New York Times US
EXCHANGING NEGROES FOR COTTON.
From the Cleveland Herald.
We call attention to the extract given below, from a letter written by a soldier in the Army of the Southwest, in regard to the complicity of [?] others in cotton speculations and robberies. The letter was written by a young man to his sister, now a resident of an adjoining town, and was not intended for publication. We have been permitted to make at public, however, and do so on the assurance that every word is true. The italics are the writer's:

NINE MILES BELOW HELENA,
Sunday, Sept. 28, 1862.
DEAR FRIEND. We are yet under marching orders. This morning we exchanged all our cannister shot for solid shot, which implies that we have got some wall to batter down somewhere.
Last night our forces burned another little town just on the opposite side from where we are now on camped. Day before yesterday we took a transport and went down the river about eighty miles to get some cotton. You must understand that we confiscate all property which belongs to rebels in arms and whose sentiments are antagonistic to this Government, and that we have now in camp not far from two thousand negroes, contrabands of war, persons whom we use to get (or rather steal) cotton with, and of which cotton Uncle Sam never gets a pound. Our camp is always thronged with cotton speculators, who seem to be very social and intimate with our officers. Well, to our trip down the river. The crew consisted of two companies of the Thirty-third Illinois and one section of Capt. SCHOFIELD's Battery, twenty-five negroes, and a man who made himself very conspicuous after we were out of sight of the camp, and who afterward proved be to the overseer of a rebel planter, whose son is a Captain in the Confederate army. This overseer was on board of this Government transport, who, after we steamed in sight of the rebel pickets, disembarked, went to the picket guard, and in half an hour returned, when our boat resumed its journey and passed without being fired upon. Extraordinary, wasn't it? In an hour we landed at a plantation landing, where we took aboard twenty-seven bales of cotton. After this was done, and the cotton securely stowed away, (italic in original) the overseer and the Captain of the transport chained fifteen of the negroes together, when the overseer thoroughly armed, drove them away(end italics). Next morning our boat was hailed by two negroes. Of course we took them aboard, for negroes are contraband of war.