Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama

by Walter L. Fleming

Secretary McCulloch said that the most troublesome and disagreeable duty that he was called upon to perform was the execution of the law in regard to Confederate property. The cotton agents, being paid by a commission on the property collected, were disposed to seize private property also. There was no authority at hand to check them. And people were disposed, he thought, to lay claim to Confederate cotton and “spirited away” much of it, while on the other hand much private property was taken by the agents.[761]

Five years later the testimony taken in Alabama at the instance of the minority members of the Ku Klux Committee exposed the methods of the cotton agents.[762] The country swarmed with agents or pretended agents and their spies or informers; the commission given was from one-fourth to one-half of all cotton collected; everybody’s cotton was seized, but for fear of future trouble a proposition from the owner to divide was usually listened to and a peaceable settlement made; when private or public cotton was shipped it was consigned by bales and not by pounds; the various agents through whose hands it passed were in the habit of “tolling” or “plucking” it, often two or three times, about one-fifth at a time; in this way a bale weighing 500 pounds would be reduced to 200 or 300 pounds; even after the private cotton arrived at Mobile or New Orleans, paying “toll” all the way, it was liable to seizure by order of some Treasury agent; as a rule, terms could be arranged by which a planter might keep one-fourth to three-fourths of his cotton, whether Confederate or not; it was safer for the agent to take a part of the cotton with the consent and silence of the owner than to steal both from the owner and from the government for which he pretended to work, and in this way the owners saved some for themselves; much private cotton was seized on the plantations near the rivers before the owners came home from the war; cotton seized in the Black Belt was shipped to Simeon Draper, United States cotton agent, New York, while that from north Alabama was sent to William P. Mellen, Cincinnati;[763] complaint was made by those few owners who succeeded in tracing their cotton that, after being reduced by “tolling” or “plucking,”[764] it was sold by the agent in the North, by samples which were much inferior to the cotton in the bales, and in this way the purchaser, who was in partnership with the agents, would pay ten or fifteen cents a pound for a lot of cotton certainly not worth more than that if the samples were honest, but which was really good cotton, worth 35 cents to $1.20 a pound in New York.

So in case the Secretary of the Treasury could be brought to “revise the mistakes” of his agents, the owner would get only the small sum paid in for inferior cotton, and even this was reduced by excessive charges and fees.[765] There was also complaint that when a lot of private cotton was seized and traced to Draper, the latter would inform the owners that only a small proportion of what had been seized was received,[766] and that had been sold at a low price. It was afterwards shown that Draper never gave receipts for cotton received. There was nothing businesslike about the cotton administration. Cotton was consigned to Draper or Mellen by the bale and not by the pound. A bale might weigh 200 or 500 pounds. As soon as cotton was seized the bagging was stripped off, and it was then repacked in order to prevent identification.[767] Many persons who knew nothing of the law and who saw that their property was unsafe were induced by the Treasury agents to surrender their cotton to the United States government, even though there might be no claim against it, the agents promising that the United States would pay to the owners the proceeds upon application to the Treasury Department. When the Secretary of the Treasury discovered this, and when the agent would certify that such was the case, his “mistake was revised” and the money received from the sale of cotton was refunded.[768] The owner had no remedy if the agent declined to certify, and he usually declined, since the cotton had probably never been turned over to the United States by him.

The experience of Hon. F. S. Lyon[769] is typical of many in the Black Belt. He stated[770] that after the surrender of Taylor, General Canby issued an order that all who had sold cotton to the Confederate government must now surrender it to United States authorities under penalty of confiscation of other property to make good the failure to deliver Confederate cotton. Under this order some cotton was seized to replace Confederate cotton that had disappeared. United States army wagons, guarded by soldiers, went over the country day and night, gathering cotton for persons who pretended to be Treasury agents. Lyon had 384 bales of Confederate cotton which were claimed by General Dustin, a cotton agent (later a carpet-bag politician), and Lyon agreed to haul it to the railroad, under an “agreement” with Dustin. But one night a train of army wagons, guarded by soldiers, came and carried off 26 bales, and the next day, 70 bales. (They had asked the manager “if he would accept $2000 and sleep soundly all night.”) The wagons were traced to Uniontown, and the commanding officer there was induced to hold the cotton until the question was settled. General Hubbard, commanding the district, arrested one Ruter, who, with the soldiers, had taken the cotton. Ruter claimed to be acting under the authority of a cotton agent in Mississippi, but could show no evidence of his authority, and his name was not on the list of authorized agents. However, General Hubbard was ordered by superior authority to regard Ruter as a cotton agent and to discharge him. The 70 bales were lost.

The Mobile agent, Dustin,[771] would not make a decision in disputed cases because he was afraid of appeal to Washington. A proposition to divide the profits, however, would always secure from him a declaration that the cotton had no claims against it. Lyon reported that not one-tenth of the cotton seized was consigned to government agents, but that the agents usually sold it on the spot to cotton buyers. The planter was held responsible for cotton sold or subscribed to Confederate government. Cotton stolen from the agent had to be made good by the person from whom the agent had seized it. Seed cotton was often hauled away at night by pretended agents. In every part of the cotton belt the looting of cotton went on.

There were frequent changes of agents. As soon as a man became rich his place would be taken by another. The chief cotton agents sold for high prices appointments as collecting agents. The new agents often seized the cotton that through bribery had escaped former agents; and in this way the same lot would be seized two or three times. One cotton agent, a mere youth, at Demopolis received as his commission for one month 400 bales of cotton which netted him $80,000. The Treasury Department made a regulation allowing one-fourth to a person who had kept the Confederate cotton and delivered it safely to the United States authorities, but the agents did not make known the regulation, and the one-fourth went to them.[772]

There were complaints of the seizure of cotton grown after the war. The Planters’ Factory of Mobile lost 240 bales of cotton grown in 1865. This company was made up of “Union” and northern men who were able to obtain an order for the release of the cotton. There was of course no way to tell what cotton was seized, and 240 bales of “dog tail,” worth six cents a pound, were turned over to the factory instead of the good cotton, worth sixty cents, a pound.[773]

Dishonest Agents Prosecuted

The Federal grand jury reported that at the end of the war there were 150,000 bales of cotton in Alabama to which the government had clear title;[774] the records showed the history and location of each bale, and these records were placed in the hands of the cotton agents; the papers of two agents, in south Alabama, Dexter and Tomeny, showed that while a large part of this cotton had been shipped but little of it had been consigned to the government, the bulk of it having become a source of private profit to the agents; the 20,000 bales turned over to the government by these agents had been much reduced in weight, in some cases as much as one-third, and exorbitant expenses had been charged against them; large quantities of cotton had been fraudulently released to parties who presented fictitious claims; cotton belonging to private individuals had often been seized, and release refused unless the owner sold at a ruinous sacrifice to S. E. Ogden and Company, who seemed to be on the inside at New York; cotton thus seized was not released except through the influence of Ogden and Company, and it was said that Tomeny openly advised some parties to make arrangements with Ogden and Company, who paid less than half-price for cotton under such circumstances.[775] The grand jury declared that in Alabama 125,000 bales had been stolen by agents. Tomeny, who seems to have secured a much smaller share of the spoils than Dexter, stated that when he began business in November, 1865, nearly all cotton had been collected or stolen, and that not a hundred bales had been received by himself except from other agents who had collected it. He consigned all his cotton to Simeon Draper, in New York City. None was released to Ogden and Company, and they bought only one lot of cotton that had been seized—505 bales seized from Ellis and Alley, themselves cotton agents under the First Agency. This lot, Tomeny claimed, was bought by Ogden and Company without his knowledge or consent.[776]

Two cotton agents, T. C. A. Dexter and T. J. Carver, were finally arraigned, in the fall and winter of 1865, in the Federal courts, and Judge Busteed proceeded to try them; but they denied the jurisdiction of the court, and the army interfered and stopped the proceedings, whereupon Busteed closed the court. Then a military commission was convened, and before it the cases were tried. Lieutenant-Colonel Hunter Brooke presided over the commission. The culprits denied the legality of this trial by a military commission in time of peace and ultimately were pardoned on this account. Carver was convicted of fraud in the collection of cotton, and was fined $90,000 and sentenced to imprisonment for one year and until the fine should be paid. Carver had paid Dexter $25,000 for his commission as cotton agent. So it seems the office must have carried with it certain opportunities. Dexter was convicted of fraud in the cotton business and for selling the appointment to Carver. Only 3321 bales of government cotton could be traced directly to his stealing.[777] He was fined $250,000 and imprisoned for one year and until the fine should be paid.[778]