As a result of certain pernicious alien influences there soon developed a tendency to insolent conduct on the part of the younger negro men, who seemed convinced that civil behavior and freedom were incompatible.  With some there was a disposition not to submit to the direction of their employers, and the negro’s advisers warned him against the “efforts of the white man to enslave” him.  Consequently, he very often refused to enter into contracts that called for any assumption of responsibility on his part, and the few agreements to which he became a party had first to be ratified by the Bureau.  As he had no knowledge of the obligation of contracts, he usually violated them at pleasure.

The negroes, massed in the towns, lived in deserted and ruined houses or in huts built by themselves of refuse lumber.  They were very scantily clothed and their food, often insufficient and badly cooked, if cooked at all, was obtained by begging, stealing, or upon application to the Bureau.  Taking from the whites was not considered stealing, but was “Spilin’ de Gypshuns.”

The health of the negroes was injured during the period 1865-1875.  In the towns the standard of living was low, sanitary arrangements were bad, and disease killed large numbers and permanently injured the negro constitution.

Following the military occupation of the State the negroes, young and old, were seized with an overmastering desire for book learning.  This seeming thirst for education was not rightly understood at the North; it was, in fact, more a desire to imitate the white master and obtain formerly forbidden privileges than any real yearning due to an understanding of the value of education.  The negro hardly knew the significance of the bare word, but the northern people gave him credit for an appreciation not yet altogether true even of whites.

CONCLUSION.

No occurrences of extreme historic value mark the career of Loudoun since the days of Reconstruction, and the seemingly abrupt conclusion to which the reader has now arrived is not thought incompatible with the plan of this work, which in no single instance has contemplated the inclusion of any but the most momentous events.  Besides, existing conditions have received protracted mention in the preceding descriptive and statistical departments where appear evidences of the County’s present vast wealth and resources, numberless charms and recent marvelous development.

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