Richmond April 20th '65

My Dear Miss Lowell--Miss Stevenson has already told you that we gathered the children in different churches on the 15th of April and opened schools informally at that time. Yesterday, the 19th of April, my sister and I formally opened school in the 1st African Church (the largest Church in the city--the one in which the somewhat recent peace conference, where Campbell, Hunter, and others made their notorious unsuccessful galvanic experiments.) We had more than one thousand (1000) children, and seventy-five adults; and found time, after disciplining them, to hear the readers, to instruct the writers, and to teach the multitude from the blackboard. Again, today, we had a huge school of nine hundred. We divided the school into classes, and made assistant teachers of the advanced children. On Friday, we shall go to Petersburg, in accordance with an urgent request from its Col'd citizens to open schools. Dont you want to be a teacher there, without delay? There are very few teachers at command; and the number of scholars is very large. Four churches are in use here, and fifteen hundred children are already in attendance. I shall try to tell you something about Richmond soon. My promise to write about Washington was unfulfilled because I came to Richmond almost immediately after my return to Norfolk. The rebel prisoners and citizens are fattening upon our choice stores of food, some of them drawing from the Government and the Christian Commission at the same time. The rebel Drs take delicacies and wines from the Sanitary rooms to their patients and inquire of Northerners what concessions the North is ready to make in the South. Genl. Lee draws rations! He is absolutely a beggar. He cannot lay aside his uniform because he has nothing to substitute for it. His officers are ludicrously proud of the arms they are allowed to wear about the streets!

Yours very truly
Lucy Chase

 

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