A speculator became interested in these girls, and plead with all his eloquence for official favor in their behalf.  General Grant softened his heart and gave this man a written permit to ship whatever cotton belonged to the orphans.  It was understood, and so stated in the application, that the amount was between two hundred and three hundred bales.  The exact number not being known, there was no quantity specified in the permit.

The speculator soon discovered that the penniless orphans could claim two thousand instead of two hundred bales, and thought it possible they would find three thousand bales and upward.  On the strength of his permit without special limit, he had purchased, or otherwise procured, all the cotton he could find in the immediate vicinity.  He was allowed to make shipment of a few hundred bales; the balance was detained.

Immediately, as this transaction became known, every speculator was on the qui vive to discover a widow or an orphan.  Each plantation was visited, and the status of the owners, if any remained, became speedily known.  Orphans and widows, the former in particular, were at a high premium.  Never in the history of Louisiana did the children of tender years, bereft of parents, receive such attention from strangers.  A spectator might have imagined the Millennium close at hand, and the dealers in cotton about to be humbled at the feet of babes and sucklings.  Widows, neither young nor comely, received the warmest attention from men of Northern birth.  The family of John Rodgers, had it then lived at Milliken’s Bend, would have been hailed as a “big thing.”  Everywhere in that region there were men seeking “healthy orphans for adoption.”

The majority of the speculators found the widows and orphans of whom they were in search.  Some were able to obtain permits, while others were not.  Several officers of the army became interested in these speculations, and gave their aid to obtain shipping privileges.  Some who were innocent were accused of dealing in the forbidden fiber, while others, guilty of the transaction, escaped without suspicion.  The temptation was great.  Many refused to be concerned in the traffic; but there were some who yielded.

The contractors who gathered the abandoned cotton were enabled to accumulate small fortunes.  Some of them acted honestly, but others made use of their contracts to cover large shipments of purchased or stolen cotton, baled two or three years before.  The ordinary yield of an acre of ground is from a bale to a bale and a half.  The contractors were sometimes able to show a yield of ten or twenty bales to the acre.

About the first of April, Adjutant-General Thomas arrived at Milliken’s Bend, bringing, as he declared, authority to regulate every thing as he saw fit.  Under his auspices, arrangements were made for putting the able-bodied male negroes into the army.  In a speech delivered at a review of the troops at Lake Providence, he announced the determination of the Government to use every just measure to suppress the Rebellion.