Kenneth:

The land sale you describe was actually very common. In essence folks looked to find a friendly buyer to protect their property from confiscation during the war. Its a not very well known or widely described tactic, but occurred all over the state. Radical Rebuplicans or other ner-do- wells would force foreclosure by local banks on property and sometimes they would also own the bank. Pretty straight forward but another scheme was to force local tax collectors to put property up for sale on the courthouse steps for unpaid property taxes... Well if you were fighting for the south and happened to be in Mississippi when it came time to pay taxes, you were deliquent. Also if the collector/assesor wanted to, he could appraise the property at a value he knew the taxes would be unaffordable, same result. As this behavior and scam got to be more well known, any number of property owners "sold" their property to "friendly interests" to protect the property from such shenanigans. Local judges by the nature of their position were able to do these transactions both good and bad. Many a moderate Rebuplican in SE Missouri ran interference for their neighbors just to frustrate their political foes. Many a lawsuit was heard in the post war period where property was "seized" or bought off the courthouse steps without the original property owners knowledge and they returned to make their claim of legal misadventure. It still is interesting reading in some of the abstract and title searches.

John R.