The debt of New Orleans increased twenty-five fold and that of Vicksburg a thousandfold.

A great deal of the debt was the result of fraudulent issues of bonds or over-issue.

For this form of fraud, the state financial agents in New York were usually responsible.

Southern bonds sold far below par, and the time came when they were peddled about at ten to twenty-five cents on the dollar.
Still another disastrous result followed this corrupt financiering.

In Alabama there was a sixty-five percent decrease in property values, in Florida forty-five percent, and in Louisiana fifty to seventy-five percent.