Thanks to Northern loans, in sums ranging as high (in one or two cases, at least,) as a half-million dollars, the railroads were rapidly getting into running order, and old lines of travel were reopening. Already the Virginia Central Railroad was open to Staunton, and the Orange and Alexandria through its whole length, over a score or more of our battle-fields. Rival lines of steamers for Baltimore swarmed in the James River. Southward, Wilmington could be reached by rail, and even Charleston, a few gaps being filled by stage lines. South-westward, an unbroken line extended through Chattanooga and Atlanta—historic names—to Mobile. * * * * * As was entirely natural, a great deal of sullen bitterness was displayed against the negro. Men did not feel kindly that their old slaves should take time to consider the question of hiring with them, and should presume to haggle about wages. The least manifestation of a disposition to assert obtrusively his independence, brought the late slave into danger. Murders of negroes were occasionally reported; and the late masters made many wrathful promises to kill that were never fulfilled. Half-a-dozen times, in the course of a single day, I observed quarrels going on between negroes and white men. The latter constantly used the most violent and domineering language; the negroes several times seemed disposed to resent it. Their schools were well attended, and the same good report of their progress was continually made. No man could fail to observe that the poor negroes were making much more earnest efforts to rise than the poor whites. The restoration of confiscated property was again leaving many of the freedmen houseless. During the convulsions of the war they had left their old homes, and the authorities had established them upon the confiscated estates of absent Rebels. Pardoned, and resuming possession of their property, it was not unnatural that their first step should be to eject the vagrant negroes from their premises. The superintendent of schools under the Freedmen’s Bureau estimated the entire number of persons thus rendered houseless in Eastern Virginia, at the beginning of winter, to be not less than seventy thousand.