seventy-six and one-half dollars per acre and bought one near Lexington, of three hundred and twenty acres, for eighty dollars per acre, that was well improved and located on a turnpike road, now assuming a still heavier debt, which was not considered a hazardous thing, as for twenty years past we could calculate with almost definite certainly what out income and expenses would be, and it was only a question of how many years it would take to liquidate the debt. We then had no national legislation that would in a short time make a few persons immensely wealthy and impoverish the masses of the people.

In 1861 the Civil War began, and a financial crash, such as we had never known, came upon the country, and in 1862 land, stock, and all the products of the farm were reduced in price to one-fourth and one-half of their former value. I felt unwilling to attempt to carry my debt, so sold the farm at a loss of ten thousand dollars, and an almost entire sacrifice of all the products, stocks, etc., on it, which about bankrupted me. I don't believe I had more than one thousand dollars, all told, left from the wreck, exclusive of my negros, which soon proved to be valueless; this was all I had, except my faithful wife and four little daughters, with my negro slaves, who remained with me, faithful and obedient, until many years after their freedom. In the fall of 1862 I was banished from the State because of my southern sympathies; my exile, however, only lasted a few months, when I was permitted, by the Federal authorities in command of General Gordon Granger, to return to my family and business in the spring of 1863, when I at once set about to retrieve my losses, and rented a farm of two hundred acres, near my old home, for one thousand dollars per year. Class legislation had now been inaugurated by the Government, greenbacks issued, the currency inflated, and unprecedented prosperity reigned throughout the country. Wheat sold for two dollars and a half per bushel, corn for eighty cents and one dollar per bushel, hogs for ten dollars and as high as thirteen dollars per hundred pounds, cattle for six and eight dollars per hundred pounds, hemp for ten dollars per hundredweight, and all else in proportion. Of course I availed myself of these opportunities, so that in a few years I retrieved my losses in a great measure financially, but in the interim a still greater loss befell me; June 9, 1864, my wife

[Continued on page 369]

Thanks to Catherine Bradford for transcribing this page.