General Samuel R. Curtis, Halleck’s successor, leaned decidedly to the Charcoals; in fact he was a Charcoal himself. He and they evidently were one in thought and sentiment. He carried out so far as he was able their extreme views. Without possessing Halleck’s discretion, he continued the policy of assessing wealthy secessionists. But this policy had gradually taken on new features. What began in assessments had unfolded into confiscation. During the last month of his administration, General Curtis sent to the South, beyond the lines of the Union army, not a few persons of means. Those having families were permitted to take with them a thousand dollars; those without families two hundred dollars each. The rest of their property was confiscated and used to meet the necessities of sick and wounded soldiers. While in some cases this mode of procedure was unquestionably justifiable, still it was a policy specially liable to abuse. It was deprecated by many of the staunchest Union men. They maintained that in a heterogeneous community like ours, where there was every kind and shade of political opinion, it could hardly fail to subject some good men to the rankest injustice; that those who did not openly participate in rebellion, whatever might be their political views or sympathies, should be let alone. There were among us many good men who were born and educated in the South, and while opposed to the folly of secession, they nevertheless naturally sympathized with their kith and kin; and the drastic policy of the extreme radicals and of their Charcoal general greatly disturbed and disheartened them. Take this as a representative case. There was in St. Louis a prominent Presbyterian minister of Southern sympathies. He had been born and bred in the midst of slavery. He hardly knew where he stood politically. He swung uncertainly between Unionism and secessionism. Like all such irresolute, hesitating mortals, he got into difficulty. The staunch Union men of his church secured his removal from his pulpit by ecclesiastical authority; and he now stood in fear lest the hand of military power might be laid upon him. So he determined to leave the State. One of his familiar acquaintances found him one morning boxing up his household goods, on the sidewalk before his door, and in surprise exclaimed: “Doctor, what’s up now?” He replied: “I am going to get out of this State of Misery;[90] I can endure it no longer.” “Where are you going?” asked his friend. He answered, “I am going to Kentucky.” “Why,” said his neighbor, “that is a worse State than this.” “Then,” said the doctor, “it must be a State of Despair.”