The barns were all burned; chimneys standing without houses, and houses standing without roof, or door, or window." Much land was thrown on the market at low prices--three to five dollars an acre for land worth fifty dollars.

The poorer lands could not be sold at all, and thousands of farms were deserted by their owners.

Everywhere recovery from this agricultural depression was slow.

Five years after the war Robert Somers, an English traveler, said of the Tennessee Valley: "It consists for the most part of plantations in a state of semi-ruin and plantations of which the ruin is for the present total and complete....

The trail of war is visible throughout the valley in burnt-up gin-houses, ruined bridges, mills, and factories...