cotton-stealing

Updated: June 7, 2025

I have sent a detachment of troops with an officer of the Freedmen's Bureau into Clark, Washington, Choctaw, and Marengo counties to investigate the reports of harsh treatment of the negroes that had come into the Freedmen's Bureau. Cotton-stealing is going on quite generally, and on a large scale, wherever there is any cotton, and the civil authorities have completely failed in stopping it.

Carl Schurz - Report on the Condition of the South