census was very imperfect, as hundreds of families were broken up, thousands of men forgotten, and there was no one to give information regarding them to the census taker. The white population decreased 3632 from 1860 to 1866, according to the census of the latter year. But for the war, according to rate of increase from 1850 to 1860, there should have been an increase of 50,000. In 1870 the census showed a further decrease of 1415, due, perhaps, to the great mortality just after the war. In other words, the white population was about 100,000 less in 1870 than it would have been under normal conditions, without immigration. Contemporary accounts state that the negro suffered much more than the whites in the two years immediately following the war, from starvation, exposure, and pestilence, and the census of 1866 showed a decrease of 14,325 in the colored population, when there should have been an increase of nearly 70,000 according to the rate of 1850 to 1860, besides the 20,000 that it has been estimated were sent into the interior of the state from other states to escape capture by the raiding Federals. The census of 1866 was not accurate, for the negroes at that time were in a very unsettled condition, wandering from place to place. However, in 1870, the number of negroes had increased 37,740 over the numbers for 1860, while the number of whites had decreased several thousand, which would seem to indicate that the census of 1866 was defective. But there is no doubt that the negroes suffered terribly during this time.[662] Destruction of Property Governor Patton, in a communication to Congress dated May 11, 1866, gives the property losses in Alabama as $500,000,000,[663] which sum doubtless includes the value of the slaves, estimated in 1860 at $200,000,000, or about $500 each.[664] The value of other property in 1860 has been estimated at $640,000,000, the assessed value, $256,428,893, being 40 per cent of the real value.[665] A comparison of the census statistics of 1860 and of 1870 after five years of Reconstruction will be suggestive:--