State

Before Foreign Aid Became So Popular The defeated South got short shrift from harsh Yankee commissioners. By AL PERRY “Voluntary residence in an insur¬ rectionary state during the war is prima-facie evidence of disloyalty, and must be rebutted by satisfactory evi¬ dence," Strong words these, yet they once were applied to North Carolina. The time: those lean, bitter years just after the Civil War. The source: Washing¬ ton. D. C. The authors: a three-man board of commissioners set up by Con¬ gress to process a flood of damage claims from the South. The story of these claims, set out in the pages of dusty, neglected records in an obscure Washington office, is one of the rarely told stories of the war. It is one of tragedy and poverty, the aftermaths of strife. North Carolina, although she gave to the Confederate cause her share and more of men and material, had seceded reluctantly — and there lived within her borders thousands of "Unionists" who strongly opposed se¬ cession. And — it has to be said — a few citizens whose opposition blos¬ somed only after the last shots were fired. To pay for property losses of those who had remained loyal to the Union, Congress established the Southern Claims Commission. Its rules were strict. For example: A Wake County woman, one Annie Horton, asked for only SI 38.50 — payment for a horse. 60 pounds of bacon and 30 pounds of flour taken by Union troops. She wrote of her loyalty and said: "The slave-owners made the war. and would send their sons into it to get killed rather than lose their Negroes." Annie Horton had committed a "disloyal" act. however. She eked out a living during the war by sewing cloth¬ ing for Confederate soldiers. "We re¬ gret . . ." said the board. A Raleigh resident. Mrs. Elizabeth Nixon, filed a $2,873 claim. One wit¬ ness testified that although Mrs. Nixon had sympathized with the Southern cause, she had been kind to the Union forces and "especially to the sick wife of a Union officer, whom she nursed when nobody else would go near her." The world would be better off with more Mrs. Nixons, the claims com¬ missioners reported, but: claim re¬ jected. Kindness wasn't enough to prove loyalty. From Madison County came a sim¬ ple request from a farmer: Please pay me for a horse taken by the Yankees. The animal had belonged to his son. the claimant said. The boy had crossed the battle lines to join the Union Army, and — after returning home — had been murdered by the Ku Klux К Ian. The board said no. because the father could not prove that his son had owned the horse. A Wilkes County merchant brought a convincing case before the commis¬ sion. Stephen Johnson, long publicly op¬ posed to secession, had been physically attacked for refusing to help a Con¬ federate company being formed in Wilkes. Furthermore, he had supplied gunpowder to Union troops. His claim, a relatively large one of more than $2.600, asked payment for a lengthy list of goods taken by North¬ ern soldiers, ineluding such items as silver watches, razors, pocketknivcs. coffee pots — and 225 gallons of brandy. But merchant Johnson had become a deputy clerk of court in 1862 and a judge in 1865. He had taken the oath of allegiance to the Confederate llraoinc by lamrv Stanley States of America at least twice, and taking the oath was all that was neces¬ sary to be considered officially disloyal. His claim was turned down. The commissioners — a Vermonter, a New Yorker and an Iowan — were harsh. Yet those were harsh times. If there was hatred in the South toward those who had stood with the Union, there was anger in the North about the idea of paying any Southern claims at all. In fact, the decision to estab¬ lish the commission was greeted with outrage and dire warnings that the vanquished would become the victors — by draining the U. S. Treasury. This never came to pass. There were some 22,000 claims (10 per cent of them from North Carolina) totaling $60 million; payments reached only $4 million. And when the commissioners came across a claim they considered fraudu¬ lent. they sounded off with a vengeance. One Silas N. Martin of Wilmington, for example, asked for $1.173. His claim was labeled "an egregious piece of impudence" if not “a consummate fraud" when the board learned he had been a blockade runner who had de¬ livered 20 tons of lead to the Con¬ federacy. Another Wilmington man. merchant James P. Levy, was the victim of an even ntore severe tongue lashing. He filed for $10.000 and. according to the commissioners, "swore to his loyalty from the opening to the close ( Continued on page II > THE STATE. August 5. 1961 7