Not long after the Southern soldiers came home, they began a wholesale prowling of government cotton, and in some instances, private cotton was stolen. The status of this government cotton was as follows: The Confederate government issued bonds, with a liberal rate of interest, exchanging them with the planters for their cotton, and in this way, a large amount had been acquired, half of which probably was still in warehouses and gin houses throughout the Southern States. Of course, this property, on the collapse of the Confederacy, by all moral and legal right, became the property of the United States government. When the soldiers came home, they were without money, clothes, and in many instances, without anything to eat, especially if their homes were in the path of either army. They claimed that they were violating no law of God or man in taking this cotton. However, the pulpits in the country came out strongly against this practice, saying that if it was wrong to take private cotton, it was as much so to take public cotton; that the latter was nothing more nor less than wholesale theft. By some means, the whereabouts of Colonel R.'s cotton was found out, and it was whispered around, that it was government cotton. I would say here that Colonel R. had made a liberal donation of cotton to his government for bonds, but that every bale had been delivered and carried off. A raid was projected on this cotton on a certain night, but when they got there they found it guarded, Colonel R. and Simon having slept there since this cotton-prowling began. The leader of the raid claimed that it was government cotton, and that the raiders were going to have it. Colonel R. protested that it was not government cotton, but his own private property, and that if they got it they would have to do so over his dead body, and that he had help and was well armed. The night was dark, and fearing that it might be well guarded, and not knowing how many they had to oppose, the raiders decided that "discretion was the better part of valor," and left without molesting the cotton. Colonel R. immediately hired every wagon and team, hauled the cotton to the river, shipped it to New Orleans by the first boat, and realized fifty cents per pound in gold for it, and as there were about one thousand bales, the reader can calculate, at five hundred pounds per bale, what a nice fortune the Colonel had, all of which had much to do with Octavia's future career. While to all appearances Octavia was as white as the whitest, she had African blood coursing through her veins, which would debar her from Southern society. Social laws on this point were as rigid and unchangeable as the laws of the Medes and Persians.