days at his house. Meantime, through secret sources, by means of bribes, I got passes to take them through the lines. These cost me a hundred dollars in greenbacks; then, when everything was ready, all passes were revoked, and they were good for nothing. Finally Dennis Shane took the job of running them through the lines for five hundred dollars in Rebel money. "He got them safely through; and just a month from that time one of those men came back for me. General Butler sent him he wanted to talk with me about affairs in Richmond. I went out with a party of seven; and when near Williamsburg we were all captured by a band of Confederate soldiers. : "I determined not to be taken back to Richmond and identified, if I could help it. I got down at a spring to drink, crawled along under the bank a little way, as fast as I could, then jumped up, and ran for my life. I was shot at, and chased; they put dogs on my track; I was four days and nights without food; but I escaped, while all the rest were carried back. After that I ran the lines to Butler whenever he wanted to see me, until it was n't safe for me to go back to Richmond, where my operations had become known. 66 "After the war was over, and our troops had possession," added Mr. W-, " then I came back, and saw what I had never expected to see in this world. I saw the very men who had robbed, persecuted, and imprisoned me, rewarded by our government. I came back to find that under the administration of our own generals, Ord and Patrick, it was in a man's favor. to be known as a secessionist, and against him to be known as a Union man. The Union men were insulted and bullied by them, the colored people were treated worse under their rule than they had ever been by the Rebels themselves, and the secessionists were coaxed and petted. A Rebel could obtain from government whatever he asked for; but a Union man could obtain nothing. When we were feeding and flattering them at a rate that made every loyal man sick at heart, I sent a request in writing for a little hay for my horse. I got a refusal in writing: I could n't have any hay. At the same PARTIALITY TO TRAITORS. 177 time the government was feeding in its stables thirty horses for General Lee and his staff." A hundred similar instances of partiality shown to the Rebels by the Ord and Patrick administration were related to me by eye-witnesses; coupled with accounts of insults and outrages heaped upon loyal men and Freedmen. Happily Ord and Patrick and their pro-slavery rule had passed away; but there were still complaints that it was not the true Union men who had the ear of the government, but those whose unionism had been put on as a matter of policy and convenience. This was no fault of General Terry, although he was blamed for it. When I told him what I had heard, he said warmly, – "Why don't these men come to me? They are the very men I wish to see.” "The truth is, General, they were snubbed so often by your predecessors that they have not the heart to come." "But I have not snubbed them. I have not shown partiality to traitors. Everybody that knows me knows that I have no love for slavery or treason, and that every pulse of my heart throbs with sympathy for these men and the cause in which they have suffered." One evening I met by appointment, at the tent of the Union Commission, a number of the dauntless twenty-one, and accompanied them to a meeting of the Union League. It was a beautiful night, and as we walked by the rainy fountain, under the still trees, one remarked, "Many an evening, when there was as pretty a moon as this, I have wished that I might die and be out of my misery. That was when I was in prison for being loyal to my country." At the rooms of the League I was surrounded by these men, nearly every one of whom had been exiled or imprisoned for that cause. I witnessed the initiation of new-comers; but in the midst of the impressive solemnities I could not but reflect," How faint a symbol is this of the real League to which the twenty-one were sworn in their hearts! To belong to this is now safe and easy enough; but to have been a true member of that, under the reign of terror, how very different!" CHAPTER XXIII. MARKETS AND FARMING. THE negro population of Richmond gives to its streets a peculiarly picturesque and animated appearance. Colored faces predominate; but of these not more than one in five or six shows unmixed African blood; and you are reminded less of an American city than of some town of Southern Europe. More than once I could have fancied myself in Naples, but that I looked in vain for the crowds of importunate beggars, and the dark-skinned lazzaroni lying all day in the sunshine on the street corners. I saw no cases of mendicancy among the colored people of Richmond, and very little idleness. The people found at work everywhere belonged to the despised race; while the frequenters of bar-rooms, and loungers on tavern-steps, were white of skin. To get drunk, especially, appeared to be a prerogative of the chivalry. The mules and curious vehicles one sees add to the picturesqueness of the streets. The market-carts are characteristically droll. A little way off you might fancy them dogcarts. Under their little ribbed canvas covers are carried little jags of such produce as the proprietor may have to sell, -a few cabbages, a few pecks of sweet potatoes, a pair of live chickens, tied together by the legs; a goose or a duck in a box, its head sticking out; with perhaps a few eggs and eggplants. These little carts, drawn by a mule or the poorest of ponies, have been driven perhaps a dozen or fifteen miles, bringing to market loads, a dozen of which would scarcely equal what a New-York farmer, or a New-England marketgardener often heaps upon a single wagon. In the markets, business is transacted on the same petty scale. You see a great number of dealers, and extraordinary SCENE IN THE MARKET. 179 throngs of purchasers, considering the little that appears to be sold. Not every producer has so much even as an antiquated mule-cart. Many come to market with what they can carry on their backs or in their hands. Yonder is an old negro with a turkey, which he has walked five miles to dispose of here. That woman with a basket of eggs, whose rags and sallow complexion show her to be one of the poor whites whom respectable colored people look down upon, has travelled, it may be, quite as far. Here comes a mulatto boy, with a string of rock-fish caught in the James. This old man has hard peaches in his bag; and that other woman contributes a box of wild grapes. People of all colors and all classes surround the sheds or press in throngs through the passages between the stalls. The fine lady, followed by her servant bearing a basket, has but little money; and although she endeavors to make it go as far as possible, it must be a small family that can subsist until Monday upon what she carries away. There is little money to be seen anywhere; in which respect these scenes are very different from those witnessed during the last years of Confederate rule, when it was said that people went to market with baskets to carry their money, and wallets to bring home what it would buy. The markets are not kept open during the evening, and as the hour for closing them arrives, the bargaining and loud talking grow more and more vivacious, while prices decline. I remember one fellow who jumped upon his table, and made a speech, designed to attract the patronage of the freedmen. "Walk up hyer, and buy cheap!" he shouted. "I don't say niggers; I say ladies and gentlemen. Niggers is played out; they 're colored people now, and as good as anybody." The markets indicate the agricultural enterprise of a community. Yet, even after seeing those of Richmond, I was amazed at the petty and shiftless system of farming I witnessed around the city. I was told that it was not much better before the war. The thrifty vegetable gardens of the North, producing two or three crops a year; the long rows of hot-beds - by the fences, starting cucumbers and supplying the market with greens sometimes before the snow is gone, such things are scarcely known in the capital of Virginia. "We have lettuce but a month or two in the year," said a lady, who was surprised to learn how Northern gardeners managed to produce it in and out of season. In one of my rides I passed the place of a Jersey farmer, about three miles from the city. It looked like an oasis in the desert. I took pains to make the proprietor's acquaintance, and learn his experience. 66 'I came here and bought in '59 one hundred and twentyseven acres for four thousand dollars. The first thing I did was to build that barn. Everybody laughed at me. The most of the farms have no barns at all; and such a large one was a wonder, it must have been built by a fool or a crazy This year I have that barn full to the rafters. man. 66 'I found the land worn out, like nearly all the land in the country. The way Virginia folks have spoilt their farms looks a good deal more like fools or crazy men than my barn. First, if there was timber, they burnt it off and put a good coat of ashes on the soil. Then they raised tobacco three or four years. Then corn, till the soil got run out and they couldn't raise anything. Then they went to putting on guano, which was like giving rum to an exhausted man; it just stimulated the soil till all the strength there was left was burnt out. That was the condition of my farm when I came here. "The first thing I did, I went to hauling out manure from Richmond. I was laughed at for that too. The way people They like to have do here, they throw away their manure. their farm-yards high and dry; so they place them on the side of a hill, where every rain washes them, and carries off into the streams the juices that ought to be saved for the land. They left their straws-tacks any number of years, then drew the straw out on the farms dry. I made my barn-yard in a hollow, and rotted the straw in it. Now I go to market every day with a big Jersey farm-wagon loaded down with stuff." He had been getting rich, notwithstanding the war. I asked what labor he employed. |