At the close of the war there were held in the south at least five million bales of cotton, worth in Liverpool $500,000,000. Only a fraction of this cotton was owned by the Confederate states government, and this was turned over to General E. R. S. Canby by General E. Kirby Smith on May 24, 1865. Besides the swarm of official agents, informers and spies sent down by the Treasury Department in search of Confederate cotton, contracts were made with private individuals to engage in the work. Much cotton was taken from plantations before the owners returned to their homes after the disbandment of the armies. Seizures were indiscriminate. Proof of private ownership had to be supported by tender of toll; there was no redress. A Treasury Department regulation required that all cotton seized in the Atlantic and Gulf states should be shipped to Simon Draper, United States cotton agent in New York City; and that seized on the upper Mississippi river and in northern Georgia and northern Alabama to William P. Mellen, agent in Cincinnati. These agents sold by samples which were spurious and inferior to the cotton which they represented. Accordingly, cotton worth sixty cents to one dollar per pound was sold for ten to fifteen cents. The purchasers were in collusion with the agent. By the system of "plucking," the weight of bales was reduced anywhere from one hundred to two hundred pounds before they were sold: the plucked cotton was termed "waste cotton," packed and sold as "trash" to mills, but not at trash prices. These terms figured only in the reports to the department. Sometimes owners traced stolen cotton to the New York or Cincinnati agency; and if a thousand bales were involved, the agent reported that only two hundred had been received, and of very inferior quality, and was sold for ten or fifteen cents per pound, which his books would prove; that transportation, storage and commissions left only a small sum. Draper, when he became cotton agent, was a bankrupt. Subsequently he settled his debts and when he died was a multimillionaire. Fifty million dollars' worth of cotton was shipped to Draper; the government derived only $15,000,000 net from that source as the reward for the wrong which it had committed in entrusting the enforcement of its doubtful claim against the impoverished southern people to dishonest and unscrupulous agents. The Confederate States government imposed a tax in kind upon all provisions produced on plantations--one-tenth. The first year after the war this tax was enforced in some isolated sections by orders of minor military officers, and collected by agents. Of course this was fraudulent, and was stopped after a while. CHAPTER FIVE THE FREEDMEN'S BUREAU