The Alaska daily empire., 1915-02-09

k When S9 ,000s s00O ia S
 Gold Went BeggI $
 Wm begets many strange condt
 tions. ,rasic grotesque, comic md
 sometimes mpossible said on old
 soldier of tho Confederate army I'm
 nossible?' yas. I've known conditions
 arising rom war that might loo cailed
 impossible. so utterly beyond all com
 mon or even uncommon experience
 were they
 For nstauce continued the voter
 an, 'wouid you not copeider lt op im'
 possible sltuation f you were told that a man. practically penniless himself
 suddenly finds that 9 million dollars . in his possession is without any claim.
 ant on earth by purchase descent or
 discovery. a8 the law defines ail man ner Of claim and title. Yet that very ! condition occurred aa 2 result ot our J Civil war-occurred not on a desert
 island but in the city of Montreal soon 8fter the surrender of Gen. Lee
 and the downfall Of the Southern Con,
 iederacy The circumstances which I led up to the anomalous situation were these;
 "As the war progressed and the blocnding aeets of the North drew their cordon more and more lightly around the Southern ports, 1t became more and more difficult for the blockade ] runners to avade their watchful eyes.
 Few and far between were the cotton laden vessels sneaking out of Calves ton, Charleston and Savannah that ey- CT reached a British port most of them were picked up before they had gotten out of sight of land
 sThe result was that by 1864, while tha warehouses Of the south were al- most choked with cotton. 1t was worth only l or 2 cents a pound while over in England, where thousands ol mill operatives were idle through lack of material it was worth about a dollar a pound. Hence. although only about one vessel in ten successfully ran the blockade the profits when successful. were SO enormous, that de-. spite the odds speculators continued to make che attemtpt, Indeed In the autumn of that year the Confederate government itself, which were sore- ly in need Of gold went secretly into the business Of blockade running, buy ing up cargoes of. cotton aud charter ing vessels in the name of some lrust cd and confidential agent When tho efforts were successful the agents sold the cotton in Liverpool for gold, took ship for Canada. and, landing there, mado his way South with his treas ure by the best possible means
 Gt was along in February, 1865, that the Confederate government having purchased about 1,S50.O0O pounds ol cotton, for a song, chartered a small but swift vessel and loading 1t in an obscure estuary of a Carolina river put out to sea one dark and foggy night, bound for the English port of Nasseau. The cotton was in charge of a young man a personal friend oil President Davis. who had been cot- ] ton merchant in Memphis.
 Fortune favored the Southerners. The vessel evaded Che blockading pa trol ships of the Union and duly ar rived at Nasseau. Here the cargo was transferred to a British ship. and. un- der protection of the British flae was taken to Liverpool, where it was im- mediately sold for more than mil- lion dollars in gold. Shortly after the young man took a steamer for Mon- treaI with his treasure safely stored ! in the hold.
 "He reached Montreal the latter part of April, and the first news he got was that Lee and Johnston had surrender ed. Jefferson Davis was a prisoner and the entire Southern Confederacy had gone up in smoke.
 "Thus the youns man found himself in an impossible position. Flo was in possession or moro than 8 million dol lars in gold to which no one on earth laid the slightest claim. More there was no one who could lay the slightest legal claim to il Not the Southern for that was stone dead and had left no heirs, executors nor administrators; not President Davis or any other officers of the Conleder.l ] ate government for the cotton had 6een bought not with their money but with the money of the Conlederacy and none of them was individually any more entitled to the proceeds of .he cotton than any other man in the South; nor was the Union govern nent entitled to 1t, for 1t had not been captured either the cotton or the gold, lor had either ever been under its Nor was the young man himself entitled to 1t, for the confed- ,rate government had paid him for lis services.
 @What did the young man do? What .ould he do but hold on to it? He wasn't going to throw 1t in he st. Lawrence River. and very much more certainly be wasn't going o turn it over to the Union govern aent. They weren't shaking hands c cross the bloody chasm to that ex- | snt just yet. He did secretly send ----------- q