Those who have witnessed the distress following the burning of a single dwelling-house, or a single barn with contents, in a neighborhood of farmers, can form some faint idea of the distress which must have followed the burning of eighteen dwelling-houses, and 1383 barns, with all their contents, and with all the stacks of grain, hay, and fodder surrounding them! Even the thought is fearful,--how much more the reality! After what we have related of the operations of Moseby's guerillas--and what we have told is not a hundredth part of what might be told--none of our readers, we think, will question the propriety of the caption to this chapter, "Guerillas on the War-path--Cunning and Duplicity Prompting the Actors;" nor, after learning of the destruction of property which followed, will any one, we think, question the third line of the caption, "Destruction in the Background!" [Illustration: 0135] CHAPTER IX. WHAT BECAME OF SLAVES DURING AND AFTER THE WAR. THE ALMIGHTY DOLLAR PROMPTING THE ACTORS.--"WE NEBER SEED'EM ANY MORE." |IT is a well-attested fact, that there were many less slaves, or those who had been slaves, in the United States on the 9th of April, 1865, when General Lee surrendered to General Grant, near the Appomattox Court House, than when the war commenced by the firing on Fort Sumter, on the 12th of April, 1861. Had there been no war, and had the ratio of increase been the same from 1861 to 1865 as it had been for the previous four years, there would have been several hundred thousand more in 1865 than there were in 1861. It is also well known that from and after the 1st of January, 1863, when President Lincoln's proclamation of freedom to the slave--issued on the 22d of September, 1862--went into effect, many hundreds, if not thousands, of those who had been slaves were taken into the military service of the United States; that, when captured by the Confederate forces, they were not recognized as prisoners of war, but in many cases, as at Fort Pillow, were massacred like so many dogs; that thousands were destroyed in this way, and that many other thousands died on fields of battle; that many during the war tried to escape, but, being overtaken, were killed on sight by their former masters or their agents; that the excessive amount of labor which they were compelled to perform for their masters on plantations, and for the Confederate government, in digging rifle-pits and throwing up fortifications, lessened their power of reproduction, and caused thousands of premature deaths; but, notwithstanding all these facts, there still remains a very large number to be accounted for; and to account for these in part, if not wholly, is the object of the present chapter.