d more than recoup them for all their losses in
the war. They had therefore exercised a considerable ingenuity in effacing
all record of its transfer to the Confederate Government, obliterating the
marks on the bales, and hiding these away in swamps and other
inconspicuous places, fortifying their claims to private ownership with
appalling affidavits and "covering their tracks" in an infinite variety of
ways generally.

In effecting their purpose they encountered many difficulties. Cotton in
bales is not very portable property; it requires for movement and
concealment a good deal of cooeperation by persons having no interest in
keeping the secret and easily accessible to the blandishments of those
interested in tracing it. The negroes, by whom the work was necessarily
done, were zealous to pay for emancipation by fidelity to the new
_regime_, and many poor devils among them forfeited their lives by
services performed with more loyalty than discretion. Railways--even those
having a more than nominal equipment of rails and rolling stock--were
unavailable for secret conveyance of the cotton. Navigating the Alabama
and Tombigbee rivers were a few small steamboats, the half-dozen pilots
familiar with these streams exacting one hundred dollars a day for their
services; but our agents, backed by military authority, were at all the
principal shipping points and no boat could leave without their consent.
The port of Mobile was in our hands and the lower waters were patrolled by
gunboats. Cotton might, indeed, be dumped down a "slide" by night at some
private landing and fall upon the deck of a steamer idling innocently
below. It might even arrive at Mobile, but secretly to transfer it to a
deep-water vessel and get it out of the country--that was a dream.

On the movement of private cotton we put no restrictions; and such were
the freight rates that it was possible to purchase a steamboat at Mobile,
go up the river in ballast, bring down a cargo of cotton and make a
handsome profit, after deducting the cost of the boat and all expenses of
the venture, including the wage of the pilot. With no great knowledge of
"business" I venture to think that in Alabama in the latter part of the
year of grace 1865 commercial conditions were hardly normal.

Nor were social conditions what I trust they have now become. There was no
law in the country except of the unsatisfactory sort known as "martial,"
and that was effective only within areas