The enforcement of the confiscation act was placed under the charge of the Attorney-General. Practically, however, it was performed by officers of the army, so far as it was enforced at all. General Lew Wallace, while in command of the Middle Department at Baltimore, in 1864, issued two orders declaring his intention to confiscate the property of certain persons who were either serving in the rebel army or giving aid to the Confederate cause. These orders, which were published in the newspapers, came to the notice of Attorney-General Bates, who at once wrote to Wallace to remind him that the execution of the confiscation act devolved upon the Attorney-General, and that he (Bates) had not given any orders which would warrant the Commander of the Middle Department in seizing private property, and requesting him to withdraw the orders. Wallace replied that his construction of the law differed from that of the Attorney-General and that he should execute it according to his own understanding of it. Thereupon Bates took the orders, and the correspondence, to the President and declared his intention to resign his office if his functions were usurped by military men in the field, or by the War Department. Lincoln took the papers, and directed Secretary Stanton to require Wallace to withdraw the two orders and to desist from confiscation altogether. This was done by Stanton, but the orders were never publicly withdrawn although action under them was discontinued. FOOTNOTES: [54] Gideon Welles quotes Montgomery Blair as saying in conversation (September 12, 1862): "Bedeviled with the belief that he might be a candidate for the Presidency, Cameron was beguiled and led to mount the nigger hobby, alarmed the President with his notions, and at the right moment (B. says) he plainly and promptly told the President he ought to get rid of C. at once, that he was not fit to remain in the Cabinet, and was incompetent to manage the War Department, which he had undertaken to run by the aid of Tom A. Scott, a corrupt lobby jobber from Philadelphia." (_Diary_, I, 127.) [55] Article on "Some Legal Aspects of the Confiscation Acts of the Civil War," by J. G. Randall. _Am. Hist. Review_, October, 1912. CHAPTER XI THE EXPULSION OF CAMERON Early in the year 1862, it was found that the national credit was sinking in consequence of frauds in the War Department. A Committee on Government Contracts was appointed by the House, and the first man to fall under its censure was Alexander Cummings, one of the two Pennsylvania politicians with whom David Davis had made his bargain for votes at the Chicago convention.