Maine Memory Network

Moses Bates, superintending and financial agent of the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Baton Rouge, wrote about the need for cotton to keep prisoners employed and to bring in income for the prison.

He told Shepley that meeting the prison's needs required "a positive order forbidding any officer or private in the army from engaging in the cotton trade, and prohibiting the Army transports from freighting cotton until the Penitentiary is supplied."