sProspectus Richmond Daily Examiner November 30, 1866- App
Globe 1866-67, p. 146.
<Mr. Boyer's speech. Globe 1865-66, p. 2466.

Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 91
any probability at that time that the negroes would vote the
Democratic ticket few will dare say that devotion to the
principles of universal equality would have induced the
Eepublican majority in Congress to put the ballot in the
hands of the freedmen.

CHAPTEE XIL
Education of the Negroes from 1865 to 1867.
The statute making it unlawful for negroes on any
condition to assemble for instruction in reading and writing
and for religious worship conducted by a negro without the
presence of a white person was not repealed until Feb. 27,
1866; yet they assembled as freely as whites, both in
schools and religious meetings, for more than ten months
after the close of the war, until by action of the General
Assembly all restraints of this character were removed.
Many of the most thoughtful men in the State urged
that the late slaves should be encouraged and assisted to
secure as thorough an education as they were capable of
receiving.' They favored the education of the negroes as a
matter of justice, since it was unfair to them to turn them
loose as freemen to win their own support and to compete
with white men without giving them an opportunity to fit
themselves for the struggle. They also felt that the blacks, as
ignorant and unskilled free men, would prove a serious
burden and a positive danger to the State. The press ot
'General Howard's Report, p. 673, Messages and Documents of U. S.
Government, 1866-67; General Terry's Report, pp. 1833-84, Globe 1865-66.

92 Negroes wnd Their Treatinent in Virginia, 1865-6?
the State generally advocated an earnest effort to educate
and elevate them.*
Many others of the most thoughtful class felt that the
blacks should be aided and encouraged in getting only such
school training as would be useful to them as private per
sons and would enable them to pursue with success the
common forms of labor and the trades to which they as
slaves had been accustomed and to which they would of
necessity confine themselves in the future. It was gen
erally felt that they would not be caUed on to serve the
State in a political capacity, and it did not seem probable
that they would for many years be able to earn a Uving in
the professions.' A large number of the people during the first two
years following the war were either indifferent to educating
the negro in any form or were positively opposed to it.
Many of the more ignorant and illiterate whites were not
pleased with the idea of educating and elevating the freed
men.* Slavery, which had formerly clearly distinguished
the condition of the poor whites from that of the blacks,
had been swept away. They now saw the negroes free and
aspiring to all the civil and political rights of the whites.
Naturally they did not relish the idea of becoming the
rivals of the negroes whom they despised as an inferior
race, and by whom they were in turn despised as "poor
white trash." This class of whites now felt that it was
more important than ever before to keep the blacks sharply
distinguished from the whites by artificial as well as racial

^Editorial Lynchburg Virginian, October 22, 1865; Whig, August
20, 1866. ^This was the general feeUng throughout the State. See the news
papers of the time.
^General Terry's Report, pp. 1833-1834, Globe 1865-66; General How
ard's Report, p. 655, Messages and Documents of U. S. Government,
1866-67. Only the lowest class of the whites opposed aU forms of negro
education and advancement.

Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 93
barriers. They were therefore opposed to giving them train
ing and culture that would render them rivals in the
trades and would tend to obliterate the distinctions between
the two races.
As early as October, 1861, the American Missionary
Association had opened schools for negroes at Fortress
Monroe.' As the war progressed interest in their educa
tion increased in the North. Various societies, philan
thropic and religious, began to raise money to send teach
ers to the South. These teachers appeared in Virginia in
considerable numbers in the summer of 1865. The Freed
men's Bureau generally furnished only the buildings and
the material equipment. The teachers were paid from
funds collected in the North by the various societies."
Schools were opened in which nearly all the teachers were
white, many of them being women from New England.
During the period from 1865 to 1867 a considerable num
ber of negroes began to teach in these schools, yet the num
ber of white teachers in the colored schools was always
about two-thirds of the whole teaching force.^ By the close
of the year 1865 there were in Virginia, mainly in the
southeastern part of the State, ninety schools, one hundred
and ninety-five teachers, and eleven thousand five hundred
pupils.^ By the close of 1866 the number of schools and
students had considerably increased.'
The officers of the Freedmen's Bureau from time to
time reported that the feeling in regard to the necessity of
educating the freedmen grew stronger each year. General
Howard, in his report at the close of the year 1866, says
"P. 116, Virginia School Report 1871.
"For an exceUent account of the work of these schools from 1861 to
1870, see pp. 115-118 of Virginia School Report 1870.
^American Annual Cyclopaedia 1867, p. 328.
^American Annual Cyclopaedia, 1865, pp. 376-77.
^American Annual Cyclopaedia, 1866, p. 337. There were more than
J.4,000 pupUs in Freedmen's schools, January 1, 1867.

94 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67
there had been a noticeable change of sentiment in regard
to negro schools since the war. Leading statesmen were
urging the people to educate the negroes; religious conven
tions had passed resolutions urging upon their members
the importance of giving them instruction.*
There was still some opposition to these schools by the
whites. The Bureau officers constantly complained that
the more ignorant element of the population continued
their opposition to the enlightenment of the negro, and it
seems that thefr complaints were well founded. Yet much
of the ill feeling toward the colored schools was due not so
much to an unwillingness to have the blacks educated as to
the manner in which it was being done and to the persons
by whom these schools were conducted." As has been men
tioned elsewhere, a very large part of these teachers were
imbued with the radical abolition ideas of the North. They
believed in equality of rights and privileges for all races
and colors, and encouraged a certain freedom of manner
towards the whites which the whites were not prepared to
tolerate from the blacks. In a short time the negroes fell
in a large degree under the influence of the teachers. AU
this displeased the whites, who felt that the negroes were
being led to expect too much in a social way, and were, at
the same time, being alienated from their old friends and
masters. Another phase of this educational work that did much
to disincline conservative citizens to encourage these out
side teachers was that they were directing their efforts, in
a very large degree, to preparing the freedmen to ask full
political privileges. The prejudices engendered by two
hundred and fifty years' acquaintance with the negro as a
*P. 656, Messages and Documents of theU. S.Government, 1866-67; also
p. 666, Messages and Documents of the U. S. Government, 1867-68.
^Lynchburg Virginian, October 32, 1865 ; Whig, August 30, 1866 ; Gen
eral Terry's Report, Globe 1865-66, pp. 1833-34; General Howard's Report,
Messages and Documents of U. B. Government, 1866-67, p. 655.

Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 95
servile race would not allow the Virginians to grant this
without a struggle. Yet in some of the towns the citizens
from the first expressed a willingness to co-operate 'with the
agents of the Freedmen's Bureau and the Northern philan
thropic societies. Where such a feeling prevaUed, the
schools were soon turned over to the local municipal
authorities with the understanding that these schools should
continue for a stipulated time to receive the support from
the philanthropic societies which had been given the
schools before the assumption of their control by the city.
Such was the case with the city of Lynchburg.'
It was freely charged by some of these teachers that
the negro school buildings had been burned by the whites.
The very small number of houses destroyed and the absence
of evidence to implicate the whites renders it highly proba
ble that scarcely a single building was destroyed by a white
incendiary during that period.*
In summing up the attitude of the whites toward ne
gro education, toward the teachers, and in regard to rent
ing houses. General Terry says: "In some places the peo
ple cordially approve it (the education of the freedmen).
Many have taken part in it. In other places the reverse is
the case — some persons coming to teach the negroes have
not been permitted to rent a place, either for school or per
sonal occupation, and it has been reported to me that
teachers sent to teach the blacks have been treated with
great contempt and in some places threatened.'"
Many of the worthy teachers were misunderstood by
the white people amongst whom they had come to labor.
They therefore were not welcome from reasons before men
tioned. Others of these teachers without tact and some-
'Gen. Terry's Report, Globe 1865-66, pp. 1833-34.
8P. 46, House Document No. 130, 1st Ses. 89th Congress ; p. 278, Ku
Klux Conspiracy, 2d Session 42d Congress, 1872.
SGlobe 1865-66, pp. 1838-34,

96 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6?
times without character became involved in difficulties with
the whites of the community. Generally these brawls were
not traced to their true origin, but were reported by the
teachers and agents of the Bureau as marks of hostility to
the education and elevation of the late slaves. Owing to
the agitation of the public mind, the most insignificant dis
turbance was magnified into a riot. These outrages were
the capital of the "scalawag," the "carpetbagger" and the
turbulent negro politician on the one side; on the other
side, some of the whites industriously spread abroad reports
of the wildest plans and wrong-doing of the freedmen and
their partisans. Chagrin at defeat, hatred toward the con
querors, hostUity to the proposed new status of the negro,
and opposition to the form and spfrit of the education
being given the freedmen, disqualified, in a large measure,
the whites from correctly estimating the teachers and the
schools. On the other hand the Bureau agents and teach
ers interpreted any opposition to the teachers or their
methods as hostUity to any form of education for negroes.
It is therefore very difficult to determine what part of
the whites were in principle opposed to negro education;
yet it is certain that a considerable element, generally of
the more ignorant class, was unwilling to see the negroes
educated or elevated in any way.
The State Legislature in its session of 1865-66 and of
1866-67 made no new provision for the education of either
whites or blacks. The State was so impoverished by the
war that it could hardly be expected to attempt the inaugu
ration of a public free school system for either race at that
time. It is, of course, impossible to affirm positively just
what would have been the policy of the whites in regard to
negro education if they had been left to solve this problem.
The fact that the Legislature in an act concerning appren
tices, passed January 30, 1866, provided that every minor
bound an apprentice should be taught not only some busi
ness or trade, but also, "reading, writing and common

Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 97
arithmetic including the ride of three," indicates clearly
that the Legislature intended that in the future there
should be no difference between the education given a
white and black apprentice." By this act the fifth section
of chapter one hundred and twenty-seven of the Code of
1860 was so amended as to put all apprentices, regardless
of color, on absolutely the same footing in regard to educa
tion as in aU other respects.
The passage of the Eeconstruction Acts of 1867 took
this matter out of the hands of the whites. Most of the
thoughtful people had felt from the close of the war that
some form of education was necessary to enable the freed
men to take thefr new places in society. This feeling was
constantly growing amongst all classes. It is, therefore,
probable that liberal provisions would soon have been made
by the Legislature for thefr education.

CHAPTEE Xni.
Apprentice Laws in Virginia.
It has been shown how completely society was revolu
tionized and the home life of the negroes broken up by the
war. Thousands of negroes had deserted their chUdren.
Many young negroes, imitating thefr elders, refused work
as unbecoming freemen, and lived by begging and stealing.
Many white parents had died leaving thefr children home
less and friendless. There was during the years of 1865
and 1866 a larger number of homeless, idle chUdren in Vir
ginia than at any other period in her history. These young
"Acts 1865-66, p. 86.

98 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6?
people were growing up in want and vice. Most of them,
with no regular labor, were coming to manhood and woman
hood without any trade or any disposition to support them
selves. For several years after the war many young
negroes were fed, clothed, and sheltered by the Freedmen's
Bureau and the army around whose headquarters great
throngs were congregated in idleness.
The army officers repeatedly urged the people of Vfr
ginia to adopt some fair system of apprenticeship. May
5, 1865, General Halleck declared that, "For minors, not
cared for by their parents, apprentice system will be intro
duced as early as practicable. " ^ The press of the State and
the army officers considered the proper education and train
ing of orphans and homeless minors one of the most serious
questions before the people.^ The army officers and Freed
men's Bureau agents feared that the people of Vfrginia
would devise some apprentice system by which they would
receive the benefits of slavery without its form. This lack
of confidence in the sincerity of the people in dealing fafrly
with the negroes rendered more difficult the efforts to find
homes and employment for the young negroes. July 15,
1865, Gen. O. O. Howard issued orders to the agents of
the Freedmen's Bureau that they should supervise the con
tracts of freedmen, but in no instance should "apprentice
ship or any substitute for slavery" be allowed.' This order
was intended to prohibit only abuses of the apprentice sys
tem by which a person might conceivably be enslaved for a
number of years; yet it, in its actual infiuenee, discouraged
all attempts to apprentice minors even on the most Uberal
terms. iP. 1091, Serial 97, Official Records of the War of the RebeUion.
^Lynchburg Virginian, November 4, 1865; Richmond Times, May 15,
August 19, 1865; p. 1216 Serial 97, Official Records. General Howard,
Commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau, ordered that, "State laws with
regard to apprenticeship will be recognized by this Bureau, provided they
make no distinction of color." Whig, October 6, 1865.
'See Genial Howard's Order, Richmond Times, July 15, 1865.

Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 99
In some of the "Cotton States" during the summer of
1865, there was some talk of the "gradual emancipation"
plan and an "apprentice'' plan, the purpose of which was
to mitigate the bad effects of "immediate emancipation" of
all the slaves. These plans never found any support in
Vfrginia. The Eichmond Times of May 15, 1865, discuss
ing them, says, "The edifice of our future greatness can
be built on free labor, and Vfrginia has something better in
store for her than to play the dry nurse for two or three
hundred thousand negroes for the next half century."
Nevertheless it was realized by all that something had
to be done to teach the throngs of idle young negroes hab
its of industry and force them to earn their bread. Novem
ber 4, 1865, the Lynchburg Virginian says, "Apprentice
ship to prevent young negroes from growing up in idleness
and vagrancy should be a settled policy to be regulated
upon some system of justice and fair dealings between both
parties." It was generally felt that the two most important
questions that would come before the Legislature to meet in
December, 1865, would be the vagrant and minor negro
questions. The Code of 1860 provided for "binding out" or "ap
prenticing minors under certain conditions."* It may be
well to remark that nearly all the apprentices prior to 1860
were white, as there was in the whole State only a com
paratively small number of free negroes. The word
"master" as used in the statute of 1860 was not under
stood to imply any ownership of the "apprentice" or
"bound person," but was a survival from the time when
all men who held "apprentices" or "bound persons" were
masters of the trade or caUing which the apprentice was to
be taught. It has been said that the use of the word
"master" in the statutes of 1866 in regard to apprentices
indicates a purpose on the part of the Legislature to place
<Code of Virginia, pp. 685-587.

100 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1866-6?
the "bound person" in the relation of a slave to his em
ployer. Such is not the case, for in every instance in
which the word ' 'master' ' occurs in the Acts of 1866 and
1867 it is taken from the Code of 1860, which was enacted
to regulate the relation of "master'' and "apprentice"
when almost all the apprentices were white. It has never
been claimed that there was any desire to enslave or wrong
the white apprentices.
An "apprentice," according to the statutes of Vfr
ginia, was a minor bound until twenty-one years of age in
the case of a male, and to eighteen years in the case of a
female, to perform services for a master, and to receive in
turn instruction in his trade or occupation. There was
nothing servile in apprenticeship, as will be seen by an
examination of the statutes regulating and defining the
rights and duties of both master and apprentice. The
Constitution adopted at Alexandria in the spring of 1864
declares: "Courts of competent jurisdiction may appren
tice minors of African descent on like conditions provided
by law for apprenticing white children."
The Legislature of "restored Virginia" at Alexandria
enacted no legislation touching this question. This ex
plicit constitutional provision was sufficient, since the
Code of 1860 defined on what conditions white children
could be apprenticed. When the Legislature of Virginia
met at Eichmond in December, 1865, it took up the minor
negro question. After nearly two months it was decided
to make only one change in the "master and apprentice"
statutes of the Code of 1860. By this Code the master was
not required to teach a "free negro'' apprentice "reading,
writing and arithmetic," which were required to be taught
white apprentices. With this single exception the laws
regulating white and black apprentices were the same.
This section in the Code of 1860 read as follows: "The
writing by which any minor is bound an apprentice, shall
specify his age and what art, trade or business he is to be

Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 101
taught. The master, whether it is expressly provided
therein or not, shall be bound to teach the same, and,
unless the apprentice be a free negro, shall be bound to
teach him reading, writing and common arithmetic, includ
ing the rule of three."' It was amended January 30, 1866,
so as to read: "The writing by which any minor is bound
an apprentice shall specify his age and what art, trade or
business he is to be taught. The master, whether it is
expressly provided therein or not, shall be bound to teach
the same, and shaU also be bound to teach him reading,
writing and common arithmetic, including the rule of
three. "«
This was the only change made in the apprentice laws
by the Legislature in its session of 1865-66. By this
amendment white and black apprentices were put abso
lutely on an equality.
January 28, 1867, at its second session, the Legislature
passed "an act concerning the authority of employers over
minors in certain cases" which read as follows:' "That
whenever a minor is held to service or labor of any kind,
for a period not less than one month, the employer may
exercise the same authority, control and discipline over the
said minor as are now exercised by a master over an ap
prentice, unless it shall be otherwise agreed in the contract
for the employment of said minor."
The purpose of this act was to give the employer the
same rights to control and discipline a minor under con
tract for a longer period than one month as were legaUy
exercised by the master over an apprentice. This statute
conferred on the employer no right to overwork, under
feed or otherwise abuse the minor, since the "master and
apprentice" laws defined very strictly the rights and obli-
'Code of Virginia, p. 585.
«Aots 1865-66, p. 86.
7Acts 1866-67, p. 567.

102 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6?
gations of master and apprentice and provided legal reme
dies for the redress of any grievance of either party.*
The letter of this act applies to whites and blacks with
out distinction; yet it was enacted to give white employers
more complete control of the young freedmen, who, ac
cording to all accounts, were at that time a very unreUable
class of laborers, and very little inclined to respect con
tracts and the rights of their employers.
In 1865 and 1866 the young negroes were constantly
making complaints to the agents of the Freedmen's Bureau
that their white employers were "infringing upon" thefr
liberty by "whipping" them or using "harsh language" to
them. Often the Bureau agents gave a ready ear to these
reports of outrages, however poorly attested. Eespectable
men who had "infringed upon the liberty" of youthful
"Afro- Americans" by using a switch on thefr backs or by
not addressing them "politely" were notified to appear and
confront their accusers before the Freedmen's Court. This
act of January 28, 1867, had a tendency to diminish the
number of such cases by legalizing so far as a Sta,te
law, at that time, could legalize anything, the power of the
employer to discipline his young employee.
This statute conferred on the employer no unusual
power, but simply stated that he could lawfully exercise
upon a minor, under contract for labor for a longer period
than one month, the rights of a master over an apprentice,
unless it was provided in the contract for such service that
he was to enjoy no such right of control. It does not ap
pear that this act was ever abused, since by its own terms
it did not go into effect nntil May 1, 1867. Before that
time the Eeconstruction Acts had reduced Virginia to a
military district and had suspended to a great extent the
operation of all the State laws.

scode of Virginia, pp. 586-587.

Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 103
CHAPTEE XIV.
Negro Marriages.
The immediate effects of emancipation on the marital
relations ot the negroes was disastrous. The results of the
war had freed them not only from slavery but also from all
forms of restraint, marriage among the rest. Hundreds
and thousands of marriages were dissolved at once without
formality, and new ones formed also without formality."
Some negroes who had been "refugeed" away from home
on the approach of the Union forces or who found them
selves for any reason separated from thefr wives, decided,
at the close of the war, that it was "cheaper" to marry
where they were than to return to their old homes to thefr
former wives.
Thoughtful people felt that this laxity was a serious
peril to the future of the black race. The army officers
requested clergymen and all others empowered to celebrate
the rite of matrimony to call the attention of the negroes to
the propriety of regular marriage." The Freedmen's
Bureau made vigorous efforts to "re-establish the sanctity
of the marriage relation amongst the freed people."^ The
various churches strove to impress them with the necessity
of fidelity to their marital obligations and urged them as
Christians and freedmen not to abuse thefr liberty by run
ning into Ucentiousness and promiscuous intercourse. The
efforts of the army officers, Freedmen's agents, and minis
ters were fafrly effective.^
SRuffln, The Negro as a PoUtical and Social Factor, pp. 16, 17.
"Gen. HaUeck's Order, Serial 97, Official Records of the War of the
RebeUion, p. 1221.
^Messages and Documents of U. S. Government, 1866-67, p. 665.
'Rev. S. A. Harris, a colored minister, appUed to the Court of Hust
ings in Richmond for license authorizing him to perform the marriage

104 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6?
Before the war there had been no legal provision for
the marriage of negroes in Virginia. No license was issued
for their marriage and no record was made of the simple
ceremony by which they were declared man and wife.
These marriages were solemnized by negro ministers and
were respected with a considerable degree of fidelity. As
has already been said, these unions were dissolved with
great recklessness at the close of the war. The Legislature
felt that something must be done to give greater force and
sanctity to the domestic relation among negroes. February
22, 1866, an act was passed providing for the marriage of
colored persons in the future on the same conditions as
were prescribed for whites.' By this act a license issued
by a county or corporation clerk was necessary. After the
marriage a record of the whole proceeding was to be made
in the clerk's office.
During the years 1865 and 1866 the mUitary authori
ties and the Freedmen's Bureau agents had done much to
encourage the negroes to marry according to prescribed
forms, and had made a record of aU such marriages as had
been solemnized by thefr authority or acknowledged in
their presence. Many negroes had been married under the
dfrection of these officers. Many others who had been
"cohabiting as man and wife' ' for years appeared before
them and on the payment of a fee of twenty-five cents were
given a certificate of their relation as husband and wife.
In April, 1867, the General Assembly instructed the Gov
ernor to obtain from the United States authorities the
records of all such marriages and acknowledgments by
negroes and to cause them to be deposited with the clerks

ceremony, but was refused on the ground that there was no law for grant
ing such license. Enquirer, Nov. 15, 1865. The Freedmen's Court in
Richmond authorized the issuance of Ucanse to negroes wishing to get
married. Enquirer, Dec. 11, 1865.
8Acts 1865-66, pp. 85-86.

Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 106
of the several counties of the State "to preserve evidences
for legitimatizing the offspring of such marriages."*
By these acts aU marriages before the war were legal
ized; the children of such unions were declared legitimate.
The records of marriages contracted in the unsettled period
following the war were preserved, and the marriage of col
ored persons in the future was provided for on the same
conditions as were prescribed for whites.

CHAPTEE XV.
Insurrection.
During the war the conduct of the slaves toward thefr
masters' families was in the highest degree praiseworthy.
At the close of the war there was very little fear that the
negroes would make insurrection against the whites. Only
two uprisings of any importance had ever occurred in the
State; namely, Gabriel's attempt near Eichmond in 1800,
which amounted to little; and Nat Turner's in Southamp
ton county in 1831, in which fifty-five persons lost their
lives.' These occurrences excited temporarUy great terror.
In 1860 a generation had passed without another such
attempt, and the rural whites dwelt in confident security
in the midst of a colored population numericaUy greatly
superior in a large part of the State.
Before the war it had been feared that horrible ex
cesses would follow the immediate emancipation of the
4Acts 1866-67, p. 951.
^Minor's Institutes, Vol. I, p; 169. The number slain IsTariooEly
reported.

106 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6?
slaves. Their exemplary conduct during the war had
almost entirely dissipated these fears. In a few sections
there was, in 1865 and 1866, some apprehension that the
armed freedmen would rise against the whites. General
Terry was urged to disarm them, which he declined to do."
No uprising followed. There were frequent coUisions be
tween white and black individuals, but there was no insur
rection of one race against the other.
The Code of 1860 provided the death penalty for incit
ing negroes to insurrection.' There was no penalty for
inciting whites against negroes. The Legislature, Febru
ary 9, 1866, enacted: "That the fourth section of chapter
one hundred aud ninety of the Code of Virginia for eighteen
hundred and sixty be amended and re-enacted so as to read
as follows, to wit:
"§4. If any person shall conspire with another to incite
the colored population of the State to make insurrection,
by acts of violence and war, against the white population,
or to incite the white population of the State to make
insurrection, by acts of violence and war, against the
colored population, he shall, whether such insurrection be
raade or not, be punished by confinement ia the peniten
tiary for not less than flve nor more than ten years."*
This act repealed all special punishments for inciting
negro insurrections, and provided a penalty of from five to
ten years in the penitentiary for inciting either whites or
blacks to insurrection. The comparative mildness of the
penalty indicates that the Legislature apprehended little
danger from uprisings of one race against the other.

'General Terry's testimony. Congressional Globe, 1865-66, p. 1884.
'Code of Virginia, p. 783.
SActs 1866-66, p. 81.

Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 107
CHAPTEE XVI.
Separate Churches for Negroes.
Before the war it was unlawful for negroes to meet for
religious worship conducted by a colored person unless a
white man was present." This statute was frequently dis
regarded. There were many negro preachers who were
respected by their masters and who exerted a wholesome
infiuenee on the slaves." They were illiterate but fervent
and frequently pious. It was also unlawful for negroes to
assemble for the purpose of being instructed in reading and
writing. Nocturnal meetings of any kind were unlawful.
After the war the whites offered no objection to the educa
tion of negroes or to religious meetings conducted by
negroes without any supervision of whites.
Almost all slave owners gave more or less attention to
the religious and moral growth of their own slaves. The
plantation of every pious master had its Sunday school, in
which the negroes were instructed by enthusiastic itinerant
white preachers and frequently by the pious women of the
family. Many negroes were members of the same churches
as the whites. A place was always reserved for them,
sometimes in the body of the church, but more often in the
galleries. In some places separate churches were built for
them by subscription of their masters. Many of the ablest
white ministers preached to these negro congregations from
time to time.
There were no separate ecclesiastical oiganizations for
blacks. Most of the negro church members were Baptists,
but they were not found in that church alone. After the
close of the war most of the colored members withdrew
9Code, p. 810.
"Olmsted, Seaboard Slave States, Vol. I, p. 119.

108 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6?
from the Baptist Church and formed a separate organization
with their own church buUdings and preachers.^ In this
they were encouraged by the whites. Before the close of
1866 the colored Baptist churches of the South formed a
number of associations which put themselves in connection
with the Northern Baptist societies. In the American Baptist
(African) Missionary Convention which met in Eichmond
in August, 1866, nearly all the Southern States were repre
sented.* Schools were maintained at Alexandria, Cul
peper, Fredericksburg, WilUamsburg, Portsmouth and
Eichmond, in which special attention was given to train
ing colored ministers.^
The General Assembly of the Southern Presbyterian
Church, November 15, 1866, considered the relation of the
freedmen of that church to the white members. In the
various synods throughout the South there were earnest
discussions in regard to the fraternal standing of the col
ored men in the Presbyterian Church. By some it was
urged that negroes, from the nature of Christianity, were
entitled to become deacons, ruling elders, or ministers of
God, and that in the church sessions and assemblies they
were entitled to "perfect equality." Others warmly op
posed this view as leading to miscegenation of the races.*
In the first general conference of the Methodist Episco
pal Church, South, after the war, in April, 1866, at New
Orleans, it was provided that the negroes could be organ
ized into separate congregations and have their own preach
ers, presiding elders, and other officers.'
In reconstruction days the negro preachers were prom-
iPeyton, History of Augusta County, p. 88 ; pamphlet by F. G. Ruffin
(Randolph & English, Richmond).
'American Annual Cyclopaedia, 1866, p. 57.
SAmerican Annual Cyclopaedia, 1867, p. 87.
^American Annual Cyclopsedia, 1866, p. 625.
"American Annual Cyclopasdia, 1866, p. 491.

Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 109
inent spokesmen of their race. Few of the blacks could
read, all were excited and inquisitive about their future
condition, The oratory of the radical leaders and colored
preachers was the chief source of political information and
knowledge that they trusted. The ministers were confi
dent, fervid, and wordy. Many of them were immoral
and neglected the Gospel for politics and sociology.
Within a few years after the war practically all of the
negroes withdrew from all the white ecclesiastical organiza
tions, and formed numerous denominations entirely inde
pendent of white control or direct influence. A great
multiplicity of church societies sprang up in each of these
sects. The social side of church life was highly developed.
The church building with its festivals, social meetings, and
revivals became the social center of the colored community.
The members contributed liberally to the building of the
churches and to the support of their ministers and church
enterprises.

CHAPTEE XVn.
Effects of the Eeconstruction Acts.
The Eeconstruction Act of Congress, March 2, 1867,
was an attempt of the radicals to force the Southern people
to recognize the civil and political equality of the colored
race. This act virtually destroyed the government of Vir
ginia and changed the State into Military District Number
One, of which General John M. Schofield of the United
States army was made commander." The negroes were
6In the main Gen. Schofield discharged the duties of his office with
tact and sympathy. Through him Virginia was spared much that other
states suffered. See his autobiography. Forty-six Tears in the Army,
Chapter XXI, for his account of his administration.

110 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67
enfranchised and the last vestiges of their inferiority, civil
and political, were wiped out by Federal legislation.
It was felt by many that the traditional influence of
the old masters would lead the enfranchised freedmen to
vote with the whites.' John M. Botts favored enfranchise
ment of the negroes as right in principle but opposed it as
inexpedient since he believed they would vote with thefr
old Democratic masters.
Negroes attempted to vote in a municipal election in
Alexandria early in March, 1867.* About fourteen hun
dred votes were presented by the negroes and were declined
by the election offlcers. This denial was severely criticised
in the North and in Congress. The whites withheld the
ballots from the blacks as long as it was possible for them
to do so. After Congress had enfranchised the freedmen
many of the leading newspapers urged the whites to strive
to maintain their influence with them and thereby prevent
their falling under the leadership of the radicals who had
for some time been growing in influence with them.'
Many of the negroes announced that they would vote
with the whites. In most cases they were ostracised and
intimidated frequently by the women of their race or by
radical organizations such as the Union League. Demo
cratic negroes were denied membership in many churches.
It was feared that a general collision of the races would be
precipitated by the ill advice of incendiaries and radical
white leaders, amongst whom Eev. J. W. Hunnicutt, the
editor of the radical newspaper, the Eichmond "New Na
tion," and Judge Underwood, of the Federal Court, were
very prominent and influential."
'Richmond Dispatch, March 23, 1867, AprU 5, 1867 ; Whig, March 6, 23,
AprU 1, 1867.
sRichmond Enquirer, March 8, 1867.
"Richmond Enquirer, May 18, 21, 1867 ; Richmond Republic, July 6, 7,
1865; Richmond Whig, AprU 1, 1867.
"Richmond Enquirer, March 26, May 18, 1867 ; Dispatch, June 30, 1867.

Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 111
The representative newspapers advised the negroes to
remain friendly with their old masters and not allow them
selves to be ruined by talk and politics.^ At the same
time the white people were urged to explain to the negroes
their rights and duties as voters, but it was everywhere
felt that honest, conscientious citizens could not bid against
Hunnicutt and the radicals for the vote of the negroes.
The Union League was the chief agency by which the
negroes were organized and pitted against the whites.
This organization was peculiarly adapted to the character
of the blacks. In it they were instructed in the privileges
and duties of citizenship and special stress was laid on their
obligation to oppose the whites and to support the Eepub
lican party which had given them the ballot.^ It early
became manifest that the negroes would vote solidly with
the radicals.^ More than ninety-three thousand blacks
voted in the election in October, 1867; only six hundred
and thirty-eight voted with the white conservatives.
The Freedmen's Bureau officials urged all negroes to
register and vote for delegates to the convention which was
soon to be called to frame a State constitution that would
give the negroes full civil and political equality.* Almost
every male negro of legal age promptly registered. Army
officers and Bureau agents were given the preference in
making appointments of registrars.
The whites were apathetic. Many neglected to regis
ter although the leading men and press urged all to regis
ter and vote.' Many were so disgusted at negro suffrage
that they declared that they would never vote again."
IRichmond Enquirer, AprU 2, 37, 1867; Whig, AprU 1, 1867.
^Documents Relating to Reconstruction, edited by W. L. Fleming.
'Richmond Enquirer, May 24, 1867.
^Richmond Enquirer, June 1, 1867.
'Richmond Enquirer, June 17, 1867; Whig, March 7, 1867.
BRiohmond Dispatch, AprU 5, 1867.

112 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6?
This was very unfortunate as it made it easier for the radi
cals and negroes to dominate the Stat« for several years.
About forty-four thousand registered white voters neglected
to vote in the election of October, 1867. Congressional
acts excluded many Confederate soldiers from voting and
almost all of them from holding office, since an officer was
requfred to take the "test oath" that he had not engaged
in armed revolt against the United States, or given "aid or
comfort" to the Confederate cause.
Many declared that negroes were not eligible to office
under the Eeconstruction Acts.' The colored inhabitants
of Alexandria had nominated candidates for office March
1, 1867.* In the summer of the same year a considerable
number of them were nominated and in October twenty-five
were elected members of the Constitutional Convention.
Thefr right to hold office was soon generally recognized.
The passage of the Eeconstruction Acts in the spring
of 1867 encouraged anew the negroes to hope for the con
fiscation and division of the lands of the Confederates
among the late slaves. In September, 1866, ' 'radical emis
saries" in Buckingham and adjoining counties urged the
negroes not to work for the whites and to assert thefr claims
to the land.' All confiscatory schemes were ardently sup
ported by most of the blacks. Nevertheless most of the
Eepublican leaders in Virginia in the summer of 1867 dis
couraged the negroes in their clamor for confiscation.
Many farms occupied by freedmen were restored to the
owners in a comparatively short time after the war.
It was more difficult to secure negro labor after March,
1867, than it had been before, inasmuch as about all negroes
gave themselves up to politics." After registration began

^Richmond Dispatch, April 13, July 11, 1867.
^Richmond Dispatch, March 6, 1867.
'Richmond Whig, Sept. 11, 1866.
"Richmond Enquirer, AprU 18, 1867; Dispatch, July 8, 1867.

Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 113
they became more demoralized than they had ever been
before that time.
Encounters between whites and blacks became more
frequent. In May an agitator was arrested on the charge
of inciting the negroes to acts of violence and insurrection.
He urged them to assert their claims to all the rights and
privileges enjoyed by white people in any Northern state,
including the right to ride in street cars and to sit in any
churches and theatres. Negro riots such as occurred in
Eichmond in May, 1867, alarmed the people. It was
feared that the relations of the races woidd continually
grow worse. ^ There was much reckless talk. A delegate
to the Philadelphia Convention in September, 1866, said
that the negroes must be drilled and organized for fighting
the whites.^ He prophesied a "rich San Domingo" in the
South when "the rebels attempt to rule the blacks." Yet
many influential negroes strove to avert any ill feeling be
tween the races. ^ The relation of the races became more
strained and unsatisfactory than at any previous time in
the history of the State.
Many white men felt that it was not prudent or patri
otic to stand haughtUy apart and aUow the negro voters to
faU under the influence of radicals and self-seekers to the
hurt of every interest of society. They denied the wisdom
or constitutionality of the means by which the negroes had
been made citizens and voters but considered it wise to
recognize actual conditions and to strive to neutralize as
far as possible the baneful influence of selfish leaders on
the negroes. These whites soon found it impossibte to co
operate with the black voters who suspected thefr motives
and implicitly trusted the "scalawags," "carpetbaggers,"
and their own leaders.
^Richmond Enquirer, May 11, 1867.
2Whig, Sept. 6, 1866.
^Enquirer, May 10, 1867.

114 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6?
A wide difference of opinion appeared as to what
course the General Assembly should pursue. Some urged
that it should call a constitutional convention and take
steps to put into effect the provisions of the Eeconstruction
Acts. A large and respectable group opposed this course
and favored a policy of "passivity."* They argued that
the people should avail themselves of the delay aUowed by
the law in hope that the State might yet be spared the
shame and humiliation of universal negro suffrage imposed
upon it by the Federal Government. The newspaper dis
cussions of this question were very acrimonious.
A State convention, called by the EepubUcan Commit
tee, met in Eichmond April 17, 1867.' Of the two hundred
and ten delegates present one hundred and sixty were ne
groes. About one half of the State was represented. Very
radical resolutions were adopted. Confiscation was de
manded by almost all the negro delegates. Some of the
speeches were of a very infiammatory character. The
negroes at this time were completely under the influence
of Hunnicutt. Many respectable Eepublicans were dissatis
fied with the radical policy of Hunnicutt and the negroes."
About this time efforts were made to form a Eepub
lican party in Virginia less radical than the Hunnicutt or
ganization. The Eichmond Whig became the advocate of
this movement. Late in April a convention in Petersburg
formulated a platform which, it was hoped, was radical
enough to meet the approval of the North and not too rad
ical to win the support of the conservative Eepublicans of
Virginia.' This platform did not receive much poptdar
*The Enquirer was the leader of the "passivity" group. Most of the
other leading newspapers favored a prompt acceptance of the provisions
of the Reconstruction Acts.
'Enquirer and Whig, AprU 18, 1867.
ewhig, AprU 5, 1867.
^This platform demands * * "that the political power of the State
sl^aU henceforth be possessed and exercised by whit? ad(1 bla^sk (dike;

Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 115
support. Governor Peirpont, John M. Botts and other
strong men had always denied the regularity and legiti
macy of the Eichmond Convention. The Petersburg Con
vention accepted Botts as leader of the movement against
Hunnicutt and the extreme radical organization.
A call for a new convention at Charlottesville to
organize the Eepublican party in the State was signed by
more than three hundred men.* Many of these were old
line Whigs of character and influen'ce. Hunnicutt and the
radicals ignored this call.
The Eeconstruction Committee in Washington now
intervened. Through its influence the ''Union Leagues"
of some of the great cities in the North undertook to bring
about harmony between the radicals and conservatives. In
June, 1867, about fifty men representing the two factions
met in Eichmond to try to bring harmony amongst the
friends of the negro. Judge Underwood, Senator Wilson,
John M. Botts, J. W. Hunnicutt, and John Hawxhurst
were prominent in this meeting.' It was decided to recall
the call for the Charlottesville convention and to call a
convention at Eichmond, August 1, to formulate a party
platform. Eichmond was at this time the center of radical
influence. On the whole, Hunnicutt and the radicals had
triumphed over Botts and the conservatives.
About this time a movement for coalition between the
whites and the blacks appeared in the State. July 1 many
of the leading citizens, socially and politically, of Albe
marle county, met in CharlottesvUle to consider the wis-

* * that a new constitution shaU be framed which shaU provide that aU
men, white or black, without reference to previous conditions of servi
tude, shall be perfectly equal before the laws, both in respect to poUtical
privileges and power and of civU rights ; and that aU laws creating distinc
tions or differences of any sort between persons of different races shaU be
unconstitutional, nuU, and void."
SEnqulrer, May 21, 1867.
SBnqoirer, June 19, 1867.

116 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6?
dom and practicability of "co-operation" with the conven
tion called to meet in Eichmond, August 1." They ex
pressed a desire to "co-operate" with the Eepublican party,
and forty-six delegates were appointed to represent them
in the Eichmond convention. PracticaUy all these "co-
operators" had been active and consistent supporters of
the Confederacy, and would have won for the Eepublican
party the support and confidence of much of the best white
element if they had become identified with that organiza
tion. Other counties decided to "co-operate," and sent as
delegates some of their most distinguished citizens.
The "co -operators" accepted negro suffrage as an
accomplished fact. They hoped to secure the support of
the freedmen and to leaven the radicalism of the Eepubli
can party. In such a coalition the leaders would have
been white men. This plan did not commend itself to the
negroes, who demanded a "fair division of aU offices,"
and declared that wherever two men were elected or ap
pointed to office one of them must be a negro.^ Hunnicutt
and the radicals did not welcome the overtures of the
"co-operators." The convention met in the African church, in Eich
mond, on the appointed day. The negroes thronged around
the church as early as seven o'clock in the morning and
poured in and filled the building when the doors were
opened at eleven. About two thousand negroes, Mr. Botts,
and the white "co-operator" delegates were left outside.
This convention was made up of negroes, except the fifty
white delegates who had attended the April convention.
Hunnicutt addressed the ' 'mass convention' ' in the church.
He said that the only work before the meeting was to
"endorse" the April platform.^ It was promptly "en-
"Enquirer, July 3, 1867.
iCharlottesvUle Chronicle, July 2, 1867,
2Bnquirer, August 3, 1867.

Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 117
dorsed." A motion to allow Botts to address the conven
tion was lost almost unanimously.
Many of the country negro delegates were not admitted
into the church. These, with the throng of negroes around
the church, repaired to the Capitol grounds and were ad
dressed by John Hawxhurst, a bitter radical. The "co-
operators" were huddled together on the outskirts of the
throng. Botts and the conservative Eepublicans were
ignored. The "co-operation" movement had failed. The
negroes had definitely declined the overtures of the whites
and committed all to the radical leaders. This triumph of
the radicals and negroes disgusted and discouraged the
whites, who had hoped that the negroes could be induced
to accept the leadership of their former masters. After
this some of the Union Leagues refused to admit white men
as members.' An election was ordered for October 18-21 to deter
mine whether a constitutional convention should be called
and to elect delegates to this convention if the popular vote
should favor it. The campaign was energetically con
ducted by the radicals. Many of the negroes gave them
selves up completely to attendance upon political meetings
and discussions of politics. Many of them were nominated
for office, about one-third of the radical Eepublican nomi
nees being black. In Eichmond the radicals nominated
three whites and two blacks.
The equality of all men before the courts, equal civil
and political rights for both races, free schools for all
classes and colors, and the right of negroes to hold any
office were leading features of the radical platform.*
The total registration of voters was nearly two hun
dred and twenty-six thousand; of this number about one
hundred and twenty thousand were white and almost one
^Documents Relating to Reconstruction, edited by Fleming, No. 3, p. 4.
^Enquirer, April, 19, 1867.

118 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6?
hundred and six thousand were colored. Nevertheless in
the election the blacks cast over seventeen thousand more
baUots than the whites. About forty-four thousand regis
tered white voters had failed to vote, but only about twelve
thousand seven hundred registered negroes remained away
from the polls. Of the one hundred and five delegates to
the Constitutional Convention, the radicals elected seventy-
two, of whom twenty-five were negroes, and twenty-seven
were from other states and foreign countries. Only about
six hundred and thirty-eight negroes voted with the whites.
This shows how completely the radicals had won them,
despite the efforts of their old masters to influence thefr
ballot. There was a majority of about forty-five thousand
in favor of calling a constitutional convention. The radi
cals were jubUant and confident of their future. The
negroes were almost beyond control with joy at thefr
triumph. The white conservatives were dismayed by thefr
overwhelming defeat at the polls.
The Constitutional Convention assembled in Eichmond
December 3, 1867. This was the first time in the history
of the State that negroes sat as members of a legislative
body. Dr. Thomas Bayne, Willis A. Hodges, and Lewis
Lindsay were the most prominent and influential negroes in
the convention. The State had been revolutionized. The old political
leaders were absent. The old dominant class had lost con
trol. Negroes and thefr radical friends had met to frame a
Constitution for the Old Dominion.
Many negroes insisted that all social distinctions of
race should be removed by law and custom. In Nanse-
mond county, in June, 1867, a negro meeting advocated
negro equality in every respect and female suffrage.' Lewis
Lindsay, a colored leader, in a speech at CharlottesviUe in
July, 1867, claimed social equality as a right of the
'Richmond Dispatch, June 18, 1867.

Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865^? 119
negroes." Similar demands were made by negro leaders
and radicals about this time in many parts of the State.
The editor of the Petersburg "Index" is quoted as saying:
"We have never seen, nor do we know, why a white mau
who wishes to marry a colored woman, or a white woman
who wishes to marry a colored man, should be restricted
in the caprice.'"
It was claimed by some that the Petersburg platform
favored intermarriage between the races.* Nevertheless
many negroes opposed any agitation for social equality,
and were content for the time being to make sure of civil
and political equality and to trust the future for other
privUeges." The whites feared that the radical doctrinaires would
attempt by some means to enforce social equality as well as
political and civil equaUty." Social equality of the races
was, of course, never more than a dream of radicals and
enthusiasts without the slightest possibility of realiza
tion. Most of the white people ceaselessly fought it in
every form and tendency.
Civil and poUtical equality of the negroes was guar
anteed by the constitution framed by the convention that
assembled in Eichmond, December, 1867. The two races
continued to stand apart socially. The instinct of the
white race is against social equality with blacks. Neither
defeat in war nor triumph of radicalism in peace could
overcome the determination of the whites to resist social
equality and to preserve racial integrity.

eCharlottesvUle Chronicle, July 2, 1867.
'Richmond Enquirer, May 6, 1867.
SRichmond Enquirer, May 4, 1867.
'Whig, May 28, 1867.
"Richmond Enquirer, May 6-10, 1867.

120 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6?
CHAPTEE XVm.
Summary and Conclusion.
The negroes in the part of Vfrginia west of the Blue
Eidge were only about fifteen per cent, of the entfre popu
lation of that section. They were considerably in the
majority in the rest of the State. The negro problem has,
therefore, never been so serious a question in the Valley and
Southwest as in the Piedmont, Southside and Tidewater
sections. In 1865 the people of Vfrginia, almost to a man, ac
cepted the unconditional emancipation of the slaves as the
most patent result of the war. The whites did not hold
the negroes responsible for the events of the war or thefr
emancipation. The negroes at once asserted their freedom
and for a few years were greatly demoralized by thefr
changed condition. The Freedmen's Bureau agents, the
Northern teachers, the "scalawags" and "carpetbaggers"
were, on the whole, disturbing forces and prolonged and
aggravated the transitional period from slavery to settled
freedom. During this period a system of free contract labor was
developed. The effort to fix wages by common agreement
amongst the farmers was a failure. There was little oppo
sition to renting or selUng land to negroes. The negroes,
however, did not, in most cases, prove successful renters.
Considerable numbers of freedmen bought real estate in the
two or three years immediately following the war. Colored
men never experienced any difficulty in buying land if they
had the money to pay for it.
Business was prostrated; money was scarce; the num
ber of laborers was excessive; wages were therefore low.
In the minds of the freedmen idleness and freedom
were synonymous. The rather severe vagrancy laws enacted

Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 121
by the Legislature in 1866 were not attempts to re-enslave
the negroes or to minimize their freedom but were intended
only to check the vagrancy and put the idle freedmen to
work. This statute was annulled by General Terry within
a few days after its enactment. It is, therefore, impossi
ble to say what would have been its practical working; yet
it is not probable that this vagrant act would have been
seriously abused. On account of the vagrancy and unre-
liabUity of negroes as laborers it was found necessary to
enact a contract law. The provisions of this act were not
severe, and the consequences to a negro of its violation
were only indirect. Every vestige of the old slave laws
was repealed in 1865 and 1866.
The number of outrages on negroes in Virginia from
1865 to 1867 was small. There were, however, many com
mon brawls and personal encounters between whites and
blacks, but no more than were naturally to be expected iu
a population of twelve hundred thousand, of whom five
hundred thousand were excited and insolent freedmen.
A considerable number of these brawls and contests arose
from the insolence and insubordination of the negroes,
which the whites would not tolerate. In disputes abont
money or property the negroes never experienced any diffi
culty in securing full justice. In common cases of assault
and battery and in more serious criminal cases white courts
would not always convict white men, if it was alleged that
the negro had been saucy or Insolent toward his white as
sailant. The negroes were generally given something like
the maximum legal penalties for such offenses as theft,
burglary and arson. The case of Dr. Watson and a few
others created the impression in the North that the courts
of Virginia did not protect the freedmen. Such cases were
in reality extremely rare.
In the summer and fall of 1865, before the old free
negro laws had been repealed, the negroes by common con
sent and the decisions of the courts came into about aU the

122 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6?
civil rights of white men. By the legislative acts of Jan
uary and February, 1866, all special punishments and
court proceedings applicable to negroes were repealed; and
they were thus put on an equality in this respect with
white men. In 1866 they were, by act of the Legislature,
declared competent witnesses in all cases in which the
interest of any colored person was directly or indirectly
involved. The whites were bitterly opposed to the enfran
chisement of the negroes, and accepted it only as it was
forced upon them by the United States Government.
A large majority of the whites favored the education
of the negroes in such ways as would fit them to become
more efficient laborers and artisans, but opposed both the
method and aims of the Northern teachers who were teach
ing the negroes to expect full political rights and to oppose
their former masters.
The apprentice laws of this period were the old ap
prentice laws of the Code of 1860, so amended as to apply
to whites and blacks aUke. The Legislature declared legiti
mate the offspring of aU unions of colored persons before
the war, and provided for the marriage of negroes in the
future on the same conditions as whites.
Prom this survey of the condition of the negroes from
1865 to 1867 it is seen that the relation of the whites and
blacks was during that period about as cordial as could
have been expected; that they were adapting themselves to
thefr new conditions; that the feeling of confidence and good
wiU between the two races, although temporarily shocked
by the events attending emancipation, was reasserting itself
during the first year foUowing the close of the war; that
the laws had been so amended and modified as to secure for
the freedmen all the civU rights and the most important
political rights enjoyed by the whites.
The Eeconstruction Acts enfranchising the negroes
and the other Federal legislation in their interest destroyed
the confidence and good feeling that had existed between

Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6? 123
the two races and arrayed them in a bitter contest for the
political control of the State. In the election of October,
1867, the negroes and radicals were successful. Of the one
hundred and five delegates elected to frame a constitution
for the State seventy-two were radicals. Of this number
twenty-five were negroes. The blacks attained full civil
and political equality but were unable to secure social
equality. These struggles engendered political and racial
passions and antipathies that have not subsided after a
generation.

124 Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1866-6?

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Census Reports, 1860 and 1870.
Reports of the Department of Agp-icultnre.
Annual Reports of the Secretary of War.
Statutes of the United States.
House Documents.
Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies.
Messages and Documents of the United States Government, 1866-71.
Eu Klux Report, (Report of tbe Joint Committee of Congress on
the Conditions in the Late Insurrectionary States, submitted at
tbe 2nd Session of the 42nd Congress, 1872).
Of the State of Yirginia.
Code of 1860.
Acts of the Restored Government, 1863-65, (Alexandria) .
Acts of General Assembly, 1866-67.
Annual Reports of Virginia, 1870-71.

Newspapers.
Richmond Times.
Richmond Enquirer.
Richmond Dispatch.
Lynchburg Yirginian.
CharlottesviUe Chronicle.
Richmond Whig.
Tht Bepublic.

Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-67 126

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American Annual Cyclopcedia, Appleton & Co., New York.
T'ribune Al'manac, New York.
Blackwood's Magazine, American Edition, New York.
"^Ruffln, P. G., The Negro as a Political a^nd Social Factor, Rich
mond, 1888.
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Popular Movement in Virginia in 1865, to Re-establish Peaceful
Relations between the Northern and Southern States, and of
the Subsequent Efforts of "the Committee of Nine," in 1869.
"" Page, Thomas N., Atlantic Monthly, September, 1901, Boston. The
articles on Reconstruction in the Atlantic Monthly in 1901 are
valuable studies of the different phases of the negro question.
Bruce, Philip A., The Plantation Negro as a Freeman, New York,
1889.
SommerviUe, C.W., A Dissertation on R. 6. Harper, Johns Hop
kins University, 1899.
^WooUey, E. C, The Reconstruction of Georgia, Columbia Univer
sity Press, 1901.
BaUagh, J. C, History of Slavery in Yirginia, JohnS' Hopkini
Press, 1902.
Herbert, H. H., Why the Solid South.
Blaine, J. G., Twenty Years in Congress, Norwich, Conn., 1884.
^Bancroft, F. A., The Negro in Politics, New York, 1885.
'^WaddeU, Annals of Augusta County, Staunton, 1902.
V Peyton, J. L., History of Augusta County, Staunton, 1882.
Dunning, W. A., The Civil War and Reconstruction, New York,
1898.
McCarthy, Lincoln's Plan of Reconstruction, New York, 1901.
^SwaivaeiTs,'ij.'P., History of Southwest Yirginia, Richmond, 1903.
Minor, J. B., Minor's Institutes, Vol. I. Richmond, 1875.
Helper, H. R., The Impending Crisis, New York, 1857.
Schofleld, J. M., Forty-six Tears in the Army, New York, 1897.
CoUins, W. H., The Domestic Slave Trade of the Southern States,
New York, 1904.
Documentary History of Reconstruction, edited by W. L. Flem-
jn|;, Cleveland, 1906.

Negroes and Their Treatment in Virginia, 1865-6?
Du Bois, W. E. B., Suppression of the Slave Trade, New York,
1904.
Olmsted, F. It., A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States, 1853-54,
New York, 1904.
Schwab, J. C, The Confederate States of America, New York, 1904.
Eckenrode, H. J., The Political History of Yirginia dwring the
Reconstruction, Johns Hopkins Press.
Documents Relating to Reconstruction, edited by W. L. Fleming,
Morgantown, W. Va. IMOL » l>»<».
Bassett, J. S., Slavery in the State of North Carolina, Johns Hop
kins Press.

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