[795] $54,191,229 in 1870.
[796] Ho. Ex. Doc., No. 181, 42d Cong., 3d Sess.
[797] The cotton tax was justified on the ground that while Alabama had paid $14,200,982 from 1862 to 1872, New Jersey had paid a total tax of $48,528,298, the two states having very nearly the same population. But no account was taken of the fact that for four years no tax was collected from Alabama by the United States, while nearly all of the movable wealth was destroyed during the war, and that in 1865 property was almost non-existent in Alabama. New Jersey, however, was a rich state. Alabama had besides paid an enormous war tax and had been looted of millions of dollars’ worth of cotton. And in Alabama there were 500,000 negroes who paid no tax, while most of the population of New Jersey were taxpayers. Ho. Ex. Doc., No. 181, 42d Cong., 3d Sess.
[798] Ho. Ex. Doc., No. 34, 39th Cong., 1st Sess.
[799] Sen. Mis. Doc., No. 100, 39th Cong., 1st Sess. (A. A. Low, Chairman of Committee of the N. Y. Chamber of Commerce).
[800] Ku Klux Rept., Ala. Test., pp. 383, 403 (General Pettus); Journal of the Convention of 1867.
[801] See Saunders, “Early Settlers,” p. 31 (Reverdy Johnson to Saunders). Jan. 18, 1872, the Alabama legislature (Republican Senate and Democratic House) memorialized Congress, asking to have the cotton tax refunded to the impoverished people, and stating that the tax was “most unjust and oppressive, a direct tax upon industry”; that to refund the tax would be “evenhanded but tardy justice.” Acts of Ala., 1871-1872, pp. 445-446. A similar petition was made on Feb. 23, 1875. Acts of Ala., 1874-1875, p. 674.
[802] In December, 1903, Representative J. S. Williams of Mississippi introduced a measure in Congress to refund the amount of the cotton tax to the southern states.
[803] It is difficult to understand now how thoroughly the Confederate soldier realized that the questions at issue were decided against him. But that it was a crime to have been a Confederate soldier, he did not understand. See also testimony of John B. Gordon and of Edmund W. Pettus in the Ku Klux Testimony.
[804] A neglected point of view is the attitude of the Confederate soldier. He had surrendered with arms in hand, and certain terms had been made with him, as he thought, a contract, embodied in the parole. This he believed secured his rights in return for laying down arms, and that as long as he was law-abiding his rights were to be inviolate. He was well pleased with the “spirit of Appomattox,” but nearly all that happened after Appomattox was in violation, he felt, of the terms of surrender. The whole radical programme was contrary to the contract made with men who had arms in their hands. Lee had decided that there should be no guerilla warfare, and in return certain moral obligations rested on the North. See the statements of General (now Senator) Edmund W. Pettus, in Ku Klux Rept., Ala. Test., pp. 377, 383, and of General John B. Gordon, in Ga. Test., pp. 314, 332, 333, 343.