THE period immediately succeeding the surrender of the Confederate army at Appomatox was one of the darkest and most discouraging that any civilized people was ever called to face. Virginia had been for four years the battle-ground over which great armies had marched and counter-marched and fought. Every home had felt the torture that "tried men's souls." Widows gathered their fatherless children around them to share the last crust of bread together, not knowing whether even that much could be found to-morrow. For miles along the highways over which the armies had marched, the bare chimneys only, marked the sites where comfortable houses had sheltered happy households. The farmer had his land left--that could not be carried away; but few had any teams to break the ground, and many had not the seed needed to sow the fields. The last cow was in many cases driven away or killed. A noted Federal general had boastfully reported to the general-in-chief that so completely had he devastated the fairest and most fertile section of the State that a crow could not travel over it without carrying his rations with him. Richmond, the capital city, after withstanding two sieges successfully, had been, in large part, made a bank of ashes. Petersburg, beleaguered so long, was a scarred and battered wreck. Fredericksburg, Winchester, Norfolk, and many other towns, were little better off. Some of the railroads were stripped of their rails--all of them in bad plight and almost without any equipment for business, if any business were to be found. The labor system, which had for centuries been used to cultivate the land and gather the crops, had been at one stroke subverted, and virtually destroyed. None had been found for months afterward to take its place. With the people at large it was a struggle for existence and a fight with famine. One of the saddest scenes this writer ever witnessed was at Nottoway courthouse. A few days after the surrender at Appomattoax, he was summoned with other citizens of the county to attend a meeting called to confer with the military officers as to the best plans to be devised to prevent suffering among the people. Just as he entered the courthouse, where a number of people were assembled, he saw a venerable man of more than three-score years and ten standing before the officer, with tears streaming down his furrowed cheeks, and heard him say: "Every scrap of meat, every grain of corn, everything in the way of food I had, has been taken from me. I know not where I shall get my meat or bread to-morrow." This man had been for many years one of the foremost men in the county, a Senator in the General Assembly of Virginia, and for many years a Trustee of Randolph-Macon College.