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I am sure I sent some honest cotton agents South; but it sometimes seems very doubtful whether any of them remained honest very long. [752] It was said that Secretary Chase had foreseen the trouble that would result if the cotton were confiscated, and had proposed to leave all cotton in the hands of the former owners who then held it. When the records were certain, the cotton might be confiscated; but in most cases there were no correct records. Such a policy would have been generous and magnanimous, and would have had a good effect.[753] The plan of Chase was not accepted, and a carnival of corruption followed. In August, 1865, President Johnson wrote to General Thomas,
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I have been advised that innumerable frauds are being practised by persons assuming to be Treasury agents, in various portions of Alabama, in the collection of cotton pretended to belong to the Confederate States government. [754] The thefts of the Treasury agents and the worst characters of the army did much to arouse bitter feelings among the people who lost their only possession that could be turned into ready money. It was assumed, as a general rule, that all cotton belonged to the government until the real owner could prove his claim and his
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and of course he could seldom do this to the satisfaction of the agent or of the army officer who was bent on supplementing his pay. Cotton had been all along an object of the special hostility of Federals. The old southern belief that cotton was king and the hopes that Confederates had founded on this belief were well known.
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Cotton is the root of all evil