ng 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