A few hows and many whys

I've been asked how and why I wrote Out of Virginia: Black Americans' Search for Freedom in 19th Century. Here are two answers. How: patience, years of research, and many years of factual editing and reporting experience. Why: How could I not when I learned about what Lynchburg and Central Virginia were actually like in 1865? Here are a few examples from the Lynchburg Daily Virginian newspaper that help explain why 172 Black Americans from Lynchburg decided to leave the country in 1865 after they'd been freed at the end of the Civil War.

Jan. 7, 1863 — The Emancipation Proclamation.
The Lynchburg Daily Virginian held nothing back in its response to the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation. The newspaper called President Abraham Lincoln a monster (twice), an incarnate fiend, an outlaw, a miserable creature and a negro generalissimo — all in one editorial. The editor urged Confederate President Jefferson Davis to put a bounty on Lincoln's head, because he “does not deserve to live another day …We sincerely trust that if he ever ventures to set foot on Virginia soil again, there will be found some heroic (Stonewall) Jackson … to rid the world of such a monster.”

May 22, 1865 — From the commander of U.S. troops occupying Lynchburg.
General Orders, No. 2: “… The delusion which many Colored persons, formerly slaves, are laboring under concerning their rights and privileges, having been in many instances productive of evil … it is deemed necessary to correct it … Their former master has the right to refuse them anything that he might deny to a perfect stranger, and is no more bound to feed, clothe or protect them than if he had never been their master … they must work for their support now, the same as before they were free; in some instances, perhaps, even harder …”

General Orders, No. 2: “ … All non-residents having no visible means of livelihood, and all negroes not living in the city, will leave within 24 hours, and all negroes congregating in groups in the streets will be arrested and placed at labor cleaning the streets of the city.”

General Orders, No. 7: “Negroes will not be permitted to congregate in and around the Camps of the troops … Colored women and children can visit the camps to sell pies, cakes and vegetables, between the hours of Reville and Retreat. II. Enlisted men will not be allowed to employ Negroes to work for them, and all colored persons must be kept away from camp, except officers' servants. III. Patrols will be kept out on the various roads radiating from this city, and all assemblages of colored people, on work days, will be dispersed.”

How to get in crops without slave labor was a major problem for farmers in Central Virginia in June 1865. They responded by colluding to set wage rates, requiring that former enslaved people provide “certificates of character” from former masters before they could be re-hired, and trying to ban the freedmen from seeking work on public projects unless their former master agreed. Labor problems were blamed on ex-slaves themselves who left their farms and plantations rather than continue their servitude.

June 16, 1865 — Virtual re-enslavement proposed.
“At a meeting of a part of the citizens of Nelson county … the following resolutions were unanimously adapted: 1. We will not pay more than Five Dollars per month for the services of a number one field hand … lodgings, fuel and rations found as heretofore; the hands to furnish their own clothing … the hands to be entirely subject to the orders of the employers. 2. To prevent improper interference with each other's arrangements, we will in no case hire a laborer who does not bring with him a certificate of character and permission to re-hire himself. 3. That the laborer who refuses these terms shall not spend his time loitering upon our premises or make them his headquarters … 4. That payment of wages shall be in money; but if the laborer prefers supplies, and the employer has them to dispose of, he shall be paid in them at market rates 5. That Presidents and Superintendents of Public Works are requested not to hire hands engaged in agriculture …”

June 22, 1865 — Indolent and deluded.
“ … We are very much afraid that the foolish course of thousands of able-bodied negroes of both sexes, in abandoning their homes and betaking themselves to a life of indolence, will cause a serious deficiency in the food crops of Virginia, and if so, great will be the sufferings of these deluded negroes the ensuing year. There is reason, too, to believe that the evil will be aggravated by an extensive failure of the blacks to comply with their contracts with farmers … unless the military authorities shall adopt stringent measures for arresting the mischief, and completing a compliance with engagement, there is no telling how troublesome the consequences will be …” (Actually, there were more white men than Black pursuing a “life of indolence,” which they had grown accustomed to and believed was their right in a slave society.)

June 29, 1865 — Lazy and worthless.
“We have been requested by some of the citizens in the neighborhood of Leftwich's Row (in Lynchburg) to call attention to the authorities to the immense number of negroes who congregate in that locality at all hours of day and night … If a (roundup) were made upon that quarter at almost any time, a sufficient number of lazy, worthless negroes could be obtained to keep the city in a state of thorough cleanliness …” (Basically, forced labor without trial.)

June 29, 1865 — Mother and son shot and killed.
“As three of the servants of Mr. Whiteley, of Bedford, were coming to the city about twilight Tuesday evening, with a trunk containing Mr. Whiteley's clothes, they were met in the suburbs of the city by several federal soldiers, who assaulted them, broke open the trunk and rifled its contents … One of the negroes was very seriously hurt … this species of outrage … is becoming of such frequent occurrence as to render it unsafe to entrust negroes as carriers to and from the city.” (White soldiers attack Blacks, paper blames it on their race.)

July 6, 1865 — Slave dealer kills himself.
“Suicide of a Citizen. — Mr. James B. Hargrove, a well-known citizen, put an end to his life yesterday, by shooting himself in the head with a pistol … in the store of A.J. Camp & Bros., on Bridge street, in the presence of several other gentlemen. They represent that the deceased took out his pistol and pointed it at one or two other persons, threatening to shoot them. They remonstrated with him, when he said he had rather kill himself than any of them, then pointed the weapon toward his own head and pulled the trigger … His mind, it is supposed, had been unsettled by undue indulgence in the use of intoxicating liquors, and besides, he was in a very depressed and unhappy condition owing to the loss of business since the breaking down of the Confederate cause. Mr. Hargrove … was a man of fine business qualities, and was generous and kind-hearted … His young son, who was present, was overcome with grief …”

July 7, 1865 — The Result of Freedom to the Negro.
“ … We have always held that it is impossible for two races so widely dissimilar as the white and colored, to exist together upon terms of equality. The one must be 'hewers of wood and drawers of water' to the other — must occupy the relation of menials, or it must disappear … We believe that the extinction of slavery, which will increase the competition between the white and black laborer and excite rivalries that had not heretofore existed in the slaveholding State, will result in crowding the negro out of country or out of existence …”

By September 1865, the President of the United States, Andrew Johnson, was actively involved in helping the white people of the South return to the rights and privileges they had enjoyed prior to attempting to break up the country via a civil war that killed more than half a million people. One of his chief opponents was U.S. Rep. Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania, who had been arguing for equal rights for African Americans for many years and had advocated seizing the property of conquered Southerners and redistributing it as early as 1862.

Sept. 14, 1865 — The President's policy.
“The President seems to be actuated by a sincere desire to restore the States of the South to all their rights and franchises, and it is the duty of the citizens thereof to sustain his policy and indicate their appreciation of his efforts to protest them from being crushed out of existence by the radical elements of the North …”

Sept. 14, 1865 — Civil rights and demonic fury.
“The odious proposition of that malignant old Jacobin, Thaddeus Stevens, who favors the confiscation of every man's property in the South where that property is valued at ten thousand dollars, is suggestive not only of the demonic fury which rages in the breasts of the leaders of the Radical party at the North; but of the civil rights to which men are entitled in times of revolution, and of the legal responsibilities incurred … it was not the men of property generally who led off in the late revolution …” (False. “Men of property,” including human property, led the South into the war, which was hardly a “revolution.” This was a feeble attempt to make the Civil War mirror the American Revolution.)

Almost as if the South had not lost the Civil War, citizens of Lynchburg were establishing banks and commercial ventures in late September 1865, while African Americans were being killed here and identified only as the property of their previous owner. An account of an African American woman and her child shot to death, apparently by a white neighbor, was published in a matter-of-fact style, with no mention of any charges pending against the perpetrator.

Sept. 26, 1865 — White man shoots and kills Black mother and son.
“Two negroes, a woman and her son were shot and killed by a man named Bowles who lives out near the Watering Branch, on Sunday. We learn that Bowles' children and those of the colored woman, who formerly belonged to Mr. David R. Edley, had a difficulty, out of which the shooting grew. The woman, it is said, used abusive words toward Bowles, when he got his gun loaded with ball and buckshot, and fired on her. The ball entered her back and lodged in the heart; and some of the shot entered the head of the boy. Both died at once. Bowles is said to have been drinking.” (This was published in a matter-of-fact style, with no mention of any charges pending against the perpetrator.)

Oct. 1, 1865 — Citizen's proclamation.
“Proceedings of a meeting of the citizens of Lynchburg called by the mayor of the city … We claim to have entered the field in honor, and in honor to have waged the battle, and now that we are vanquished, yield in honor — submitting with composure to the sacrifices we have made; witnessing with fortitude the sorrow and desolation that have come upon us, and accepting the result as a fact accomplished, with the manly purpose to discharge all the obligations it imposes … we claim as among the reserved rights of the States, the privilege, in time of Peace, of managing their local affairs in their own way, without external interference …” (In other words, can't we just pretend the war never happened? Pure Lost Cause rhetoric.)

Oct. 21, 1865 — Northerners help black children.
“The Board of Managers of Free Schools recently established in this city have resolved to take the colored schools also under their charge … there are four schools now in operation, numbering, in scholars, above five hundred, with nearly a daily attendance of five hundred. These are taught by eight teachers … The pecuniary means for their support are raised by voluntary societies in the North, and the 'Freedmen's Bureau' extends to them a general patronage. Books, stationery, &c., are furnished gratuitously to all those unable to pay …” (These schools were founded by the local Black community soon after the war ended. Prior to this, there were no public schools in Lynchburg.)

Finally, this was written to the colonization society in August 1865 by one of the leaders of the 1865 emigration out of Lynchburg, preacher and tobacco factory worker, Levi Norvell, who was hardly an “ignorant, degraded Negro.” His writing style blended Christianity, positivity, and hope for the future.

Bursting the fetters of degradation.
“Now that the fetters of degradation are burst asunder … we are willing to venture upon the land of Africa and there put our trust in Almighty providence …. We desire to go and teach and be taught, and so Excell in life. and fit our souls for immortal glory with Jesus Christ.”