Annotation
[1] ALS, IHi. General Banks replied on March 26, 1864:
``Your letter relating to the case of Mrs. J. Q. A. Fellows, who was dispossessed of her House by order of the Treasury Agent in New Orleans, was given to me by Mrs Fellows, before I left New Orleans. The case is as follows:---All the real estate in New Orleans belonging to active Rebels was seized by the military authorities as far as it could be identified. It was all made to pay rent to the government, when not in use by the government itself: and carefully protected, until the courts under the law of confiscation should decide the rights of the claimants for repossession. Pending this decision, by an order from the war department, I turned over all this property in the Department, Plantations and other estates to Honble. B. F. Flanders, Treasury agent, who assumed possession, collected the rents, controlled the occupancy, and when it seemed to him proper, restored these estates . . . to the Rebels who claimed them:---the cases still pending in the District court of the United States. The only control over any of this property that I have relates to that which is required for miliary uses. The rest is under the exclusive control of the Treasury Agent, and I am required to assist with military force, the execution of any order he gives concerning the disposition of this property by the same general order No: 88 of the War Department.
``Mr: Fellows is an honorable and perfectly loyal man, as thoroughly so as Mr: Flanders or any man in New Orleans, but he is weak enough to believe that the constitution of Louisiana can be restored as it was. . . . He was active in the Riddell election which took place when I was in Texas. . . . There can be . . . no other cause for the ejectment of his family, than that this course was politically unacceptable to Mr: Flanders, and his friends. He assigned this house to an officer of the army who was to pay rent as Mr Fellows had done, and made a demand upon me in writing for the support I was required to give him by war Dept: orders No: 88, which with the greatest reluctance I gave him---hence the visit of Mrs Fellows to Washington. She had a good case, but it concerns the Treasury officers, not the war Department. When she presented me your letter directing an investigation of the case, I immediately requested Brigadier General [James] Bowen to present the case in person to Mr Flanders, and requested his attention to your request. He replied that when Colonel Dudley, the occupant surrendered the house, he would assign it to Mrs Fellows, and not till then. Colonel Dudley is now commanding a Brigade of Cavalry in front of the enemy here It is very hard