Private Property Confiscation
The First Confiscation Act, which was essentially a pretext for liberating slaves by taking them as property, was passed by the Union congress in August 1861. The Act of Sequestration, which declared anybody disloyal to the Confederacy might have their property seized by the government, was approved by the Confederate congress as reprisal in the same month. Although this was meant to facilitate the seizure of Union property, things quickly got out of hand because government officers were forced to rely on local, sometimes grievance-driven evidence to determine who was disloyal.
Eastern Tennessee was the part of the country that suffered the most from this approach. Conflicts with the Confederate authority were all but inevitable because this region was staunchly pro-Union (it voted against secession by a margin greater than 2 to 1). The confiscation of numerous dwellings in this already destitute area enraged the locals to the point that on November 8, 1861, groups of enraged Southerners set fire to four crucial railroad bridges.
Yet Eastern Tennessee wasn't by itself. By the end of the war, North Carolina had also lost millions of dollars' worth of property. Many of the government workers who took the property didn't even keep account of the confiscation, which resulted in a significant quantity of "lost" property.
