The Sequel of Appomattox, A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States | Page 6

these peculations
were going on took advantage of the unsettled condition of the country,
and representing themselves as agents of this department, went about
robbing under such pretended authority, and thus added to the
difficulties of the situation by causing unjust opprobrium and suspicion
to rest upon officers engaged in the faithful discharge of their duties.
Agents, . . . frequently received or collected property, and sent it
forward which the law did not authorize them to take . . . . Lawless men,
singly and in organized bands, engaged in general plunder; every
species of intrigue and peculation and theft were resorted to."
These agents turned over to the United States about $34,000,000.
About 40,000 claimants were subsequently indemnified on the ground
that the property taken from them did not belong to the Confederate
Government, but many thousands of other claimants have been unable
to prove that their property was seized by government agents and hence
have received nothing. It is probable that the actual Confederate
property was nearly all stolen by the agents. One agent in Alabama sold
an appointment as assistant for $25,000, and a few months later both
the assistant and the agent were tried by a military court for stealing
and were fined $90,000 and $250,000 respectively in addition to being
imprisoned.
Other property, including horses, mules, wagons, tobacco, rice, and
sugar which the natives claimed as their own, was seized. In some
places the agents even collected delinquent Confederate taxes. Much of
the confiscable property was not sold but was turned over to the
Freedmen's Bureau* for its support. The total amount seized cannot be
satisfactorily ascertained. The Ku Klux minority report asserted that
3,000,000 bales of cotton were taken, of which the United States
received only 114,000. It is certain that, owing to the deliberate
destruction of cotton by fire in 1864-65, this estimate was too high, but
all the testimony points to the fact that the frauds were stupendous. As
a result the United States Government did not succeed in obtaining the
Confederate property to which it had a claim, and the country itself was
stripped of necessities to a degree that left it not only destitute but
outraged and embittered. "Such practices," said Trowbridge, "had a
pernicious effect, engendering a contempt for the Government and a
murderous ill will which too commonly vented itself upon soldiers and

Negroes." * See pp. 89 et seq.
The South faced the work of reconstruction not only with a shortage of
material and greatly hampered in the employment even of that but still
more with a shortage of men. The losses among the whites are usually
estimated at about half the military population, but since accurate
records are lacking, the exact numbers cannot be ascertained. The best
of the civil leaders, as well as the prominent military leaders, had so
committed themselves to the support of the Confederacy as to be
excluded from participation in any reconstruction that might be
attempted. The business of reconstruction, therefore, fell of necessity to
the Confederate private soldiers, the lower officers, nonparticipants,
and lukewarm individuals who had not greatly compromised
themselves. These politically and physically uninjured survivors
included also all the "slackers" of the Confederacy. But though there
were such physical and moral losses on the part of those to whom fell
the direction of affairs, there was also a moral strengthening in the
sound element of the people who had been tried by the discipline of
war.
The greatest weakness of both races was their extreme poverty. The
crops of 1865 turned out badly, for most of the soldiers reached home
too late for successful planting, and the Negro labor was not
dependable. The sale of such cotton and farm products as had escaped
the treasury agents was of some help, but curiously enough much of the
good money thus obtained was spent extravagantly by a people used to
Confederate rag money and for four years deprived of the luxuries of
life. The poorer whites who had lost all were close to starvation. In the
white counties which had sent so large a proportion of men to the army,
the destitution was most acute. In many families the breadwinner had
been killed in war. After 1862, relief systems had been organized in
nearly all the Confederate States for the purpose of aiding the poor
whites, but these organizations were disbanded in 1865. A Freedmen's
Bureau official traveling through the desolate back country furnishes a
description which might have applied to two hundred counties, a third
of the South: "It is a common, an every-day sight in Randolph County,
that of women and children, most of whom were formerly in good
circumstances, begging for bread from door to door. Meat of any kind
has been a stranger to many of