course he could seldom do this to the satisfaction of the agent or of the army officer who was bent on supplementing his pay. Cotton had been all along an object of the special hostility of Federals. The old southern belief that cotton was king and the hopes that Confederates had founded on this belief were well known. "Cotton is the root of all evil" was a common declaration of the invading army and of the cotton agents. When no other private property was taken or destroyed, cotton was sure to be. Every cotton-gin and press in reach of the armies was burned from 1863 to 1865. There seemed to be an intense desire to destroy the royal power of King Cotton. As opportunity offered, officers in the army, contrary to orders, began to interest themselves in speculations in cotton--captured, purchased, or stolen. The small garrisons were not officered by the best men of the army, and many who would never have touched money from any other kind of plunder thought it perfectly legitimate to fill their pockets by the seizure and sale of cotton. They did not consider it defrauding the government, for the latter, they knew, had no more title to it than they had.[755] The disposition of the cotton collectors to regard the people as without rights resulted in the growth of a feeling on the part of the latter that it was perfectly legitimate to keep the government and its rascally agents from profiting by the use of Confederate property. In every way people began to hinder the agents and the army in its work of collecting cotton. Colonel Hunter Brooke stated, in 1866, that most of the people who had subscribed cotton to the Confederate government or on whose cotton the Confederates had some claim utterly refused to recognize the title of the United States to that property and refused to give any assistance to the authorities in tracing the cotton. At times the citizens rose in rebellion against the invasion of Treasury agents and the military escorts sent with them. A cotton spy was sent into Choctaw County to collect information about cotton stealing. He had an escort of twenty soldiers, but the people drove them out. A battalion of cavalry was then sent. Steamers sent up the rivers to get the cotton seized by the agents were sometimes fired upon.[756] Not only cotton but stores collected on private plantations for the army, no matter whether private property or not, were seized. Horses and mules used in the Confederate service were taken, notwithstanding the terms of surrender and the fact that the Confederate soldiers owned the cavalry horses.[757] The counties of Cherokee, Franklin, Jackson, Jefferson, Lauderdale, Limestone, Madison, Morgan, St. Clair, Walker, and Winston--all white counties--lost principally corn, fodder, provisions, harness, mules, horses, and wagons.[758]