Subsequently the same man took to purchasing cotton, on a system of what seemed utterly reckless speculation. He would buy a hundred thousand dollars’ worth, ship it to New York, and check against his bills of lading for its full value. This money he instantly invested in another lot of cotton of equal amount, which he likewise shipped and checked against; then reinvesting, shipping again, checking again, still making fresh purchases, each with the money thus procured, and so building up his commercial house of card-boards. It thus happened that he sometimes used his hundred thousand dollars a dozen times over, before the returns were half in from his earlier shipments. So enormous became the ventures of this man, who started two years before on nothing, that he had on the ocean, exposed to the perils of ocean navigation, at one time, seven hundred thousand dollars’ worth of cotton! Few of these Northerners had yet made permanent investments in the South. Plantations had not begun to come into the market. Southerners had hardly had time to look about them and decide what to do. But it was already evident that, provided they could make titles which were good for anything, plenty of them would soon be anxious to sell. Northern capital and energy were likely to have still finer openings within a few months, than any that the confusion of a captured city and the chaos of constantly shifting military government had afforded. * * * * * Among the earliest callers, the day after our arrival, were General Canby and General Banks. The former is a plain, rather heavy-looking regular, giving you the impression of a martinet, though officers of excellent judgment speak highly of his abilities. He knows nothing about politics, tries to confine himself to the purely military duties of his department, and says he told the Secretary of War he didn’t feel fit to undertake the management of the complex questions arising out of the political relations of his department. General Banks was fully sensible of the treachery which the person he had made Governor was contemplating; still, he seemed to think that if his reorganized government could only have been recognized by Congress, the evils that were then upon the state would have been in some way averted. Now he saw no remedy but in negro suffrage, and for this he was disposed to give hearty co-operation. He had doubts as to whether the General Government would have power to insist upon it; but, in some way or another, not only justice to the loyal blacks, but absolute safety to the loyal whites and to the nation, required it.