Land was almost worthless, because the owners had no capital, no farm animals, no farm implements, in many cases not even seed. Labor was disorganized, and the product of labor was most likely to be stolen by roving negroes and other marauders. Seldom was more than one-third of a plantation under cultivation, the remainder growing up in broom sedge because laborers could not be gotten. When the Federal armies passed, many negroes followed them and never returned. Numbers of them died in the camps. When the war ended, many others left their old homes, some of whom several years later came straggling back.[678] Land that would produce a bale of cotton to the acre, worth $125, and selling in 1860 for $50 per acre at the lowest, was now selling for from $3 to $5 per acre. Among the negroes, especially after the occupation, there was a general belief, which was carefully fostered by a certain class of Federal officials and by some leaders in Congress, that the lands would be confiscated and divided among the "unionists" and the negroes. When the state seceded, it took charge of the public lands within its boundaries and opened them to settlement. After the fall of the Confederacy those who had purchased lands were required to rebuy them from the United States or to give up their claims. Some lands were abandoned, as the owners were able neither to cultivate nor to sell them, for there was no capital. In Cumberland, a village, at one time there were ninety advertisements of sales posted in the hotel. The planters often found themselves amid a wilderness of land, without laborers, and often rented land free to some white man or to a negro who would pay the taxes.[679] Many hundreds of the people could see no hope whatever for the future of the state, and certainly the North was not acting so as to encourage them. Hence there was heavy emigration to Brazil, Cuba, Mexico, the northern and western states, and much property was offered at a tenth of its value and even less.