It was already considered certain that the confiscation law was to be a dead letter, and wealthy Rebels seemed to have no fear of the loss of their estates. But there were harassing confiscation suits, against which there was great outcry. “Are we never to see the end of those frightful lists of libeled property which the marshal and clerk are advertising?” exclaimed one of the papers. “Are costs to be piled, like Pelion upon Ossa, upon the heads of the gentlemen of Richmond and Petersburg, who have already been pardoned? A distinguished gentleman of this city has heard from President Johnson’s own lips, language of strong indignation at the wholesale confiscation proceedings which have been instituted against certain classes of our people.” Here, as always, President Johnson’s will was to be taken as the final expression and force of law. An indignant correspondent of one of the newspapers[47] brought heavy charges against the Government and one of the United States Judges: “Major Nutt’s farm, near Alexandria, and Dr. Bowen’s farm, sold by decree of Judge John C. Underwood, are to be delivered up to Judge Underwood, Governor Pierpont, and Mr. Downey, the purchasers under the confiscation sale. It now appears that the principal property sold under Judge Underwood’s decrees, in and around Alexandria, was purchased by himself and those connected with him in the high position he holds, at a fractional part of its value only. “Rumor says, and I have never heard it doubted, that Judge Underwood, during the rebellion, obtained permission to raise a regiment of negroes in Alexandria, which he succeeded in getting at a low price, which regiment he turned over to one of the Northern States, at a large advance, thereby realizing a large sum of money, with which he has been buying up the property confiscated by himself, under his own decree, in _fee simple_.” The burnt district, comprising nearly all the business portion of the city, south and east of the capitol, was beginning to rise from its ruins. Between a fourth and a third of it would soon be better than before the conflagration, with which the Rebels signalized their abandonment of the city. But business was greatly overdone by Northern speculators who had rushed down with heavy supplies of goods immediately after the surrender. The first pressing necessities satisfied, the Virginians were too poor to trade largely.