Page:Annual report of the superintendent of Negro Affairs in North Carolina, 1864.djvu/60

58 coughs, with measles, with malarial chills, it seemed like anything but a land of promise into which they had come. But they were happy, and did not complain. With the characteristic cheerfulness of the negro, which is an admirable and beautiful feature of his character, they went singing along, and still, though living in want and destitution, they continue to sing. Our stores of clothing were soon exhausted, and an appeal was issued, not in vain, to the good people of the North to send us more. The same warm friends of suffering humanity who had once and again supplied our wants, and who had just responded to an urgent appeal in behalf of Savannah and Charleston, listened kindly also, when we spoke of Wilmington and New Berne. The Friends at Philadelphia sent us very promptly a valuable invoice of clothing, shoes, hats, caps, blankets, axes and seeds. The National Freedmen's Relief Association sent a large quantity of clothing. The New England Freedmen's Aid Society, forwarded sundry valuable boxes of clothing and other goods. And the Rhode Island Freedmen's Association, a new but vigorous society, added an important contribution to the donations of its elder sisters. These supplies have done incalculable good, and have relieved the most pressing cases of suffering and want. During the warm weather the people, even in their poverty, will get on comfortably. But the next winter will be one of trial, it is to be feared, beyond any in the history of this war.

Had hostilities ceased a couple of months earlier, much more land would have been put under cultivation this season, and perhaps food enough would have been produced in the State for the supply of all its inhabitants, white and black. But it can hardly prove so now. When Johnston's army surrendered, it was late planting time, and the horses and mules needed for plowing, had mostly been captured, and put to army uses. It will require at least a year to bring the cleared lands of the State, large tracts of which have lain fallow during the whole war, into cultivation again. Those portions of the State which were overrun by Gen. Sherman's army were stripped of all food and stock, and the people who resided there were reduced to positive want. It was a matter of necessity that the negroes should leave their homes and congregate in the large towns. Hunger and fear of the rebels, and a sense of liberty, alike impelled them to follow the army, though it was attended with great hardship and suffering. Many poor creatures who then left their homes will never see them again. What with long marches, and hunger, and exposure to cold and rain, with insufficient clothing and shelter, and not unfrequently rudeness and cruelty, on the part of those who ought to have been their defenders, and toward whom they looked with all confidence as deliverers, these people have melted away almost as rapidly as if they had been swept with grape and cannister, and their routes of travel are marked with freshly made graves. Government aid was freely but judiciously administered to them, in the form of simple food, and none were allowed to die of hunger. But so soon as hostilities had ceased, and it became safe for the freedmen to return to their former residences without fear of violence, they were advised and encouraged to do so.