Viewing page 49 of 243

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

2

so recently overun by contending armies, the usual business avocations were almost entirely suspended, and large numbers of the former laboring population were collected in camps, or located on abandoned farms, or obtained a precarious existence on charity, and the fruits of irregular employment.- In the neighborhoods of Norfolk, Fort Monroe and Yorktown, about seventy thousand had been collected, during the war; from among these, from eight to ten thousand recruits for the army, had been enlisted; many other of the able-bodied men had found employment in the different staff departments of the army, leaving their families in this district, partially dependent on the Government.-

In other districts, thousands of Freedmen were roaming about, without settled employment, and without homes.  In localities least disturbed by the presence or conflict of armies, and where the average amount of land was under cultivation, the crops were suffering for want of proper attention,- the planter being unwilling to acknowledge his late slave a freeman, by becoming a 

Transcription Notes:
overrun misspelled in original, kept as written. ---------- Reopened for Editing 2023-09-15 10:14:08