It appears to me from my studies thereof, that the Yankee establishment were constantly in a struggle to wrestle control of the valuable trade with planters in and out of Confederate control. It seems wide spread but rarely made visible across the South. Chase's Treasury Department and his agents was always pushing to take over assets with some success. They took most of the plantation leasing program up and down the Mississippi Valley under Federal control. The Banks people who replaced the Butler people at New Orleans were claiming such shock at Butler/Shipley operations but it was later ascertained that Banks people operated the same way. In fact, the entire Red River campaign in 1864 seemed to have degenerated or had been secretly planned to a little more than a Great Cotton Raid. Banks people and the Navy people got into quite a bit of conflict and bad mouthing each other over the issue of confiscation of cotton and the buying of cotton from local planters. Some planters rushed to the Federal to sell for those Federal dollars. Some planters had theirs confiscated.
This is where brother Andrew comes in. Due to his background in business, his small wealth and big credit he came with brother Ben as a volunteer with the rank of Col that he flaunted.
I have attach a pix of an handwritten Andrew order.
But Andrew and to some extent Ben paid 60k for their first purchase of sugar which was more then the plantation could have gotten on their own. Andrew not being in the service officially, took his cut off the top and this began a lucrative trading system. At one time some cattle where ship from Mexico to NO for Andrew for resale to the Army (Ben was the Army) and so it went.
Some say Andrew made 200k, other said Andrew made 2 million. Whichever was right, probably somewhere in the middle.
Anyway Andrew gets killed, probably for either a deal gone bad or a deal he didnt pay his share to others. Andrew did end up in Court, and lost, for not paying off his partners and his obligation was 12k.
Ben was the sole beneficiary of Andrew's estate. Though Ben was shrewd and Ben was a great lawyer, his law firm stayed open during the war. Ben also owned the only US bunting company and thus made a fortune. And Ben owned the US Crtridge company that supplied most of the ammo through WWl if I recall.
When Ben dies in 1892 his estate had a value of at least 8 million dollars...us a mansion on Capital Hill, his mansion in Lowell (Belvedere, and the area is still called that though developers tore down the mansion years ago) and a mansion off Cape Ann, Mass. BEN owned the Granite quarry in Cape Ann and happened to get federal contracts to supply granite to build DC.
Kind of shrewd
Gotta live him