02. The person in question was relatively well-to-do before the war, but by the time of his death in 1875 the obituary said: "Mr. E. A. Corbet, formerly a wholesale dealer in saddlery on Fourth Street between Locust and Vine streets, died ... Mr. Corbet met with great reverses about the close of the war which forced him to retire from business ..."
03. Before the war he owned 320 acres in Osage County. That is not a particularly large holding, but the larger facts present a different picture. On the day he purchased those 320 acres, he caused a comparable-adjoining plot of 320 acres to be purchased in his mother-in-law's name and a third adjoining 320-acre plot to be purchased in a brother-in-law's name. So, the truer picture is of 760 adjacent acres of good farm land.
04. During the war, owing to his age [45] and status in the community, he was made a Captain in the E.M.M. -- pretty certainly just an honorary commission -- he never truly served in any military campaigns.
05. But then the picture gets clouded. He would have fallen in the category of pro-Union, but very anti-abolition. [He named a son born in 1860 John Breckinridge, and almost certainly voted for the former Vice-President in that election.] He was a young man from Edinburgh, but all the relatives who accompanied him to St. Louis were solid Virginia-to-Louisville-to-St. Louis land holders with modest slave holdings.
06. Since he was a dealer in what was an important war commodity -- I think his company was a sub-contractor to his much more famous neighbor on Main St. -- Thornton Grimsley -- for the supply of harness and saddles, he would have had requests to supply to both the Union and the Confederacy. However, in the portfolio on him maintained by the Provost Marshal there was never any accusation of his 'playing both sides'. On the other hand. as soon as the newly-instituted Income Tax was initiated to finance the war, he and his firm seem to have been very hard hit by taxes -- they almost seem punitive in relation to what was being paid by far wealthier firms and individuals.
07. Then it gets worse, one brother-in-law was arrested by the Provost Marshall and thrown in Gratiot Prison for almost 100 days before being released on Parole after the posting of a rather hefty $10,000 Bond. That brother-in-law was only released based on the representations of my grandfather to cover the Bond. The Provost Marshal dossier on the brother-in-law would probably lead most unbiased observers to suspect he was indeed guilty of providing a channel of medical supplies to the South.
08. And finally, the person I mentioned as being closely related by marriage, and in the business community, was a West Point graduate with known Southern sympathies, whose mail was intercepted by the government for he was known to be a high-ranking member of the Knights of the Golden Circle, and was in fact, at the outset of the war designated in writing by General Price to be one of the persons who would negotiate exchanges of prisoners with General Fremont. That person, Colonel Robert Mary Renick, however, came into 1860 wealthy, powerful and well-respected, and exited the war wealthy, powerful and well-respected.
09. So, with all that background, the questions I have are:
a. Are there known cases in which fines for 'being on the wrong side' resulted in either a government confiscation of deeded lands, or a forced sale with the proceeds going to the government?
b. After the war, upon decease of the three persons who each owned 320 acres in Osage, there is nothing left in the wills, estates or any family remembrances. I am in California, so I cannot travel to the Circuit Court in Linn to try to track down what records must exist for the disposition of the property. I also cannot afford to pay some researcher to do that tracking. Can anyone suggest any on-line, or at least remotely-accessible manner to 'follow the money'?
c. I have begun to do a lot of reading, and obviously have much more to do; can anyone suggest any material that relates to specific examples of the economic consequences of the period of Marshal Law in St. Louis for persons named in the Provost Marshal catalog of 'Disloyal Persons'?