Disunion follows the Civil War as it unfolded.  Between 1862 and 1865, officers of the Confederate District Court of North Carolina, empowered by a new national law, confiscated and sold millions of dollars worth of property from North Carolinians accused of being “alien enemies.” The proceeds of confiscated and sold property were to be sent immediately to Richmond, but most was never reported. Many officers of the District Court, like David Schenck of Lincoln County, became wealthy enforcing the Act of Sequestration while thousands of their fellow Tar Heels were deprived of their property, charged with disloyalty, and in some cases even executed as enemies of the Confederacy.  The Confederate law was inspired by the Union’s First Confiscation Act of Aug. 6 1861, which laid the legal groundwork for Northern forces to confiscate Southerners’ private property being used to aid the rebellion. Although not directly mentioned in the act itself, it was understood, and later confirmed by executive order, that “property” included slaves.  Passage of the confiscation law touched a raw nerve with Confederates. Protection of personal property rights, and particularly the right to slave property, underpinned the Confederate government’s entire political philosophy. Not surprisingly, within a month, the Jefferson Davis administration responded with its own version of government-sanctioned confiscation. The Confederate Act of Sequestration was passed on Aug. 30, 1861.  The Southern Congress designed the Act of Sequestration to strike at Northern financial interests within the Confederate states. It mandated that Confederate agents would locate “all and every lands, tenements, hereditaments, goods, and chattels, rights and credits within these Confederate states and every right and interest therein held, owned, possessed or enjoyed by or for any alien enemy.” Such property would be “sequestered by the Confederate States of America.” Confiscated property of “alien enemies” would be sold and the proceeds paid into a fund, administered by the Treasury Department, from which “loyal Confederates” could make indemnity claims. The indemnity clause was problematic however, for it stated that confiscated property “shall be held for full indemnity of any true and loyal citizen of these Confederate states,” yet nowhere did the act define or offer any criteria for identifying “true and loyal citizens.”  The primary difficulty with enforcing the law would be locating Northern-owned property. The Confederate government would rely heavily on information volunteered by ordinary citizens, but if anyone proved reluctant to provide the government the information it sought, sequestration officials were given extraordinary punitive powers to search out and seize confiscable property. Enforcement of the law fell to two newly created arms of the Confederate Department of Justice, receivers and federal grand juries. Receivers tracked down and seized property suspected of belonging to a Northerner, while federal grand juries aided receivers by interrogating those whose loyalty was suspect, which could be anyone. The Confederate attorney general was charged with putting the law into effect, but aside from that stipulation the act set no parameters or limitations on the power of receivers and grand juries to acquire the information or property they sought.  The system’s bureaucratic process for facilitating sequestration was complex, and with few exceptions receivers seldom left a record of their involvement with seizing property; grand jury identities were secret and the minutes of their interrogations destroyed after each session. Rather than keeping detailed records of all property confiscated and sold, and the amount each property fetched at auction, receivers reported only on those properties that were sold. In this way the system placed a partial veil of secrecy over sequestration.  An unfolding history of the Civil War with photos and articles from the Times archive and ongoing commentary from Disunion contributors.  The act’s silence on nearly all interpretative matters placed the awesome responsibility of defining the terms “loyal Confederate” and “alien enemy” entirely in the hands of local sequestration officials. Moreover, unlike other laws, like conscription, impressments and tax-in-kind, which were administered by state officials, sequestration proceedings were the exclusive jurisdiction of the Confederate district courts. Judges thus wielded unprecedented power. For example, Asa Biggs, the judge of the North Carolina Confederate District Court, personally appointed every officer of the court in North Carolina, including the ardent secessionist David Schenck, who became a receiver.  At the outset of the war, Schenck was a struggling middle-class lawyer who was put out of work by North Carolina’s Stay Act, which drastically reduced the type and number of cases that could be brought before the district court. He owned a small farm on the outskirts of Lincolnton and owned no slaves. He began his duties as receiver in the Western Piedmont, including Cleaveland, Catawba, Lincoln, Gaston, Iredell and Mecklenburg Counties, in September 1862. Within days he confided to his diary that he had already sold some $20,000 worth of sequestered real estate – an amount exceeding the state comptrollers’ report of the gross value of all non-real estate taxable property (gold watches, wagons, carriages) in Cleaveland and Catawba Counties combined. In the adjoining district, receiver C.N. White sold 354 acres of prime cotton land in Union County at auction for $5 an acre on Sept. 16, 1862. Assuming the land Schenck sold fetched the same amount, he would have sold some 4,000 acres of land. A few weeks later Schenck purchased his first slave for $1,225, bought some land to build a new house, and by year’s end he estimated his earnings to be $9,000.  The question that necessarily arises here regards the source of such wealth, especially when, as a Confederate bureaucrat, Schenk was paid in Confederate currency, which was depreciating daily. The Receivers Ledger for the Sequestration Fund from the Confederate Treasury offers a clue. According to the ledger, which kept track of all funds remitted, Schenck’s district remitted only $3,610.24 in 1862. It also shows that he was paid $319.58 to cover the cost of expenses incurred while executing the duties of his office. There is no evidence that the full $20,000 from confiscated property sold at auction in September was ever deposited into the Sequestration Fund in Richmond. Could it be that members of the district court distributed those and other funds liberally among themselves?  Still another important question is, who was buying all this property? In an economy that quickly fell victim to hyperinflation and rapid devaluation of its currency, who possessed enough ready capital to buy so much land and property? In Wilmington, the receiver DuBrutz Cutlar seized real estate belonging to J.B. Allen when a neighbor, William Gordon, accused Allen of being disloyal. When Cutlar auctioned Allen’s property it was bought by William Gordon. In Union County, the receiver C.N. White sold mineral rights on 288 acres of land to Robert Hall Morrison, the father-in-law of the generals Daniel Harvey Hill and Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson. Morrison also owned land adjacent to the land he purchased from White. Notably, Schenck emerged from the Civil War owning six lots in Lincolnton and several pieces of land nearby.  What became of the officers of the North Carolina District Court? Asa Biggs and DuBrutz Cutlar practiced law in Tarboro and Wilmington, respectively. David Schenck practiced law in Lincolnton after the war, and later became a superior court judge for the Ninth judicial district. He also became the leader of the Ku Klux Klan in western North Carolina. As for the countless men and women accused of being “enemy aliens,” none ever received restitution.  Follow Disunion at twitter.com/NYTcivilwar or join us on Facebook.  Rodney Steward is an assistant professor of history at the University of South Carolina, Salkehatchie.
How Southern agents used the Act of Sequestration to enrich themselves at the expense of their innocent neighbors.