after the declaration of peace or recognition of the Southern Confederacy." These bonds remained in Mr. Payne's hands, becoming, of course, entirely worthless, and long after the war he gave to his favorite granddaughter enough of them to paper her bedroom or boudoir. What became of the rest I do not know. Mr. Payne's export business was, of course, stopped at once by the Federal blockade. The planters who owed him were unable to pay. The Federal troops later on seized his plantations and destroyed most of the sugar, cotton press houses, and even the fences. His great home in New Orleans, which was crowded with works of art and vertu accumulated by years of traveling and careful selections in Europe, was seized by the Federals and used as a residence by some of the officers. Much of the silver, paintings and bric-a-brac was shipped to New England by Butler and other officers to their homes. This is probably the origin of the story of General Butler and the spoons. They were never recovered, and it was many years before Mr. Payne regained possession of his home in New Orleans.
Within the two years after the beginning of the war Mr. Payne found himself stripped of every earthly possession of value and in debt over $700,000. He bravely went to work to pay this debt off, and after some sixteen or eighteen years of hard work he succeeded in paying it all. When I last saw him he was ninty-four or ninty-six years old, and was at his office and dealing in cotton every day. I went in to pay my respects, and told him I had come to New Orleans to buy a team of horses. He at once jumped up and took his cane and, with the beautiful manner which he had, insisted on going with me to see that I fell into the hands of the right man and was properly treated. He was a man of the purest life and most beautiful spirit, and his manners were quite perfect. He died quietly in his own home in the care of his daughter at the age of ninety-seven, and out of debt. He was probably at the outbreak of the war the second richest man in America, certainly the richest man in the Southern States, his slave property alone having been valued at $4,000,000.
Rosehart was named from a great heart-shaped rose bed between the house and the boulevard some seventy-eight feet in diameter and containing 300 rosebuds, in which we took great
