Prior to the Civil War, the Scott family enjoyed all the benefits of wealth. For example, Rebecca and the chidren made the Grand Tour of Europe and the Middle East, as was customary in the education of privileged American children North and South. During the Civil War, Rebecca and her sons lived comfortably on Colonel Nixon's cotton plantation, waited on by black slaves. The Colonel continued to cultivate and harvest the cotton, although the Union naval blockade of Mobile prevented the planters from shipping their product to the mills in the United Kingdom where it was spun into cloth. The cotton bales were piled up on wharves up and down the Alabama River waiting for a resolution of the war that would open up trade again.
After the last two Scotts departed for the North, the war came to an end with the surrender of Lee and Joseph E. Johnson's armies and the fall of Richmond to the Union forces. Sometime after that, camp followers from the North descended upon the Nixon plantation, looted it, burned the manor house to the ground, and set fire to four years' crop of cotton on the wharf.
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