Believing that “we cannot carry on war and trade with a people at the same time,” Sherman and Grant did their best to stop the illicit cotton trade through Memphis and western Tennessee in 1862.60 The two generals issued a stream of regulations to tighten the granting of permits for legal trade, banished southerners who refused to take the oath and imprisoned some who violated it, required that all payments for cotton be made in U.S. greenbacks (instead of gold that could be converted into guns at Nassau), and tried to prevent the access of unscrupulous northern traders to Memphis.
