The South As It Is: 1865–1866

Chapter 11

XI DAVIDSON CO., N. C., September 11, 1865 I LEFT Greensboro' this morning early, and without regret, for my stay there had been far from comfortable. It is a small, hilly town with only twenty-seven hundred inhabitants; but boasts a hotel styled "The Metropolitan," in which I took up my quarters. To me they gave a room with a bed in it, and a wash-basin, and a chair in which one could sit if the back of it was first set against the wall. My horse had the freedom of a small yard, where, without so much shelter as the shade of a tree, he was constantly exposed to sun or rain. My room, also, was open to the elements, for on one night I was driven from my bed by a deluge of rainwater pouring from the boarded ceiling, which flooded and soaked the floor, and rendered the room nearly uninhabitable for two days afterwards. The hotel table was entirely in keeping with the chambers . Such things in themselves are not unendurable; but the traveller 's equanimity is sure to be disturbed when he finds that landlords can push impudence and extortion so far as to demand five dollars a day for such board and lodging. In Danville we fared somewhat better, but not without having somewhat more to pay, the charge for horse and man per day being six doIIars and a quarter. Yet nearly every article of food here used is cheaper in these country towns than in the Northern Atlantic States. As I rode away, the day was gray and soft, promising rain, but soon all the clouds were dissipated and the sun shone oppressively. At the hotel they told me that Salisbury was forty miles distant; at a blacksmith's shop a mile and a half from the village, the distance II2 The South As It Is: 1865-1866 II3 was said to be only thirty-five miles; after an hour's riding I enquired again, and was told that the men folks called it forty-six miles to Salisbury and six miles back to Greensboro'; tonight my host tells me that really the distance between the two places is fifty-two miles by the country roads, and that I have travelled thirty-one miles since morning. Some of these people, I find, have never passed beyond the bounds of the county in which they were born, and have learned nothing of places which they have not visited. My road has led me over sandy hills, sterile in appearance, and evidently occupied by people belonging to the class of poor whites; but the country seemed more thickly settled than the richer districts further north. I saw white women as well as white men busy in the fields, and there were as many white people at work as Negroes. Whenever a good opportunity presented itself, I engaged them in conversation, and usually found them not averse to leave their labor and talk for a while. Six or seven miles out of Greensboro ', seeing a farmer in his sorghum fields stripping the leaves from the cane, I stopped and enquired about the road. He gave me the desired information, and, in answer to his questions, I said I was riding to Salisbury from Lynchburg. He was a lean, hard-featured man, past the middle age, who owned about a hundred acres of land, he said, and was "an original secessioner." I asked if he farmed his land without help. "I ha'n't no help jest now," he answered. "Most 0' our hireIin' men went off to the war, and pretty much all on 'em got killed, or died off one way and another. I don't know but all on 'em out 0' this neighborhood is gone; I a'n't sure as one come back. My wife's brother hoIp me in pIantin'. But we a'n't doin' much anyhow this season, and I am by myself now." "I should think you'd hire Negroes; you have employed them, I suppose." "Oh yes; before the war, you know, I hed black ones then every year. But we could make 'em work then. I wouldn't expect to make a crop with 'em now; they're no account. A'n't it so in your country?" 114 John Richard Dennett "The farmers in Virginia are almost all saying the same thing." "Exactly; it's jest so everywhar. 1 tried one this year. He...