The sale of such cotton and farm products as had escaped the treasury agents was of some help, but curiously enough much of the good money thus obtained was spent extravagantly by a people used to Confederate rag money and for four years deprived of the luxuries of life.

The poorer whites who had lost all were close to starvation.

In the white counties which had sent so large a proportion of men to the army, the destitution was most acute.

In many families the breadwinner had been killed in war.

After 1862, relief systems had been organized in nearly all the Confederate States for the purpose of aiding the poor whites, but these organizations were disbanded in 1865.