Without Right of Conquest
The Civil War Occupation and Restoration of the Findlay Foundry of Macon, Georgia
Winter 1997, Vol. 29, No. 4
By Robert Scott Davis, Jr.
© 1997 by Robert Scott Davis
A Civil War–era map of Macon, Georgia, shows the Findlay foundry on Oglethorpe between Third and Fourth Streets.
The precise definition of the great American conflict of 1861–1865 remains a subject for debate. Names given for that struggle—"Civil War," "War of the Rebellion," "War Between the States," "Late Unpleasantness," and "War for Southern Independence"—tell as much about political views as about attempts at historical accuracy. These varied names reflect the disagreement between North and South over the very nature of the war and its legal implications.
Neither side viewed the struggle as a true civil war, for no one claimed that anyone tried to overthrow the existing government. The Confederate States sought foreign recognition not as "rebels" but as an independent nation trying to retain what the southern leaders proclaimed as the true ideals of the original American government.
For legal and for practical reasons, the federal government adopted conflicting policies in conducting the war. President Lincoln's administration refused to acknowledge the war as a true rebellion or to recognize the legal existence of the Confederate government as an independent nation. This policy defined the struggle as a war against insurrectionary individuals temporarily in control of the governments of certain states for the purposes of pursuing an illegal policy of secession. To Lincoln, the states remained legally within the Union. Even when he called up an initial seventy-five thousand volunteers to crush the rebellion, he did so as a police action. He wrote that "combinations too powerful" for arrests by federal marshals and other law enforcement officials required the use of the armed forces. To avoid atrocities and escalation of the violence, the U.S. government gave the military forces of the insurgents the status of belligerents traditionally granted to the soldiers and sailors of an enemy nation. Until February 14, 1862, for example, the secretary of state ordered the arrests and detention of Confederate sympathizers in the northern states in the same manner as his office dealt with enemy aliens during a declared war.
These federal policies, which admittedly contradicted each other, helped the federal government to justify, internationally, a naval blockade of the southern states while avoiding the legal problems that invasion of a foreign nation would incur. These conflicting views also allowed federal officials to arbitrarily class the owners of captured or destroyed property as belligerents, insurgents, or innocent bystanders for purposes of judging their right to compensation.1
The refusal of the Lincoln administration to recognize the rebel state governments and the Confederate States of America technically saved the U.S. government from observing Congress's long tradition of paying a conquered people for property acquired as a result of war. The United States Supreme Court did eventually grant de facto recognition of the existence of the Confederate States of America by designating property captured by the United States as taken by the "right of conquest," the right of conquering nations to make permanent territorial conquests without compensation to the defeated. However, Americans had traditionally found that policy abhorrent, and the United States pursued a policy of paying for territory permanently acquired by act of war. The idea of such compensation to the former Confederates, however, was repugnant to northerners angered at the losses incurred during the war to preserve the Union. As a campaign issue, Confederate compensation frightened northerners into voting against Democrat Samuel Jones Tilden in the 1876 presidential election. It remained a national issue, at least as demagoguery, as late as 1878.2
The federal government did have very real legal and ethical problems with the status of private property seized or destroyed during the war as well as with the physical remains of the "so-called" Confederate States of America. The latter property, used in a very expensive and bloody war with the United States, by federal definition belonged to a political entity that did not exist. The Findlay Iron Works of Macon, Georgia, presents a good example of the problems faced and the paperwork created by private citizens and the federal government in resolving these property issues after the war. To the former owners, the property remained, as it had always been, private property although seized under implied threat by the Confederate government and later illegally occupied by Federal forces. They even petitioned the U.S. government for rent. Another opinion held that the "socalled" Confederate States of America permanently acquired the property in 1862 to create the Macon Arsenal, a factory for creating weapons to inflict injury and death upon soldiers of the United States. Aside from ownership of the foundry, the issue of the ownership of buildings erected on the site by the insurgents and other enemy property stored on the grounds presented particular problems. The resolution of these claims tells a great deal about the legal complexities of finally ending the conflict of 1861–1865.
The history of the Macon Arsenal began in 1838. In that year, thirty-year-old Scottish-born Robert Findlay arrived in Macon from Philadelphia as a mechanical engineer for the newly built Monroe Railroad. Before the year ended, he resigned from the railroad to work as an independent millwright and then as a partner in Macon's—and Georgia's—first real foundry. Within months, Findlay bought out his partners and, over the next two decades, used the market created by Macon's extensive railroad and river transportation network to become one of the few unquestioned successes in southern manufacturing. He established branch foundries in nearby towns and, in 1851, began construction of "Findlay's Steam Engine Manufactory" in Macon. His new foundry complex occupied an entire block at Oglethorpe and Fourth Streets when finished in 1854. Findlay boasted that the plant required 350 employees to operate at full capacity and contained the machine tools for building any machine of the age, including locomotives.3
The hard economic times that set in, even as the new foundry came into being, prevented Robert Findlay from ever having more than seventy employees or building a locomotive. He died on November 30, 1859, and control of the company passed to his two eldest sons and partners, James Nelson and Christopher DeSwan Findlay. They, however, each received only a partner's share of the profits. Robert had retained ownership of all of the company's assets. At his death, actual ownership went to his estate and was divided equally among his widow and eight children.
Despite the company's heavy debt load, the Findlay brothers expanded the company's business by adding new and improved stationary steam engine and sawmill machinery to expand their market.4 However, more economic panics came as the nation headed toward disunion and war. Business declined to the point that, by April of 1862, the Findlay foundry had only seven white and three slave employees. Their chief local competitor, John S. Schofield, later testified that the Findlays could have operated their company profitably during the war, as he had managed his foundry. When a writer for Debow's Review asked in 1862 how their company planned to benefit from the war, the Findlay brothers responded only that they hoped, with northern competition shut out, that they might expand their sales in sugar machinery in Louisiana and railroad iron for the local market. The Findlays did allow W. A. Rines to build an experimental artillery shell at the foundry in 1861, and they did some one thousand dollars in business with the state armory. By 1862, though, the company's business had all but come to a halt, and all of the Findlay brothers who were old enough to serve, except James, had enlisted in the Confederate army.5
The Civil War provided financial relief for the Findlay family. In April 1862, Macon, ignored for a year by the Confederacy, suddenly moved to the forefront of the civilian war. At that moment, Richard Matthaei Cuyler of the Confederate artillery corps brought with him to Macon the Confederate ordnance property of Savannah, which faced the threat of capture by Federal forces. An officer in the U.S. Navy for two decades, R. M. Cuyler overnight rose from private to captain in the Confederate army due to his worldwide naval experience in ordnance.6 He recognized the value of Macon's railroads and foundries in meeting the South's critical needs for weapons and munitions. Cuyler leased the Findlay foundry for the Confederacy on May 10 for $25,200 a year and bought all of their stocks of materials, hired their remaining workmen, and rented their mules and dray. The captain also rented Macon's twelve largest warehouses for his new Macon Arsenal. The Findlays had a floor plan of their foundry drawn and then removed what goods they still had to sell. They gave up all of the foundry except a part of their office to the Confederacy.7 No longer left with the responsibility for the foundry, James N. Findlay joined the Confederate army.8
At the former Findlay Iron Works, Cuyler added purchased machinery removed from Huntsville, Alabama, in the wake of the Federal advance and acquired the tools of A. L. Maxwell's machine shop, which had moved to Macon from Knoxville, Tennessee, before that city fell to the enemy.9 He hired two of the foundry's owners, Christopher DeSwan and Robert Burns Findlay, from the army to help operate their former foundry for the Ordnance Bureau and employed their former foreman and expert on brass and bronze, Alexander Reynolds, to oversee the cannon furnaces. Cuyler employed at different times from 350 to 500 men, women, and children, black and white, slave and free. They made shot, shell, pistols, rifles, ammunition, and entire artillery batteries, including caissons, battery wagons, and traveling forges. At its peak, the Macon Arsenal produced 10,000 rounds of small arms ammunition and 125 artillery shells per day. The people of Macon and the surrounding countryside brought to the Findlay foundry their bells, fenders, andirons, candle sticks, and even door knockers to be cast into cannons and shells. Although the Macon Arsenal and the city's other facilities made enough equipment (from matches to shoes to cannons to medicine) to equip completely an entire Confederate army, the twelve-pound bronze-barreled Napoleons and ten- to thirty-pound iron-barreled Parrott guns made at the former Findlay foundry for the Confederate armies of Arkansas, Mississippi, and Tennessee became Macon's most famous contribution to the war, reportedly "the pride of the army."10
Cuyler also erected two-story wooden buildings on the foundry grounds for casting cannons and doing the extensive carpentry work necessary for making artillery batteries. After he discovered that the Findlays' relatively small cupola furnaces made cannon barrels that exploded, Cuyler obtained fire bricks to build special gun furnaces just for casting cannons. The foundry's old furnace room became an expanded machine shop. He added additional forges to the foundry and erected a new carpentry shop, wheelwright shop, and steam-hammer shop. Cuyler also erected shanties on the foundry grounds as housing for some of his workers. The Findlays protested as their lease required them to purchase improvements made by the Confederacy to the property when the lease finally expired at the end of the war. They regarded the new buildings and the cannon pits as useless and expensive to them. On February 6, 1864, Christopher Findlay traveled to Richmond, where he hired attorney E. A. Nisbet to prepare a memorial to the Confederate government. He and his brother James frequently petitioned the rebel authorities for more rent.11
On April 17, 1865, Cuyler, now a lieutenant colonel, managed to send out two last trainloads of munitions. He kept the Macon Arsenal in operation, to some degree, to the very end of the war. Three days later, as the representative for Gen. Howell Cobb, he rode out to meet with an approaching force of Federal troops.12
Federal general John H. Wilson and his corps of blue-coated cavalrymen accepted the city's surrender. Wilson's irresistible force had already wrecked the industrial works of Columbus, Montgomery, and Selma, although, contrary to what he later wrote in his memoirs, his men left Macon largely untouched. Cuyler turned over all of his records of the Macon Arsenal to the Federal soldiers. The documents were shipped to army headquarters in Greensboro, North Carolina, but only some of them survived for preservation in the War Department and later the National Archives. With unintended irony, the Federal troopers took down the Findlay foundry's flagpole from Cuyler's Confederate arsenal to use for the United States flag at Wilson's headquarters on Mulberry Street.13
While their foundry's participation in the war ended, its owners served the Confederacy. James N., George W., and Charles S. Findlay finished the war in Virginia. Their brother Christopher D. Findlay had received a commission as lieutenant colonel of the Fifth Georgia Reserves Regiment, a unit of well-uniformed boys, ordnance workers, and old men recruited for local defense and prison guard duty in Macon. When Sherman's army passed Macon in November 1864, the Fifth Georgia Reserves joined the Confederate forces trying to impede the Federals’ march through the Carolinas. Christopher Findlay, however, surrendered to Wilson's men in Macon as did his brother Robert B. Findlay, clerk of the Macon Arsenal.14
With the war at an end, the Findlays found Federal soldiers occupying their foundry. The army used the Findlay foundry to warehouse more than a million dollars’ worth of captured Confederate goods, including munitions and other explosives. As they emptied Macon's warehouses of Confederate goods and the local owners quietly reoccupied their former property, the Federal officials consolidated the captured goods at the Findlay foundry grounds. The foundry stood in real danger. Federal forces had similarly consolidated munitions at a warehouse in Mobile, Alabama, resulting in an explosion on May 25, 1865, that killed two hundred to three hundred people, destroyed eight city blocks, and replaced the warehouse with a huge hole.15
As early as August 26, 1865, Mary DeSwan Findlay and her sons had their attorney, Lewis N. Whittle, petition Maj. Gen. James B. Steedman, Federal commander in Georgia, to have the foundry returned to them.16 When that direct route failed, the Findlay heirs filed a petition to have the foundry restored, while cooperating fully with the Federal officers in charge of the foundry grounds.
In the interim, the Findlays lived on rent paid on houses owned by the estate. They also tried to find other means of support. James N. Findlay, with brothers Christopher and Charles, opened a produce business in partnership with Thomas W. Mangum to sell liquor, buckwheat, lard, muslin bags, herrings, smoked tongues, pineapples, specialty cheese, and other goods. The credit reporter for the R. G. Dun Company (precursor to Dun & Bradstreet) did not give this business much chance of success. The Findlays also formed Findlay & Kennick, an auctioneering firm. George W. and Robert B. Findlay went to work as clerks for local merchant houses.17
No copy of their petition to the government for the restoration of the foundry exists, but abstracts of that document survive in the endorsement book of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands. The claim, dated August 19, 1865, contained a copy of the deed to the property, Cuyler's list of Confederate property on the grounds, and the floor plans. The heirs of Robert Findlay presented their papers to Maj. Daniel A. Russell, the provost marshal in Macon. He passed their claim on to Lt. H. P. Webb, the ordnance officer in charge of captured property in Georgia and Alabama, for endorsement (comment). Webb gave the papers to his superior in Macon, Brig. Gen. John T. Croxton, commander of the District of Southwest Georgia, on August 23. He in turn sent the papers to the commander of the Georgia Department, Maj. Gen. James B. Steedman in Augusta. He recommended the return of the foundry to the Findlays and, on August 30, sent the Findlay claim on to his superior, Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas, in Nashville, Tennessee. Thomas passed the petition on to O. A. Nichols, the adjutant general of the United States in Washington, D.C.
Gen. George H. Thomas used these twelve-pound bronze Napoleon cannons made at the Macon Arsenal as battle trophies to decorate his headquarters. The Federal army captured these cannons in the fighting around Chattanooga.
The papers then traveled from Nichols's office in the War Department to the secretary of the treasury and from him to Maj. Gen. O. O. Howard, chief of the Bureau of the Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands. By that time, March 2, 1866, the Findlays, along with other Macon citizens, had hired the now retired General Croxton as their attorney in Washington. He petitioned the secretaries of treasury and war on the Findlays' behalf, pointing out that the foundry represented their only means of support and that other property leased by the Confederacy in Macon had already been restored to owners merely by moving the contents to the Findlay foundry.
At Croxton's request, General Howard sent the claim to the Georgia Freedmen's Bureau's chief, Brig. Gen. Davis Tillson, in Augusta on February 25, 1866. On the way to Tillson, the papers passed through the hands of captains W. Sellers Hill and O. T. Watson, the bureau's representatives in Macon. At the same time, the Treasury Department ordered all property not belonging to the Findlays before the war transferred to the Freedmen's Bureau on February 24. Tillson sent the papers back to Howard on May 11, 1866, with a copy of his order returning the foundry property to the Findlays, dated February 26, 1866. The War Department had ordered the property turned over to the Treasury Department on February 19. Lieutenant Webb, still commanding at the arsenal, however, refused to relinquish his control until orders arrived from the secretary of war on March 24. The Department of the Treasury did not grant final permission for the restoration until May 8, delaying the return of the foundry to the Findlays until May 12.18
The foundry had remained in federal hands after February 26 because of the complexities of federal treatment of southern property. Because Wilson's cavalrymen had captured the foundry, government officials classified it as captured property under the Captured and Abandoned Property Act of Congress of March 3, 1863. Such property came under the official control of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands under the act of March 3, 1865, that created the bureau. Presidential proclamations of Lincoln and Johnson ordered almost all such property restored to its owners. However, while the bureau ordered the property returned to the Findlays, the military had the right, later upheld by the United States Supreme Court, to act in insurrectionary areas as local military commanders deemed necessary. To complicate matters further, only the Treasury Department could sell the permanent buildings and other property on the site that had belonged to the "so-called" Confederate government, with all sale records passed on to the Commissioner of Customs. The Findlays gained nothing until the military chose to leave the site and the Treasury Department disposed of the property stored there.19
The Findlays' attorney, General Croxton, tried to take advantage of this situation by petitioning the U.S. government for rent. He filed a claim with the Quartermaster General of the Army under the act of July 4, 1864, for compensation for property of "loyal" citizens seized or destroyed by the United States military. Croxton likely based this particular "Fourth of July" claim on the federal occupation of the foundry after the war when the Findlays and the rest of the South no longer remained in rebellion, for the act denied compensation to anyone living in a state currently under rebellion. The Findlay heirs took a written oath of allegiance to the United States. A committee of army officers meeting in Macon on August 10, 1866, ruled against the Findlays collecting rent, contending that the Confederacy had never intended to return the foundry. They considered it captured Confederate property.20
This decision had potential for great harm to the Findlays. If the foundry belonged to the insurrectionary forces, then the United States had the right to confiscate and sell it. In retaliation for Confederate sequestration acts, the U.S. Congress had passed its own confiscation acts on August 6, 1861, and July 17, 1862. The first act allowed the federal government to seize and sell property directly used against the United States as it would property captured from smugglers or pirates. In the 1867 case Armstrong's Foundry v. The United States, however, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the owners of that New Orleans iron foundry, sold under the act of 1861, should receive the government's proceeds from the sale of that property. Tens of thousands of southerners used this ruling with related decisions and acts of Congress to petition the federal government for compensation for cotton seized by Union forces.21
Although Congress intended the Confiscation Act of July 17, 1862, to punish residents of the Confederacy by sale of their property, the Supreme Court eventually interpreted it as a necessary military measure in a time of war rather than as a retaliatory action. On that basis, the U.S. government granted no compensation to victims of the act. Certain provisions of the law served as the beginnings of general emancipation of slaves, although the U.S. government seized almost no other property by confiscation other than cotton. The many compromises that allowed passage of the act created a largely unworkable system requiring potentially lengthy legal actions in then nonexistent federal courts in the South. President Johnson's proclamation of May 29, 1865, granted protection to almost all property not already under confiscation. That same year, the U.S. attorney general offered the opinion that confiscation ended with the Civil War. By 1867, after expenses, the federal treasury had received no more than $300,000 from confiscations and no profit at all from sales by the Treasury Department in several states including Georgia and Alabama. Federal forces had seized vast amounts of southern cotton in the name of the act. However, the rationale behind depriving an enemy during a war of portable property used to finance armed resistance did not extend to taking permanent possession in peacetime of an entire city block containing an industrial complex.22
Technically, the Confiscation Act of 1862 and the Findlays' support of the Confederacy made the foundry property subject to permanent seizure. The legal problems of filing such proceedings had protected it from confiscation and sale. However, the redesignation of the property as not belonging to the Findlays but to the Confederacy spared the federal government from the requirements of the 1862 Confiscation Act that it prove in court that the Findlays were guilty of treason or even that they had ever owned the property. By using the Confiscation Act, the federal government could avoid returning the property and paying any compensation. At that very time, the U.S. government confiscated and sold the nearby Macon Confederate Central Laboratory building as property of the insurrectionary forces. Ultimately the Supreme Court ruled that the federal government had the right to dispose of the property of the Confederate States of America, even that taken by right of conquest and without any financial compensation. The court, in making this ruling, even gave de facto recognition to the existence of the now defunct Confederate government.23
The Findlays avoided this confiscation by accident of timing. Officially their property had already been designated as "captured." They also had their foundry property restored to them before the committee of army officers ruled it a permanent Confederate installation and before the final decisions on the Macon Central Laboratory. They also had precedent, if they chose to use it. Aside from the warehouses and other property in Macon restored to previous owners, the federal government released the Tredegar Iron Works of Richmond, Virginia, to its former owners in September 1865. As a private company, the Tredegar made more than half of the cannons manufactured in the Confederacy. The petition for amnesty by the Tredegar's president, Confederate general Joseph R. Anderson, upon which President Johnson based the restoration, also contained misstatements, exaggerations, and outright falsehoods.24
Only the remaining Confederate property on the grounds kept the Findlays from occupation. Although federal officials returned the foundry's original portable property to the Findlays, they designated the machine tools and goods belonging to the Confederacy as subject to sale. The U.S. government and the Findlays chose an appraiser who designated the value of that property and the buildings erected at the site at $3,680. The Findlays offered $2,780, provided that the government did not just abandon the Confederate property. The Treasury Department followed the letter of the law and sold the property as confiscated at auction, much of it to Christopher D. Findlay, in August 1866. Ironically, Christopher, at least in part, bought this property with money borrowed from the man most responsible for the property being on the foundry grounds, Richard Matthaei Cuyler, by then a cotton broker in Baltimore and New York.25
The Findlays avoided the one other (and potentially the greatest) jeopardy to the restoration of their property by paying their taxes. Congress had passed a direct tax act in 1861 that assigned tax revenue quotas to each state, including those controlled by the insurrectionaries. As the Union forces occupied the southern states, Treasury officials imposed tax assessments on the property owners of the occupied territories to meet the quota. The act even required owners to pay the taxes in person, not by agent, blocking persons like Mrs. Robert E. Lee, living in Confederate Richmond, from saving property from sale for taxes. The U.S. government took all funds raised by the sale of the condemned property, even the sums beyond the assessments, without any compensation to the owners. Treasury officials sold far more southern property of all types by this means than through confiscation, capture, or abandonment. By 1866, federal agents had acquired for the United States Treasury almost $900,000 in cash and bids from South Carolina alone. The Findlays somehow found the money to meet the tax bill.26
The heirs of Robert Findlay had avenues for seeking compensation that they did not pursue, although they certainly considered those options. Upon restoration of the foundry, the Findlays had a new set of floor plans drawn up and had the foundry photographed. The claim papers filed by the Findlays with the Confederate and the U.S. governments appear as abstracts in endorsement and registry books. The original papers long ago disappeared from various federal files, perhaps requested by and returned to the Findlays for use in preparing a future claim. In 1883 the Findlays protected their copy of the 1865 inventory of the foundry by having it recorded as a public record. The family kept the records of the restoration of the foundry, even after discarding all other records of the company and more than eighty years after they no longer owned the foundry.27
Despite these preparations, the Findlays did not file any claim for damages with the U.S. Congress. By an act of March 3, 1863, Congress authorized the United States Court of Claims to rule on indemnity for property of unionists in the South that the federal government had seized or destroyed. From 1871 to 1880, Congress ordered such claims reviewed by the Commissioners of Claims, popularly called the Southern Claims Commission. After 1880, the Court of Claims again heard such cases and also ruled on appeals to the earlier decisions of the Commissioners of Claims. Both of these bodies required that the claimants prove loyalty to the Union and no support of the insurrection. Congress prohibited the Commissioners of Claims from hearing cases involving federal occupation, but the Court of Claims always remained a viable option for the Findlays.28
With five owners of the foundry in the Confederate army and three of them officers, filing such a claim would appear useless. However, James and Christopher Findlay, the managing partners of the foundry, and their mother had been born in Pennsylvania. The Findlays included a copy of an oath of allegiance to the United States they had signed and argued that they had leased the foundry to the Confederacy out of fear that the Confederate government would seize it anyway. As the Confederate government had only passed acts to sequester property owned by "enemy aliens," their petition implied that, to the Confederacy, the heirs of the estate of Robert Findlay had a status as potentially loyal Northerners and not Confederate citizens.29 Their claim thereby had all of the necessary elements of a typical loyal "southern unionist" claim presented to the federal government.
The Pennsylvania-born Noble family of Rome, Georgia, filed such a claim for $19,051.49 worth of property lost when Union forces destroyed their foundry. They had manufactured cannons for the Confederacy and aided the rebels' cause in a number of other ways. The Commissioners of Claims rejected their claim, as it did over 80 percent of the southern claims. An agent of the commissioners even wrote that the members of the Noble family, male and female, "did the federal government more harm than any one regiment of rebel soldiers during the war."30 Certainly the Findlays had no less reason to hope for compensation than did this family of Confederate cannon makers.
The Findlays' woes did not end with the final return of the foundry in 1866. James N. Findlay died of smallpox on May 12, 1866, at age thirty-five. The Findlays' business ventures failed during the panic of 1866, leaving the family even deeper in debt. Because Robert Findlay's estate remained unsettled, the foundry went through the formality of an estate sale in 1867, made even more complicated by the personal bankruptcies of some of the heirs. Robert Burns Findlay bought the foundry complex for $32,000 and then sold one-eighth shares to each of the other individual heirs. The following year, debts owed by the company forced the sale of the foundry property before the Findlays could reopen the business. Not until 1869 could the Findlays find someone, W. A. Cherry, to lend them enough money to reopen their foundry. They also raised money by selling stock subscriptions as the Findlay Milling and Manufacturing Company.31
The Findlay foundry continued for many years, through good times, depressions, leases, and bankruptcies. In 1860 the estate of the original Robert Findlay controlled real estate worth $75,000 and personal property of $50,000. By 1875, Mary Findlay, his widow, willed her share of the property exclusively to her four youngest children, explaining that the older children had received so much when the Findlays "were better off." The Findlays put the Confederate buildings that they had criticized to good use until they burned in 1876. Shortly before Christopher Findlay's death in 1912, the family sold the last remaining building of the foundry complex. For several years it remained abandoned, but by the 1930s it had become a state farmers market and a shopping mall. On the building, the United Daughters of the Confederacy mounted a plaque identifying the building as the Findlay foundry where, as the Macon Arsenal, cannons had been made for the Confederacy. Rendered obsolete by time, this last building came down in 1955. Today a massive brick building housing Bibb County's Department of Family and Children's Services occupies the foundry site.32
The UDC's marker long ago disappeared. Today nothing identifies the site of the Robert Findlay Iron Works, Richard Cuyler's Macon Arsenal, or the place where, as in so many parts of the South, federal paperwork finally brought an end to the war.
Modern wars do not end with the last bullet or battle. Only with the resolution of the claims and legal obligations do these struggles finally come to an end. The great American conflict of 1861–1865, already a complex entity with secession, became even more confused with clashes between legalities, constitutional issues, and the realities of war. With the end of the fighting, the paper war achieved in the Reconstruction era a conclusion, not completely out of motives of retribution or of justice but a mutual desire between government agents and private citizens to achieve a resolution that allowed individuals to go on with their lives as the federal government, with its soldiers and bureaucrats, withdrew.
Robert Scott Davis, Jr., is director of the Family and Regional History Program, Wallace State College, Hanceville, Alabama. He has published articles in several historical journals, including Prologue (Spring 1994).
Notes
The author would like to acknowledge the help provided by Dr. Harriet Amos Doss, Mark Patterson, Shirley Knight, William F. Sherman, Michael Musick, and Keith Bohannon.
1 Michael P. Musick, “Civil War Records: An Introduction and Invitation, Prologue: Quarterly of the National Archives and Records Administration 27(Summer 1995): 149; James G. Randall, Constitutional Problems under Lincoln (2d ed., 1951), pp. 62–63, 65–67, 91, 221, 224; Frank W. Klingberg, The Southern Claims Commission (1955), p. 27; James M. McPherson, Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution (1990), pp. 30–31; Mark Grimsley, The Hard Hand of War: Union Military Policy Toward Southern Civilians, 1861–1865 (1995), pp. 8–11; Kenneth W. Munden and Henry Putney Beers, The Union: A Guide to Federal Archives Relating to the Civil War (1962, reprint 1986), pp. 153–154; and John Syrett, "The Confiscation Acts: Efforts at Reconstruction During the Civil War," (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 1971), pp. 10–12.
2 Walter A. Harris, "By Right of Conquest: The Confederate Laboratory at Macon," Georgia Bar Journal 10 (1948): 428–436; Mark Wahlgren Summers, The Era of Good Stealings (1993), p. 285; and Philip Cornelius Hayes, Shall We Pay Southern War Claims? (n.p., 1878).
3 Robert S. Davis, Jr., "Robert Findlay: Antebellum Iron Founder of Macon," Journal of Southwest Georgia History 3 (1995): 17–43; and Davis, "The Machine Tools of a Southern Iron Founder: Findlay's Steam Engine Manufactory," Tools & Technology 6 (1985): 25–28.
4 Weekly Georgia Telegraph (Macon), Feb. 25, May 18, Dec. 13, 1860, Feb. 21, 1862; Albany (Georgia) Patriot, May 17, 1860; and Bibb County Annual Returns Book M-2 (1865–1867), pp. 581, 584–585, microfilm roll 90/74, Superior Court Minute Book 10 (1861–1865), November Term 1861, pp. 117–125, microfilm roll 183/16, Georgia Department of Archives and History.
5 J. N. & C. D. Findlay to Richard M. Cuyler, Apr. 28, 1862, Letters Received 1862, Records of Confederate Ordnance, chap. IV, vol. 36, War Department Collection of Confederate Records, Record Group 109, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C. (hereinafter, records in the National Archives will be cited as RG ___, NARA); "How Our Industry Profits by the War," Debow's Review 8 (May–August 1862): 79; Weekly Georgia Telegraph, Apr. 3, 1861; Bibb County Annual Returns Book M-2 (1865–1867), p. 577, microfilm roll 90/74, Ga. Dept. of Archives and Hist.; Ida Young, Julius Gholson, and Clara Nell Hargrove, History of Macon, Georgia (1950), pp. 204, 251, 254; Clement Evans, ed., Confederate Military History Extended Edition (1897; reprinted and expanded, 1987) 7: 648–649; and Alphabetical Card File of Georgia Confederates, Ga. Dept. of Archives and Hist.
6 Richard M. Cuyler, W.O. 8,025, Mexican War Pensions, Preliminary Inventory of Pension Case Files, entry 12, Records of the Veterans Administration, RG 15, NARA; Cuyler to Isaac Toucey, Dec. 12, 1859, Letters Received By the Secretary of the Navy from Commissioned Officers Below the Rank of Commander and from Warrant Officers (“Officers’ Letters”), 1802–1884 (National Archives Microfilm Publication M148, roll 263), RG 45, NARA; and Richard M. Cuyler compiled service record, Compiled Service Records of Confederate General and Staff Officers, and Nonregimental Enlisted Men (National Archives Microfilm Publication M331, roll 69), RG 109, NARA.
7 Findlay lease, May 10, 1862, Cannon Ball House Museum, Macon, GA; Bibb County Annual Returns Book M-2 (1865–1867), p. 596, microfilm roll 90/74, Ga. Dept. of Archives and Hist.; and petition of J. N. and C. D. Findlay, n.d., in C. D. Findlay to Hugh McCulloch, May 16, 1866, Letters Relating to Claims Received in the Office of the Secretary of the Treasury, 1864–1887, file T-509 (National Archives Microfilm Publication M503, roll 41), RG 56, NARA; James C. Butler, Historical Record of Macon and Central Georgia (1888, reprint 1960), pp. 257–258; and Macon Daily Telegraph, May 26, 1862.
8James N. Findlay, Slaton's Company, Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers Who Served in Organizations from the State of Georgia (National Archives Microfilm Publication M266, roll 114), RG 109, NARA.
9 McCulloch to H. H. Buckley, Feb. 24, 1866, and McCulloch to H. B. Titus, July 24, 1866, Letters Sent by the Secretary of the Treasury Relating to Restricted Commercial Intercourse (“BE Series), 1861–1887, vol. 12, pp. 327, 340–341 (National Archives Microfilm Publication M513, roll 3), and vol. 14, pp. 211, 361 (M513, roll 4), RG 56, NARA; L. H. Ragan to McCulloch, May 21, 1866, and Findlay to McCulloch, May 16, 1866, Letters Relating to Claims Received in the Office of the Secretary of the Treasury, 1864–1887, file T-509 (M503, roll 41), and file T-537 (M503, roll 42), RG 56, NARA; A. L. Maxwell file, Confederate Papers Relating to Citizens or Business Firms (National Archives Microfilm Publication M346, roll 669), RG 109, NARA.
10 Macon Daily Telegraph, June 13, 1863; Larry J. Daniel and Riley W. Gunter, Confederate Cannon Foundries (1977), pp. 70–73; Frank E. Vandiver, Ploughshares into Swords: Josiah Gorgas and Confederate Ordnance (1952), p. 189; Butler, Historical Record of Macon, pp. 257–258; Richard M. Cuyler compiled service record, Compiled Service Records of Confederate General and Staff Officers, and Nonregimental Enlisted Men (M331, roll 69), RG 109, NARA; Findlay File, Confederate Papers Relating to Citizens or Business Firms (M346, roll 303), and cannon file, Macon Arsenal Papers, chap. IV, vol. 58, RG 109, NARA. See also Michael P. Musick, "War in an Age of Wonders: Civil War Arms and Equipment," Prologue: Quarterly of the National Archives and Records Administration 27 (Winter 1995): 348–368.
11 Bibb County Annual Returns Book M-2 (1865–1867), pp. 599, microfilm roll 90/74, Ga. Dept. of Archives and Hist.; petition of J. N. and C. D. Findlay, n.d., in C. D. Findlay to McCulloch, May 16, 1866, Letters Relating to Claims Received in the Office of the Secretary of the Treasury, 1864–1887, file T-509 (M503, roll 41), RG 56, NARA; Register of Correspondence, Confederate Adjutant and Inspector General Papers, chap. 1, vol. 57, RG 109, NARA; and Barry L. Zerby, Military Reference Branch, NARA, to author, Feb. 5, 1990.
12 Cuyler to W. McBurney, May 10, 1865, Cannon Ball House Museum, Macon, GA; Butler, Historical Record of Macon, p. 280.
13 Butler, Historical Record of Macon, pp. 281–282, 287; Diary of Franklin A. Rogers, First Wisconsin Cavalry Regiment, Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Battlefield Park, Chattanooga, TN; Charles P. Roland, The Confederacy (1960), pp. 17–18; James Pickett Jones, Yankee Blitzkrieg: Wilson's Raid Through Alabama and Georgia (1976), pp. 166–167; and John Harrison Wilson, Under the Old Flag (1912), 2: 335.
14 Macon Daily Telegraph, June 13, 1863, and July 2, 1864; Robert C. Black III, The Railroads of the Confederacy (1852), p. 261; Young et al., History of Macon, p. 221; "Reminiscences of F. H. Bozeman," Oct. 12, 1915, Civil War Miscellany Collection, AC 82-16, Middle Georgia Archives, Washington Memorial Library, Macon, GA; Susan Dabney Smedes, Memorials of a Southern Planter, ed. Fletcher M. Green (1965), pp. 205–206; C. D. Findlay to W. S. Winder, Dec. 19, 1863, F 61 1864, Letters Received by the Confederate Secretary of War, 1861–1865 (National Archives Microfilm Publication M437, roll 126), RG 109, NARA; and C. D. Findlay service record, Fifth Georgia Reserves, Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers Who Served in Organizations from the State of Georgia (M266, roll 200), RG 109, NA.
15 Petition of J. N. and C. D. Findlay, May 16, 1866, Letters Relating to Claims Received in the Office of the Secretary of the Treasury, 1864–1887, file T-509 (M503, roll 41), RG 56, NARA. For the Mobile incident, see Noah Andre Trudeau, Out of the Storm: The End of the Civil War, April–June 1865 (1994), pp. 324–334.
16 Bibb County Annual Returns Book N (1867–1868), p. 347, microfilm roll 90/75, Ga. Dept. of Archives and Hist.
17 Weekly Georgia Telegraph, Dec. 13, 1859; Georgia vol. 3, pp. 155, 179, 241n, R. G. Dun Collection, Baker Library, Harvard University Graduate School of Business Administration; Internal Revenue Assessment Lists for Georgia, 1865–1866 (National Archives Microfilm Publication M762, roll 4), RG 58, NARA; J. C. Judson, A Directory for the City of Macon (1866), p. 23; and C. H. Benedict & Co. v. Findlay & Mangum, U.S. Circuit Court, Southern District of Georgia, Savannah Division, Records of District Courts of the United States, RG 21, NARA–Southeast Region, East Point, GA.
18 Davis Tillson to W. W. Dean, May 12, 1866, Land Records: Orders Restoring Property, entry 94, box 14, and Monthly Reports on Property, entry 90, box 7, Records of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, RG 105, NARA; Endorsements Sent 1865–1866, vol. I (20), pp. 214–216, Register of Incoming Correspondence, vol. I, Records of the Assistant Commissioner for the State of Georgia, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (National Archives Microfilm Publication M798, rolls 8, 11), RG 105, NARA; McCulloch to Buckley, Mar. 24, 1866, and McCulloch to Titus, July 24, 1866, Letters Sent by the Secretary of the Treasury Relating to Restricted Commercial Intercourse (“BE” Series), 1861–1887, vol. 12, pp. 327, 340–341 (M513, roll 3), and vol. 14, pp. 211, 361 (M513, roll 4), RG 56, NARA; "M," nos. 92, 96, Register of Letters Received, entry 323, "W," no. 858, entry 20, Records of the Bureau of Ordnance, RG 156, NARA; and H. O. Webb to M. O. Wickersham, July 25, 1865, 1258H 1865, Letters Received by the Office of the Adjutant General (Main Series), 1861–1870 (National Archives Microfilm Publication M619, roll 365), Records of the Adjutant General’s Office, RG 94, NARA. For background on Croxton, see Rex Miller, "John Thomas Croxton: Scholar, Lawyer, Soldier, Military Governor, Newspaperman, Diplomat, and Mason," Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 74 (1976): 281–299.
19 Randall, Constitutional Problems under Lincoln, pp. 225–227, 236, 324, 327–328, 340; Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877 (1988), pp. 183–185; Munden and Beers, The Union, pp. 178–179, 184–185; O. O. Howard to Davis Tillson, Mar. 2, 1866, Letters Sent, vol. 1, p. 97, Records of the Assistant Commissioner for the State of Georgia, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (M798, roll 11), RG 105, NARA; and D. W. Flagler to A. B. Dyer, Sept. 6, 1866, Findlay claim file, 1258 H 1865, Letters Received by the Office of the Adjutant General (Main Series), 1861–1870 (M619, roll 365), RG 94, NARA. The Commissioner of Customs should not be confused with the Customs Service, a separate agency of the United States Treasury. The Macon Arsenal/Findlay Foundry records sent to the Commissioner of Customs do not survive in the Official and Miscellaneous Letters Received, entry 278, Records of the General Accounting Office, RG 217, and no correspondence was found in Letters Sent by the Commissioner of Customs Relating to Captured and Abandoned Property, 1860–1875 (National Archives National Archives Microfilm Publication M498), RG 217. Rebecca A. Livingston and Richard W. Peuser, National Archives Reference Branch, to author, Dec. 16, 1996, and William F. Sherman, Civil Records Branch, to same, Apr. 18, 1995.
20 Klingberg, The Southern Claims Commission, p. 24; McCulloch to Buckley, Feb. 24, 1866, and McCulloch to Titus, July 24, 1866, Letters Sent by the Secretary of the Treasury Relating to Restricted Commercial Intercourse (“BE” Series), 1861–1887, vol. 12, pp. 327, 340–341 (M513, roll 3), and vol. 14, pp. 211, 361 (M513, roll 4), RG 56, NARA; Findlay to McCulloch, May 16, 1866, Letters Relating to Claims Received in the Office of the Secretary of the Treasury, 1864–1887, file T-509 (M503, roll 41), RG 56, NARA; Endorsements Sent 1865–1866, vol. I (20), pp. 214–216, Records of the Assistant Commissioner for the State of Georgia, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (M798, roll 8), Register of Incoming Correspondence, vol. I (M798, roll 11), RG 105, NARA; and D. W. Flagler to A. B. Dyer, Sept. 6, 1866, Findlay claim file, 1258 H 1865, Letters Received by the Office of the Adjutant General (Main Series), 1861–1870 (M619, roll 365), NARA. The Findlay "Fourth of July Claim" is missing from the files of the Quartermaster General in Record Group 92 of the National Archives. Munden and Beers, The Union, pp. 289–290; and Tod Butler, Military Records Branch, NARA, to author, Feb. 29, 1988. On the Findlays' failure to apply for pardons, see Carolyn N. Rowe, Individual Pardon Applications (1996).
21 Randall, Constitutional Problems under Lincoln, pp. 275–276, 333–334; Klingberg, The Southern Claims Commission, p. 35; Munden and Beers, The Union, p. 182; and Armstrong's Foundry v. The United States, 6 Wall 766–77, Supreme Court Reports. Some of the paperwork on the restoration of the Findlay Iron Works was filed among the "cotton claims" in entry 371, General Records of the Department of the Treasury, RG 56, although the Findlay claim did not involve cotton. For information on Civil War claims brought before the Treasury Department, see the general index to claims in entry 366 of RG 56.
22 Randall, Constitutional Problems under Lincoln, pp. 286, 288–289, 295, 313, 333–334; Paul A. Cimbala, "Federal Confiscation," in Encyclopedia of the Confederacy ed. Richard N. Current (1994), 1: 389–391; Patricia M. L. Lucie, "Confiscation: Constitutional Crossroads," Civil War History 23 (1977): 307–321; Grimsley, The Hard Hand of War, pp. 14–15, 213; Stephen V. Ash, When the Yankees Came: Conflict and Chaos in the Occupied South, 1861–1865 (1995), pp. 54, 56, 150–151; Harris, "By Right of Conquest," pp. 428–436; and Syrett, "The Confiscation Acts," pp. 17, 158.
23 Randall, Constitutional Problems under Lincoln, pp. 333–334; Harris, "By Right of Conquest," Georgia Bar Journal 10 (1948): 428–436. Bibb County Annual Returns, Book N (1867–1868), pp. 345, 349, microfilm roll 90/75, Ga. Dept. of Archives and Hist.; Findlay claim file, 1258 H 1865, file 616 R 1867, Letters Received by the Office of the Adjutant General (Main Series), 1861–1870 (M619, rolls 365 and 586–587), RG 94, NARA; Endorsements Sent 1865–1866, vol. I, pp. 214–216, Register of Incoming Correspondence, vol. I, pp. 119, 146–149, 197, 321, General Orders, pp. 183–184, Records of the Assistant Commissioner for the State of Georgia, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (M798, rolls 8, 11, and 34), RG 105, NARA; McCulloch to Buckley, Feb. 24, 1866, and McCulloch to Titus, July 24, 1866, Letters Sent by the Secretary of the Treasury Relating to Restricted Commercial Intercourse (“BE” Series), 1861–1887 (M513, rolls 3 and 4), RG 56, NARA; Findlay to McCulloch, May 16, 1866, Letters Received in the Office of the Secretary of the Treasury, 1864–1887 (M503, rolls 41 and roll 43), RG 56, NARA; "M," nos. 92, 96, Register of Letters Received, entry 323, "W," no. 858, entry 20, Records of the Bureau of Ordnance, RG 156, NARA; and J. N. and C. D. Findlay File, Confederate Papers Relating to Citizens or Business Firms (M346, roll 303), RG 109, NARA.
24 Charles B. Dew, Ironmaker to the Confederacy: Joseph R. Anderson and the Tredegar Iron Works (1966), pp. 294–302.
25 Titus to McCulloch, June 19, 1866, McCulloch to Titus, July 24, 1866, and J. F. Hurley to N. Sargent, Sept. 8, 1866, Letters Sent by the Secretary of the Treasury Relating to Restricted Commercial Intercourse (“BE” Series), 1861–1887, vol. 12, pp. 327, 340–341 (M513, roll 3), and vol. 14, pp. 211, 361 (M513, roll 4), RG 56, NARA; and Bibb County Deed Book R-17 (1863–1866), p. 688, microfilm roll 181/21, Ga. Dept. of Archives and Hist. Christopher named two of his sons after Cuyler: Cuyler and Richard Findlay.
26 Randall, Constitutional Problems under Lincoln, pp. 317–318, 322–323; and Records of Direct Tax Payments to the United States Government, RG 8-1-24, Ga. Dept. of Archives and Hist. Also see Internal Revenue Assessment Lists of Georgia, 1865–1866 (M762, rolls 1–4), RG 58, NARA; and Direct Tax Assessments, Georgia, 1866–1872, RG 58, NARA–Southeast Region.
27 Bibb County Annual Returns Book M-2 (1865–1867), pp. 367, microfilm roll 90/74, and Annual Returns Book P (1869–1871), p. 400, microfilm roll 90/77, Deed Book HH-33 (1882–1884), pp. 257–266, microfilm roll 181/30, Ga. Dept. of Archives and Hist. The Findlay family only recently donated their records relating to the Confederate and Federal occupation of their former foundry to the Cannon Ball House Museum, Macon, GA.
28 George P. Perros, Legislative Records Division, NARA, to author, Aug. 28, 1985; Munden and Beers, The Union, pp. 125–126; Klingberg, The Southern Claims Commission, pp. 32–33; Sarah Larson, "Records of the Southern Claims Commission," Prologue: Journal of the National Archives and Records Administration 12 (Winter 1980): 208; and T. Peactree, Docket Section, U.S. Court of Claims, to author, Mar. 17, 1987. For records of the Commissioners of Claims, see Gary B. Mills, Southern Loyalists in the Civil War: The Southern Claims Commission (1994); Klingberg, The Southern Claims Commission; and Munden and Beers, The Union, pp. 126–128. See also Commissioners of Claims, Summary Reports in all Cases Reported to Congress as Disallowed . . . (1871–1882) and List of Abstracts of Information Concerning Confederate Citizens, entry 316, Treasury Department Collection of Confederate Records, RG 365, NARA. Claims by unionists for property lost in Tennessee and West Virginia prior to May 10, 1871, were usually brought before the Quartermaster General and Commissary General of the Army. See Klingberg, The Southern Claims Commission, pp. 63–64.
29 Endorsements Sent, 1865–1866, vol. I (20), pp. 214–216, and Register of Incoming Correspondence, vol. I, Records of the Assistant Commissioner for the State of Georgia, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (M798, rolls 8 and 11), RG 105, NARA; and Mary A. DeCrecio, "Confederate Sequestration," in Encyclopedia of the Confederacy, 1: 388–389.
30 Robert S. Davis, Jr., "The Noble Foundry: Cannon Makers to the Confederacy," Northwest Georgia Historical and Genealogical Society Quarterly 22 (1990): 4–7; and James, John W., Samuel, and William Noble Claim, Barred and Disallowed Case Files of the Southern Claims Commission, 1871–1880 (National Archives Microfilm Publication M1407, fiche 3526), Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, RG 233, NARA.
31 Georgia, vol. 3, pp. 155, 179, 241n, R. G. Dun Collection, Baker Library; and Rose Hill Cemetery Records, microfilm roll 77/47, and Bibb County Deed Book S-18 (1866–1868), pp. 315, 526, 632–633, 697, 711, 714, microfilm roll 181/2, Ga. Dept. of Archives and Hist. Curiously, Robert Findlay did not make his eldest son James N. Findlay a partner until the next youngest son, Christopher, became old enough to manage the firm. Christopher, rather than his older brother James, served as Robert Findlay's administrator. James supposedly contracted the fatal case of smallpox from former slave women. He had written to the President of the United States warning of a planned slave insurrection. Laura Louise Vance, East Point, GA, interview with Robert S. Davis, Jr., Feb. 10, 1984, written notes in the author's possession; and James N. Findlay to Andrew Johnson, Aug. 9, 1865, EB 12 Provost 2220, Registers of Letters Received by the Secretary of War from the President, Executive Department, and War Department Bureaus, 1862–1870 (National Archives Microfilm Publication M493, roll 7), Records of the Office of the Secretary of War, RG 107, NARA.
32 Will of Mary H. Findlay, Oct. 12, 1875, Will Book C (1870–1891), p. 158, microfilm roll 89/70, Ga. Dept. of Archives and Hist.; Bibb County, p. 430, Eighth Census of the United States 1860 (National Archives Microfilm Publication M653, roll 111), Records of the Bureau of the Census, RG 29, NARA; and Macon Daily Telegraph, July 29, 1876.