The turmoil of four years of civil war in the United States of America spawned a wealth of lost treasures and lost treasure tales. At a time when banks were generally not secure or insured, if there were any banks at all in the area, people hid their money and their heirlooms at their farms, plantations and homes. Many family fortunes were lost and not recovered due to the deaths and confusion of war(Lawrence H. Gipson, 1918).
Bands of deserters and looters scoured the countryside for prey and booty. Jennison's Union Kansas Jayhawkers and Quantrill's Confederate guerrillas depopulated many areas on the Missouri-Kansas border, leaving only lonely chimneys to mark the site of once prosperous farms and communities. Bands of guerrillas and outlaws under men like Joseph Sanders in Alabama and Florida, Jim and John Reynolds in Colorado and New Mexico, William C. Quantrill in Kansas, Missouri and Texas, Beanie Short and Sue Munday in Kentucky, Alf Bolin in Missouri, and Colonel John S. Mosby in Virginia left behind legends of hidden loot as part of their legacy.
General William Tecumseh Sherman's Union army devastated plantations and towns in Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina. Confederate General John Hunt Morgan's raiders looted parts of Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio. Hundreds of raids and campaigns destroyed the Confederacy and border states. Everywhere the armies marched the population was forced to hide their valuables from looters eager to profit from war.
As the Confederacy relied more and more on blockade-runners to bring in vital supplies and luxury goods, the Union Navy tightened its grip on the blockade of the South. Many blockade-runners ran onto reefs and beaches to escape capture and to deliver the goods. Some of the blockade-runners were said to have carried gold to pay for the transactions between the Confederacy and the mostly British merchants in the trade................
