1. Under the Act of March 12, 1863, commonly called the
"Abandoned or Captured Property Act," it is not necessary that a
party preferring his claim in the Court of Claims for the proceeds
of property taken and sold under it to prove, in addition to his
own loyalty, the loyalty of the persons from whom he bought the
property taken and sold, the property having been purchased by him
in good faith and without intent to defraud the government or
anyone else.
2. Notwithstanding the 4th section of the Act of June 25, 1868,
the vendors of the property so taken and sold are competent
witnesses, on a claim preferred by the owners in the Court of
Claims, in supporting such claim if they themselves never had any
title, claim, or right against the government, and are not
interested in the suit.
3. As respects rights intended to be secured by the
above-mentioned Abandoned or Captured Property Act, "the
suppression of the rebellion" is to be regarded as having taken
place on the 20th of August, 1866, on which day the President by
proclamation declared it suppressed in Texas "and throughout the
whole of the United States of America," that same date being
apparently adopted by Congress in a statute continuing a certain
rate of pay to soldiers in the army "for three years after the
close of the rebellion, as announced by the President of the United
States by proclamation bearing date August 20, 1866."
4. Under the Captured or Abandoned Property Act, the Court of
Claims may render judgment not only generally for the claimant, but
for a specific sum as due to him.
Congress, by Act of July 13, 1861, [
Footnote 1] passed soon after the outbreak of the late
rebellion, enacted that it might be
Page 76 U. S. 57
lawful for the President by proclamation to declare that the
inhabitants of any state or part of a state where such insurrection
was existing were in a state of such insurrection, and that
thereupon (with a proviso that the President might, to a limited
extent and under regulations to be prescribed by the Secretary of
the Treasury, license it) all
"commercial intercourse by and between the same and citizens
thereof, and citizens of the rest of the United States, should
cease, and be unlawful so long as such condition of hostility
should continue."
By a subsequent Act of July 17, 1862, [
Footnote 2] it was enacted:
"That to insure the speedy termination of the present rebellion,
it shall be the duty of the President of the United States to cause
the seizure of all the estate and property, money, stocks, credits,
and effects of the persons hereinafter named in this section and to
apply and use the same and the proceeds thereof for the support of
the army of the United States."
The enumeration of persons includes several classes of persons,
and the section concludes by declaring that
"All sales, transfers, or conveyances of any such property shall
be null and void."
Another section goes on to say:
"And if any person within any state or territory of the United
States other than those named as aforesaid, after the passage of
this act, being engaged in armed rebellion against the government
of the United States or aiding or abetting such rebellion, shall
not within sixty days after public warning and proclamation duly
given and made by the President of the United States cease to aid,
countenance, and abet such rebellion and return to his allegiance
to the United States, all the estate and property, money, stocks,
and credits of such persons shall be liable to seizure as
aforesaid, and it shall be the duty of the President to seize and
use them as aforesaid, or the proceeds thereof.
And all sales,
transfers, or conveyances of any such property,
Page 76 U. S. 58
after the expiration of the said sixty days from the date of
such warning and proclamation shall be null and void."
By a still later act, one passed when the armies of the United
States were beginning to march into the rebellious regions -- the
Act, namely, of March 12, 1863 [
Footnote 3] -- entitled "An act to provide for the
collection of abandoned property &c., in insurrectionary
districts within the United States," it was provided as
follows:
"And person claiming to have been the owner of any such
abandoned or captured property may,
at any time within two
years after the suppression of the rebellion, prefer his claim
to the proceeds thereof in the Court of Claims, and on proof to the
satisfaction of said court (1) of his ownership of said property,
(2) of his right to the proceeds thereof, and (3) that he has never
given any aid or comfort to the present rebellion, receive the
residue of such proceeds, after the deduction of any purchase money
which may have been paid, together with the expense of
transportation and sale of said property and any other lawful
expenses attending the disposition thereof."
The time mentioned in this act as that within which a party
might prefer his claim, "any time," to-wit, "within two years after
the suppression of the rebellion," was one which, as events in the
conclusion of the rebellion subsequently proved, was not to common
apprehension entirely definite. As matter of fact, rebellious
districts were brought under the control of the government in
different parts of the South at different times, and in April,
1865, the armies of the rebel generals Lee and Johnston
surrendered, their surrender being followed by that of Taylor's
army on the 4th of May, and by that of Kirby Smith's on the 26th of
the same month. With this last-named surrender, all armed
resistance in the least formidable to the authority of the
government ceased, and as
matter of fact the rebellion was
prostrate, though rebel cruisers continued their depredations on
our commerce, and though there were, in Texas and elsewhere,
Page 76 U. S. 59
some wandering bands of robbers. Still, after Kirby Smith's
surrender May 26, 1865, intercourse, commercial and other, between
the inhabitants of the different sections began to resume itself;
trade opened, more or less, on its ancient basis, remittances were
made, debts were paid or compromised, and bills of exchange were
drawn between the inhabitants of the two sections.
The courts which in each section had been closed to the
inhabitants of the other were soon opened, in form at least. The
Court of Claims assumed jurisdiction of cases under the Abandoned
Property Act, and between the termination of actual hostilities and
the date fixed by the court below as the legal suppression of the
rebellion (20 August, 1866), thirty causes were commenced in that
court under the act and jurisdiction of them entertained.
In this Court, the causes pending at the beginning of the war to
which inhabitants of the states in rebellion were parties and which
had been suspended and postponed from term to term during the
continuance of the war were, at the December Term 1865, by the
order of the Court, called and heard in their order on the calendar
or on special days to which they were assigned.
Post Offices were reopened, [
Footnote 4] the letting of contracts for mail service
throughout the rebellious states resumed, [
Footnote 5] and the revenue system extended throughout
the same states. [
Footnote
6]
The federal courts, too, were reopened in the insurrectionary
districts.
But notwithstanding all this, the late rebellious states were
not politically restored to the Union, nor were many of them so
restored till long afterwards. On the contrary, many of them were
kept under military government in virtue of statutes of the United
States known as the reconstruction acts. And the complete
status ante bellum was not yet visible.
So far as executive recognitions of the date when the rebellion
was to be assumed to have been "suppressed" were
Page 76 U. S. 60
concerned, the government issued three proclamations, one dated
June 13, 1865, [
Footnote 7] in
relation to the suppression of the rebellion in Tennessee; another,
dated April 2, 1866, [
Footnote
8] in regard to the suppression of the rebellion in the States
of Georgia,
South Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, Alabama,
Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Florida,
and the third,
dated August 20, 1866, [Footnote
9] declaring the rebellion suppressed in Texas "and throughout
the whole of the United States of America."
And an Act of Congress passed March 2, 1867, [
Footnote 10] declared that a previous act
of Congress, passed June 20, 1864, [
Footnote 11] to increase the pay of soldiers in the army
should be
"continued in full force and effect for three years after
the close of the rebellion, as announced by the President of
the United States by proclamation bearing date August 20,
1866."
In this state of enactments, proclamation, and fact, one
Anderson, a free man of color, possessed of real and personal
property, by occupation a drayman and cotton sampler, and a
resident of Charleston, South Carolina, preferred, on the
5th
of June, 1868, to the Court of Claims, under the provisions of
the already-mentioned "Abandoned Property Act" of 1863, as it was
familiarly styled, a claim for the residue of the proceeds of some
cotton.
Twenty days after Anderson preferred his claim to the Court of
Claims -- that is to say, on the 25th June, 1868 -- Congress passed
a law [
Footnote 12]
"That no plaintiff, or claimant, or any person, from or through
whom any such plaintiff or claimant derives his alleged title,
claim or right against the United States, or any person interested
in any such title, claim, or right, shall be a competent witness in
the Court of Claims in supporting any such title, claim, or
right."
When the matter came on afterwards to be heard, Anderson proved
this case (proving it, in part, by two persons, the one named
Fleming, and the other Doucen, who resided within the
insurrectionary district, and from whom he had
Page 76 U. S. 61
bought the cotton), the case, to-wit, that he had bought part of
the cotton in the early part of the war, and the rest in the autumn
of 1864, before the evacuation of Charleston by the rebels; that on
the 5th March, 1865, the military authorities of the United States
being now in possession of Charleston, he reported it to them, and
that on the 5th of April following, it was removed under their
direction from its place of deposit to the Charleston custom house,
whence it was shipped to New York, and there sold for the United
States and the gross proceeds paid into the Treasury, the net
proceeds amounting to $6,723. The loyalty of Fleming and Doucen,
from whom the cotton was purchased, was not proven, but that of
Anderson was, and that he had never given any aid or comfort to the
rebellion, or to the persons who were engaged in it.
In the Court of Claims, the counsel for the government urged
four principal grounds of objection to the allowance of the
claim.
1st. That the action was barred by the limitation in the statute
of March 12, 1863.
2d. That if in this they were mistaken, still that the suit must
fail because the persons who sold the property to Anderson, being
residents of an insurrectionary district, were unable, under the
state of the law on this subject, to convey title to him.
3d. That the vendors of the cotton in question were incompetent
witnesses, by reason of the Act of 25 June, 1865, and that their
testimony should have been excluded.
4th. That the court had no authority to render judgment for a
specific sum, its power being limited to the point of deciding
whether the claimant was entitled to recover at all, leaving the
amount to be determined by computation by the proper officers of
the Treasury Department.
But the Court of Claims held:
1st. That the claim was not barred by the limitation
mentioned
2d. That the cotton had not been
ipso facto forfeited
because it had belonged to persons resident in the
insurrectionary
Page 76 U. S. 62
district, no proceedings having been instituted to confiscate
the same as the property of such persons.
3d. That the vendors of the property were not incompetent
witnesses.
4th. That upon the whole case the claimant was entitled to
judgment for the net proceeds as proved.
The correctness of these several rulings was the matter now here
for review.
Page 76 U. S. 64
MR. JUSTICE DAVIS delivered the opinion of the Court.
Whether the positions taken by the learned counsel of the United
States in the court below and maintained in this Court also are
well taken or not depends on the construction to be given the act
concerning abandoned and captured property and the 4th section of
the Act of June 25, 1868.
The Act of March 12, 1863, in one particular inaugurated a
policy different from that which induced the passage of other
measures rendered necessary by the obstinacy and magnitude of the
resistance to the supremacy of the national authority. To overcome
this resistance and to carry on the war successfully, the entire
people of the states in rebellion were considered as public
enemies; but it is familiar history that there were many persons
whom necessity required should be treated as enemies who were
friends, and adhered with fidelity to the national cause. This
class of people, compelled to live among those who were combined to
overthrow the federal authority and liable at all times to be
stripped of their property by the usurped government, were
Page 76 U. S. 65
objects of sympathy to the loyal people of this country, and
their unfortunate condition was appreciated by Congress.
During the progress of the war, it was expected that our forces
in the field would capture property, and, as the enemy retreated,
that property would remain in the country without apparent
ownership, which should be collected and disposed of. In this
condition of things, Congress acted. While providing for the
disposition of this captured and abandoned property, Congress
recognized the status of the loyal Southern people, and
distinguished between property owned by them and the property of
the disloyal. It was not required to do this, for all the property
obtained in this manner could by proper proceedings have been
appropriated to the necessities of the war. But Congress did not
think proper to do this. In a spirit of liberality, it constituted
the government a trustee for so much of this property as belonged
to the faithful Southern people, and while directing that all of it
should be sold and its proceeds paid into the Treasury, gave to
this class of persons an opportunity, at any time within two years
after the suppression of the rebellion, to bring their suit in the
Court of Claims and establish their right to the proceeds of that
portion of it which they owned, requiring from them nothing but
proof of loyalty and ownership.
It is true the liberality of Congress in this regard was not
confined to Southern owners, for the law is general in its terms,
and protects all loyal owners; but the number of Northern citizens
who could, in any state of the case, be
bona fide owners
of this kind of property was necessarily few, and their condition,
although recognized in the law, did not induce Congress to
incorporate in it the provision we are considering.
The measure, in itself of great beneficence, was practically
important only in its application to the loyal Southern people, and
sympathy for their situation doubtless prompted Congress to pass
it. It is in view of this state of things, as it is the duty of a
court in construing a law to consider the circumstances under which
it was passed and the object to
Page 76 U. S. 66
be accomplished by it, that we are called upon to apply this
particular provision to the facts of this case. The loyalty of the
claimant is not questioned, but his ownership, in the sense of the
law, of the property in dispute is denied.
It is not denied that he purchased the property in good faith
for value and with no purpose to defraud the government or anyone
else, but it is said the persons from whom he bought resided in
South Carolina, were presumed to be rebels, and were therefore
prohibited from selling.
This is an attempt to import from the confiscation law of July
17, 1862, into this law a disability which it does not contain. If
this could be done, but very little benefit would accrue to the
loyal people of the South from the privilege conferred on them by
the law in question. It is well known that nearly all the Southern
people were engaged in the rebellion, and that those who were not
thus employed furnished the exception, rather than the rule. Few as
they were, the necessities of life required that they should buy
and sell, and equally so that their trading should be free and
unrestricted.
This condition of things Congress was aware of, and if it had
been its purpose to limit the privilege in controversy to the loyal
citizen who happened to acquire his property from another person
equally loyal, they would have said so. But Congress had no such
narrow policy in view. It policy in the matter was broad and
comprehensive, and embraced within its range all persons who had
adhered to the Union. It treated all alike, and did not
discriminate in favor of the person who could trace his title
through a loyal source and against him who was not so fortunate. It
did not consider the loyal planter, who raised his own cotton and
rice, as entitled to any more protection than the dweller in the
cities and towns who lived by traffic and bought where he could buy
the cheapest.
The confiscation law, however, was not intended to apply to a
person occupying the status of this claimant. The purpose which
Congress had in view in passing that law was very different from
that which induced it, in the Captured
Page 76 U. S. 67
and Abandoned Property Act, to extend a privilege to the loyal
owner. The confiscation law concerns rebels and their property, was
intended as a measure to cripple their resources, and insofar as it
claims the right to seize and condemn their property as a
punishment for their crimes, recognizes that certain legal
proceedings are necessary to do so. But by the act in question, the
government yielded its right to seize and condemn the property
which it took in the enemy's country if it belonged to a faithful
citizen, and substantially said to him,
"We are obliged to take the property of friend and foe alike,
which we will sell and deposit the proceeds of in the Treasury, and
if at any time within two years after the suppression of the
rebellion you prove satisfactorily that of the property thus taken
you owned a part, we will pay you the net amount received from its
sale."
The two acts cannot be construed
in pari materia. The
one is penal, the other remedial; the one claims a right, the other
concedes a privilege.
It is said the vendors of the cotton were incompetent witnesses
by reason of the 4th section of the Act of June 25, 1868, which
declares that no plaintiff or claimant, or any person from or
through whom any such plaintiff or claimant derives his alleged
title, claim, or right against the United States, or any person
interested in any such title, claim, or right, shall be a competent
witness in the Court of Claims in supporting any such title, claim,
or right.
There are three classes of persons who are by this section
prohibited from testifying. The claimant cannot testify, nor can
the person who, after a claim has accrued to him against the United
States, has sold or transferred it to the claimant, nor can anyone
who is interested in the event of the suit. Doucen and Fleming, the
immediate vendors of Anderson, are not excluded by this rule. They
were not interested in the suit, and in no sense did Anderson
derive his claim against the United States through them. They never
had any claim against the United States, because when the property
was taken, it belonged to Anderson, and it is
Page 76 U. S. 68
only after the property was sold that Anderson's claim even to
the proceeds attached. If the property
in transitu from
Charleston to New York had been lost, no claim could arise under
the law in favor of Anderson against the United States, his claim
being contingent upon the proceeds of the property finally reaching
the Treasury.
But the point most pressed in the argument against the right to
recover in this case relates to the limitation in the law. It is
contended that the claim was barred by this limitation, as it was
not preferred until the 5th of June, 1868. It is therefore
necessary to determine when the time for preferring claims
commenced and when it ended. The words of the statute on this
subject are that any person claiming to be the owner of abandoned
or captured property may, at any time within two years after the
suppression of the rebellion, prefer his claim to the proceeds
thereof in the Court of Claims. There is certainly nothing in the
words of this provision which disables a person from preferring his
claim immediately after the proceeds of his property have reached
the Treasury, and there is no good reason why a different
interpretation should be given them. On the contrary, there is
sufficient reason in the nature of the legislation on this subject,
apart from the letter of the law, to bring the mind to the
conclusion that Congress intended to give the claimant an immediate
right of action. The same motive that prompted Congress to grant
the privilege to prefer a claim at all operated to allow it to be
done so soon as the property had been converted into money. If in
the condition of the country it was known that the Union men of the
South, as a general thing, would be unable to prosecute their
claims while the war lasted, still it was recognized that some
persons might be fortunate enough to do so and to meet the
requirements of their cases the right to sue at once was conferred.
In the progress of the war, as our armies advanced and were able to
afford protection to the Union people, it was expected that many of
them, availing themselves of the opportunity, would escape into the
national
Page 76 U. S. 69
lines, and be thus in a condition to secure the rights conceded
to them by this statute, and the history of the times informs us
that this expectation was realized. To impute to Congress a design
to compel these people, impoverished as they were known to be, to
wait until the war was over before they could institute proceedings
in the Court of Claims would be inconsistent with the general
spirit of the statute, and cannot be entertained. If, then, the
right to prefer a claim attached as soon as the money reached the
Treasury, when did it expire? The law says two years after the
rebellion was suppressed, but the question recurs when is the
rebellion to be considered suppressed, as regards the rights
intended to be secured by this statute? It is very clear that the
limitation applied to the entire suppression of the rebellion, and
that no one was intended to be affected by its suppression in any
particular locality. It might be suppressed in one state and not in
another, but the citizen of the state that had ceased hostilities
was in no better or worse position in this regard than the citizen
of the state where hostilities were active. The limitation was not
partial in its character, but operated on all persons alike who are
affected by it, was dependent on the solution of a great problem
and an interpretation of it which would prescribe one rule for the
people of one state, and a different rule for those living in
another state cannot be allowed to prevail.
The point, therefore, for determination is when, in the sense of
this law, was the rebellion entirely suppressed. And in this
connection, it is proper to say that the purposes of this suit do
not require us to discuss the question -- which may have an
important bearing on other cases -- whether the rebellion can be
considered as suppressed for one purpose and not for another, nor
any of the kindred questions arising out of it, and we therefore
express no opinion on the subject.
The inquiry with which we have to deal concerns its suppression
only in its relation to those persons who are within the protection
of this law. It is argued, as the rebellion was in point of fact
suppressed when the last Confederate general
Page 76 U. S. 70
surrendered to the national authority, that the limitation began
to run from that date. If this were so, there is an end to the
controversy; but did Congress mean, when it passed the statute in
question, that the Union men of the South, whose interests are
especially cared for by it, should, without any action by Congress
or the Executive on the subject, take notice of the day that armed
hostilities ceased between the contending parties, and if they did
not present their claims within two years of that time, be forever
barred of their recovery? The inherent difficulty of determining
such a matter renders it certain that Congress did not intend to
impose on this class of persons the necessity of deciding it for
themselves. In a foreign war, a treaty of peace would be the
evidence of the time when it closed, but in a domestic war like the
late one, some public proclamation or legislation would seem to be
required to inform those whose private rights were affected by it
of the time when it terminated, and we are of the opinion that
Congress did not intend that the limitation in this act should
begin to run until this was done. There are various acts of
Congress and proclamations of the President bearing on the subject,
but in the view we take of this case, it is only necessary to
notice the proclamation of the President of August 20, 1866, and
the Act of Congress of the 2d of March, 1867.
On the 20th day of August, 1866, the President of the United
States, after reciting certain proclamations and acts of Congress
concerning the rebellion and his proclamation of 2d of April, 1866,
that armed resistance had ceased everywhere except in the State of
Texas, did proclaim that it had ceased there also, and that the
whole insurrection was at an end, and that peace, order, and
tranquility existed throughout the whole of the United States of
America. This is the first official declaration that we have on the
part of the Executive that the rebellion was wholly suppressed, and
we have shown in a previous part of this opinion that the
limitation in its effects on the persons whose rights we are
considering did not begin to run until the rebellion was suppressed
throughout the whole country. But we are not
Page 76 U. S. 71
without the action of the legislative department of the
government on this subject. On the 20th day of June, 1864, Congress
fixed the pay of non-commissioned officers and privates, and
declared that it should continue during the rebellion; and on the
2d day of March 1867, it continued this act in force for three
years from and after the close of the rebellion, as announced by
the proclamation of the President.
Congress, then, having adopted the 20th day of August, 1866, in
conformity with the announcement of the President, as the day the
rebellion closed, for the purpose of regulating the pay of
noncommissioned officers and privates, can it be supposed that it
intended to lay down a harsher rule for the guidance of the
claimants under the Captured and Abandoned Property Act than it
thought proper to apply to another class of persons whose interests
it equally desired to protect? In order to reach this conclusion,
it is necessary to ascribe to Congress a policy regarding the
statute under which this claim is preferred foreign to the views we
have expressed concerning it. Besides, it would require us to
construe two acts differently, although relating to the same
general subject, in the absence of any evidence that such was the
intention of the legislature. If we are right as to the motive
which prompted Congress to pass the law in question and the object
to be accomplished by it, it is clear the point of time should be
construed most favorably to the person who adhered to the national
Union and who has proved the government took his property and has
the money arising from its sale in the Treasury.
As Congress, in its legislation for the army, has determined
that the rebellion closed on the 20th day of August, 1866, there is
no reason why its declaration on this subject should not be
received as settling the question wherever private rights are
affected by it. That day will therefore be accepted as the day when
the rebellion was suppressed as respects the rights intended to be
secured by the Captured and Abandoned Property Act.
The point taken that the court below was not authorized
Page 76 U. S. 72
to render judgment for a specific sum, but only to determine
whether the claimant was entitled to receive the proceeds of his
property, leaving it for an officer of the Treasury to fix the
amount, cannot be sustained. To sustain this position would require
us to hold that for this class of cases, Congress intended to
constitute the Court of Claims a mere commission. This Court will
not attribute to Congress a purpose that would lead to such a
result in the absence of an express declaration to that effect.
It is proper to say, in conclusion, that the case of
McKee
v. United States [
Footnote
13] cited as an authority against the claimant's right to
recover, has no application whatever to this case.
Judgment affirmed.
[
Footnote 1]
12 Stat. at Large 257.
[
Footnote 2]
12 Stat. at Large 590.
[
Footnote 3]
12 Stat. at Large 820.
[
Footnote 4]
Postmaster General's Report, 1868, p. 263.
[
Footnote 5]
Ib., 1865, pp. 9, 10.
[
Footnote 6]
Report of the Secretary of the Treasury, 1865, pp. 29, 30.
[
Footnote 7]
13 Stat. at Large 763.
[
Footnote 8]
14
id. 811.
[
Footnote 9]
Ib., 814.
[
Footnote 10]
Ib., 422, § 2.
[
Footnote 11]
13
id. 144.
[
Footnote 12]
15
id. § 4.
[
Footnote 13]
75 U. S. 8 Wall.
163.
