The Tax-in-Kind in the Department of the Trans-Mississippi

A native of Austin, Texas, Dr. Nichols is on the history staff at Stephen F. Austin State College at Nacogdoches. He is the author of a recently published study, Confederate Engineers. The Tax-in-Kind in the Department of the Trans-Mississippi JAMES L. NICHOLS about twenty years ago Professor Charles W. Ramsdell, in his presidential address to the Southern Historical Association, wondered at the neglect by müitary historians of the story of the Confederate army supply services.1 In recent years the gaps have been closing with the appearance of an increasing number of studies of the ordnance and railroad problems of the embattled South. To date, however, the equally vital subsistence, quartermaster, and medical supply departments have faüed to inspire full-length treatments. The bleak prospect of wading through scattered masses of receipts, memoranda, and account books quickly blunts the early enthusiasm of most Confederate monographers. Truly it may be said that in this realm of bookkeeping bureaus, one will not want for elbow room. If, or when, a history of Confederate quartermaster operations is written, one chapter perhaps wül be devoted to the collection and distribution of the tithe tax on farm produce. Presumably, a section of that chapter wül deal with the type of material offered herein on the tithe story in "Kirby Smithdom," the Trans-Mississippi Department—or, as quartermaster officers called it, the "DTM." Passage of the tax-in-kind act on April 24, 1863, required the heavilyladen Quartermaster Department to assemble a subbureau mechanism of special post quartermasters. From Richmond, Colonel Larkin Smith, assistant quartermaster general, provided direction to a network which 1 "Some Problems Involved in Writing the History of the Confederacy," Journal of Southern History, II ( 1936), 137. 382 included one post quartermaster for each congressional district and one controlling quartermaster for each state.2 Loss of Vicksburg and Port Hudson in July, 1863, left the TransMississippi Department too isolated for effective control from Richmond . With the approval of the Confederate government, Lieutenant General Edmund Kirby Smith, new commander of the department, assumed "extraordinary powers" and began at Shreveport, Louisiana, and Marshall, Texas, to erect a mushroom patch of bureaus with which to implement Confederate will. The Marshall group included the taxin -kind bureau, headed by Major Benjamin A. Botts, whose letterbook, preserved in the University of Texas Archives, affords a day-by-day chronicle of tithe operations in the Trans-Mississippi. The tithe act specifically affected crops of oats, rye, buckwheat, rice, sweet and Irish potatoes, cured hay and fodder, sugar, molasses, cotton, wool, and tobacco. The tax, however, would not operate to deny a farm family of a necessary reserve of rations. With livestock added to the list, producers in the Trans-Mississippi were told to prepare one-tenth of the meat for the government (hog meat at the ratio of 60 pounds of cured bacon to each 100 pounds of pork). Local tax assessors estimated each prospective crop and informed the producer of the result. If the producer thought the evaluation too high, he and the assessor called in a third party, a freeholder; and, if necessary , a fourth party joined the conference. When appraisers agreed, the final crop estimate was written out in duplicate, original to the assessor and copy to the producer. Tax assessors seut copies of their estimates to the post quartermaster, who receipted for them. These receipts, in the Trans-Mississippi, ended up in the hands of the departmental auditor, who could then check the accountability of each quartermaster. Each producer was required to deliver, within sixty days after his assessment, his tax in "marketable" condition to a depot located uot more than eight mües from his collecting point. The government paid transportation for distances of more than eight mües and agreed to furnish grain sacks and allow for the cost of molasses barrels. Faüure to deliver within the prescribed period brought a penalty of 50 per cent of the tithe, making a total obligation of 15 per cent of the crop. If the producer defaulted completely, the post quartermaster notified the district tax collector, who issued a distress warrant for the sale of the producer's...