1. A purchaser of cotton from the Confederate states, who knew
that the money he paid for it went to sustain the rebellion, cannot
in the Court of Claims recover the proceeds when it has been
captured and sold under the Captured and Abandoned Property
Act.
2. The moral turpitude of the transaction forbids that in a
court of law he should be permitted to establish his title by proof
of such a transaction.
3. The acts of the states in rebellion, in the ordinary course
of administration of law, must be upheld in the interest of civil
society, to which such a government was a necessity.
4. But the government of the Confederacy had no existence except
as organized treason. Its purpose while it lasted was to overthrow
the lawful government, and its statutes, its decrees, its authority
can give no validity to any act done in its service or in aid of
its purpose.
The act known as the Captured and Abandoned Property Act, passed
March 12, 1863, [
Footnote 1]
providing for "the collection
Page 87 U. S. 460
of abandoned property &c., in the insurrectionary districts
within the United States," enacts that any person claiming to have
been the owner of any such abandoned or captured property may,
within a time specified in the act, prefer his claim to the
proceeds thereof in the Court of Claims, and on proof to the
satisfaction of the court: (1) of his ownership, (2) of his right
to the proceeds thereof, and (3) that he has never given any aid or
comfort to the rebellion, receive the residue of such proceeds,
after deducting any purchase money which may have been paid
&c.
Under this act, one Sprott, a resident of Claiborne County,
Mississippi, filed a claim in the Court of Claims to the proceeds
of certain cotton. That court made the following finding of
facts:
At different times during the years 1864 and 1865, large
quantities of cotton were purchased by the agents of the
Confederate states for the treasonable purpose of maintaining the
war of the rebellion against the government of the United States.
Of cotton thus purchased by various agents in Claiborne County,
Mississippi, three hundred bales were sold to the claimant by one
agent in March, 1865, for ten cents a pound, in the currency of the
United States. The sale was made by the agent as of cotton
belonging to the Confederate states, and it was understood by the
claimant at the time of the purchase to be the property of the
rebel government, and was purchased as such. The agent had been
specially instructed by the Confederate government "to sell any and
all cotton he could for the purpose of raising money to purchase
munitions of war and supplies for the Confederate army," but the
purpose of the sale was not disclosed to the claimant, whose
purpose was not to aid the Confederate states, buying the cotton at
its market value and regarding it as a mere business transaction of
"cotton for cash." The cotton was delivered to him at the time when
the money was paid, he then being a resident of Claiborne County,
within the Confederate lines.
The cotton was captured in May, 1865, and the proceeds or some
portion thereof are in the Treasury.
Page 87 U. S. 461
And upon these facts, the Court of Claims found, as conclusions
of law:
1. That the government of the Confederate states was an unlawful
assemblage, without corporate power to take, hold, or convey a
valid title to property, real or personal.
2. That the claimant was chargeable with notice of the
treasonable intent of the sale by the Confederate government, and
that the transaction was forbidden by the laws of the United States
and wholly void, so that the claimant acquired no title to the
property which was the subject of suit.
The court therefore decreed against the claimant, and from its
decree he brought the case here.
MR. JUSTICE MILLER delivered the opinion of the Court.
The Court of Claims, upon the facts which it found, decided as
conclusions of law:
1. That the government of the Confederate states was an unlawful
assemblage without corporate power to take, hold, or convey a valid
title to property, real or personal.
2. That the claimant was chargeable with notice of the
treasonable intent of the sale by the Confederate government, and
that the transaction was forbidden by the laws of the United States
and wholly void, so that the claimant acquired no title to the
property which is the subject of suit.
We do not think it necessary to say anything in regard to the
first proposition of law laid down by that court. Whether the
temporary government of the Confederate states had the capacity to
take and hold title to real or personal property, and how far it is
to be recognized as having been a
de facto government, and
if so what consequences follow in regard to its transactions as
they are to be viewed in a court of the United States it will be
time enough for us to decide when such decision becomes necessary.
There is no such necessity in the present case.
Page 87 U. S. 462
We rest our affirmance of the judgment of the Court of Claims
upon its second proposition.
It is a fact so well known as to need no finding of the court to
establish it -- a fact which, like many other historical events,
all courts take notice of -- that cotton was the principal support
of the rebellion so far as pecuniary aid was necessary to its
support. The Confederate government early adopted the policy of
collecting large quantities of cotton under its control, either by
exchanging its bonds for the cotton, or when that failed by forced
contributions. So long as the imperfect blockade of the Southern
ports and the unguarded condition of the Mexican frontier enabled
them to export this cotton, they were well supplied in return with
arms, ammunition, medicine, and the necessaries of life not grown
within their lines, as well as with that other great sinew of war,
gold. If the rebel government could freely have exchanged the
cotton of which it was enabled to possess itself for the munitions
of war or for gold, it seems very doubtful if it could have been
suppressed. So when the rigor of the blockade prevented successful
export of this cotton, their next resource was to sell it among
their own people or to such persons claiming outwardly to be loyal
to the United States as would buy of them for the money necessary
to support the tottering fabric of rebellion which they called a
government.
The cotton which is the subject of this controversy was of this
class. It had been in the possession and under the control of the
Confederate government, with claim of title. It was captured during
the last days of the existence of that government by our forces,
and sold by the officers appointed for that purpose, and the money
deposited in the Treasury.
The claimant now asserts a right to this money on the ground
that he was the owner of the cotton when it was so captured. This
claim of right or ownership he must prove in the Court of Claims.
He attempts to do so by showing that he purchased it of the
Confederate government and paid them for it in money. In doing
this, he gave aid and assistance to the rebellion in the most
efficient manner he
Page 87 U. S. 463
possibly could. He could not have aided that cause more
acceptably if he had entered its service and become a
blockade-runner, or under the guise of a privateer had preyed upon
the unoffending commerce of his country. It is asking too much of a
court of law sitting under the authority of the government then
struggling for existence against a treason respectable only for the
numbers and the force by which it was supported to hold that one of
its own citizens, owing and acknowledging to it allegiance, can by
the proof of such a transaction establish a title to the property
so obtained. The proposition that there is in many cases a public
policy which forbids courts of justice to allow any validity to
contracts because of their tendency to affect injuriously the
highest public interests and to undermine or destroy the safeguards
of the social fabric is too well settled to admit of dispute. That
any person owing allegiance to an organized government can make a
contract by which, for the sake of gain, he contributes most
substantially and knowingly to the vital necessities of a
treasonable conspiracy against its existence, and then in a court
of that government base successfully his rights on such a
transaction, is opposed to all that we have learned of the
invalidity of immoral contracts. A clearer case of turpitude in the
consideration of a contract can hardly be imagined unless treason
be taken out of the catalogue of crimes.
The case is not relieved of its harsh features by the finding of
the court that the claimant did not intend to aid the rebellion,
but only to make money. It might as well be said that the man who
would sell for a sum far beyond its value to a lunatic, a weapon
with which he knew the latter would kill himself, only intended to
make money, and did not intend to aid the lunatic in his fatal
purpose. This Court, in
Hanauer v. Doane, [
Footnote 2] speaking of one who set up the
same defense, says:
"He voluntarily aids treason. He cannot be permitted to stand on
the nice metaphysical distinction that, although he knows that the
purchaser buys the
Page 87 U. S. 464
goods for the purpose of aiding the rebellion, he does not sell
them for that purpose. The consequences of his acts are too serious
to admit of such a plea. He must be taken to intend the
consequences of his own voluntary act."
This case, and the succeeding one of
Hanauer v.
Woodruff, [
Footnote 3] are
directly in point in support of our view of the case before us.
The recognition of the existence and the validity of the acts of
the so called Confederate government, and that of the states which
yielded a temporary support to that government, stand on very
different grounds, and are governed by very different
considerations.
The latter, in most if not in all instances, merely transferred
the existing state organizations to the support of a new and
different national head. The same constitutions, the same laws for
the protection of property and personal rights remained and were
administered by the same officers. These laws, necessary in their
recognition and administration to the existence of organized
society, were the same, with slight exceptions, whether the
authorities of the state acknowledged allegiance to the true or the
false federal power. They were the fundamental principles for which
civil society is organized into government in all countries, and
must be respected in their administration under whatever temporary
dominant authority they may be exercised. It is only when in the
use of these powers substantial aid and comfort was given or
intended to be given to the rebellion, when the functions
necessarily reposed in the state for the maintenance of civil
society were perverted to the manifest and intentional aid of
treason against the government of the Union, that their acts are
void. [
Footnote 4]
The government of the Confederate states can receive no aid from
this course of reasoning. It had no existence except as a
conspiracy to overthrow lawful authority. Its foundation was
treason against the existing federal government. Its single
purpose, so long as it lasted, was to make that treason successful.
So far from being necessary to the
Page 87 U. S. 465
organization of civil government, or to its maintenance and
support, it was inimical to social order, destructive to the best
interests of society, and its primary object was to overthrow the
government on which these so largely depended. Its existence and
temporary power were an enormous evil which the whole force of the
government and the people of the United States was engaged for
years in destroying.
When it was overthrown, it perished totally. It left no laws, no
statutes, no decrees, no authority which can give support to any
contract or any act done in its service or in aid of its purpose or
which contributed to protract its existence. So far as the actual
exercise of its physical power was brought to bear upon
individuals, that may, under some circumstances, constitute a
justification or excuse for acts otherwise indefensible, but no
validity can be given in the courts of this country to acts
voluntarily performed in direct aid and support of its unlawful
purpose. What of good or evil has flowed from it remains for the
consideration and discussion of the philosophical statesman and
historian.
Judgment affirmed.
MR. JUSTICE CLIFFORD and MR. JUSTICE DAVIS expressed their
concurrence in the judgment of the Court above announced solely
upon the ground that the purchase of the cotton and the payment of
the consideration necessarily tended to give aid to the rebellion,
and that all such contracts were void as contrary to public policy.
They stated that all such portions of the opinion as enforced that
view had their concurrence, but that they dissented from the
residue of the opinion as unnecessary to the conclusion.
[
Footnote 1]
12 Stat. at Large 820.
[
Footnote 2]
79 U. S. 12 Wall.
342.
[
Footnote 3]
82 U. S. 15 Wall.
439.
[
Footnote 4]
Texas v.
White, 7 Wall. 700.
MR. JUSTICE FIELD, dissenting.
I am compelled to dissent from the judgment of the Court in this
case and from the reasons stated in the opinion upon which that
judgment is founded. The opinion appears to me to proceed upon the
assumption that this is an action to enforce a contract which was
illegal in its inception, and therefore without standing in a court
of justice. And the
Page 87 U. S. 466
cases of
Hanauer v. Doane in the 12th of Wallace and
Hanauer v. Woodruff in the 15th of Wallace are cited in
support of the position that contracts of this character will not
be upheld. Those authorities do establish the position that
contracts entered into for the purpose of aiding the late
insurrectionary government are illegal and void and will not be
enforced by the federal tribunals. In the first case, the action
was upon two promissory notes, the consideration of which consisted
in part of stores and supplies furnished the defendant, an army
contractor of the Confederate government, with knowledge that they
were to be used in aid of the rebellion, and in part of due-bills
issued by the contractor to other parties for similar supplies, and
taken up at his request, and the Court held that the sale of the
goods, being made with the vendor's knowledge of the uses to which
they were to be applied, was an illegal transaction and did not
constitute a valid consideration for the note of the purchaser, and
that the due-bills given by him for similar goods, being taken up
by third parties with knowledge of the purpose for which they were
issued, were equally invalid as a consideration for his note in
their hands. In the second case, the action was upon a promissory
note the only consideration of which consisted of certain bonds,
issued by the convention of Arkansas which attempted to carry that
state out of the Union and issued for the purpose of supporting the
war against the federal government, and styled "war bonds" on their
face, and one of the questions presented for our determination was
whether the consideration was illegal under the Constitution and
laws of the United States. And the Court answered that it did not
admit of a doubt that the consideration was thus illegal and void;
that
"if the Constitution be, as it declares on its face it is, the
supreme law of the land, a contract or undertaking of any kind to
destroy or impair its supremacy or to aid or encourage any attempt
to that end must necessarily be unlawful and can never be treated,
in a court sitting under that Constitution and exercising authority
by virtue of its provisions, as a meritorious consideration for the
promise of anyone. "
Page 87 U. S. 467
In both of these cases, the aid of the courts was sought to
enforce unexecuted contracts which were illegal and void in their
inception because made in aid of the rebellion, and all that they
decide is that contracts of that character can never be enforced in
the courts of that government against which the rebellion was
raised. In those courts, such contracts stand on the same footing
as other illegal transactions -- they will not be upheld nor
enforced. In both of those decisions I concurred, and in the second
case I wrote the opinion of the Court. I still adhere to the views
expressed in both cases.
But, with great respect for my associates, I am compelled to say
that in my judgment, neither of those cases has any just
application to the case at bar or to any question properly involved
in its decision. This action is not brought to enforce an
unexecuted contract, legal or illegal; there is no question of
enforcing a contract in the case. The question, and the only
question, is whether the cotton seized by the forces of the United
States in May, 1865, was at the time the property of the claimant.
If it was his property, then he is entitled to its proceeds, and
the judgment of the Court of Claims should be reversed; and in
determining this question we are not concerned with the
consideration of his loyalty or disloyalty. He was a citizen of
Mississippi and resided within the lines of the Confederacy, and
the act forbidding intercourse with the enemy does not apply to his
case. He was subject to be treated, in common with other citizens
of the Confederacy, as a public enemy during the continuance of the
war. And if he were disloyal in fact, and if by his purchase of the
cotton he gave aid and comfort to the rebellion, as this Court
adjudges, the impediment which such conduct previously interposed
to the prosecution of his claim was removed by the proclamation of
pardon and amnesty made by the President on the 25th day of
December, 1868. He was included within the terms of that beneficent
public act of the Chief Magistrate of the United States as fully as
if he had been specifically named therein. That pardon and amnesty
did not, of course, and could not
Page 87 U. S. 468
change the actual fact of previous disloyalty, if it existed,
but, as was said in
Carlisle v. United States, [
Footnote 2/1] "they forever close the eyes
of the court to the perception of that fact as an element in its
judgment, no rights of third parties having intervened." In legal
contemplation, the executive pardon not merely releases an offender
from the punishment prescribed for his offense, but it obliterates
the offense itself.
In the present case, therefore, the question of the loyalty or
disloyalty of the claimant is withdrawn from our consideration, and
as the nonintercourse act does not apply to his case, it does not
concern the United States whether he acquired the property from
another public enemy or from one of the states of the Confederacy,
or from an agent of the Confederate government. He was in
possession of the property at the time of the seizure, asserting
ownership to it, and no one then disputed, and no one since has
disputed, his title. Who then owned the property if he did not? The
United States did not own it. They did not acquire by its seizure
any title to the property. They have never asserted any greater
rights arising from capture of property on land in the hands of
citizens engaged in the rebellion than those which one belligerent
nation asserts with reference to such property captured by it
belonging to the citizens or subjects of the other belligerent. All
public property which is movable in its nature, possessed by one
belligerent and employed on land in actual hostilities, passes by
capture. But private property on land, except such as becomes booty
when taken from enemies in the field or besieged towns, or is
levied as a military contribution upon the inhabitants of the
hostile territory, is exempt from confiscation by the general law
of nations. Such is the language of Mr. Wheaton, who is recognized
as authority on all questions of public law. And "this exemption,"
he adds, "extends even to the case of an absolute and unqualified
conquest of the enemies' country." [
Footnote 2/2]
In
Brown v. United States, [
Footnote 2/3] the question arose whether
Page 87 U. S. 469
enemy's property found on land at the commencement of
hostilities with Great Britain, in 1812, could be seized and
condemned as a necessary consequence of the declaration of war, and
the Court held that it could not be thus condemned without an act
of Congress authorizing its confiscation. The Court, speaking
through Chief Justice Marshall, said that it was conceded that war
gives to the sovereign full right to take the persons and
confiscate the property of the enemy wherever found, and observed
that the mitigations of this rigid rule, which the humane and wise
policy of modern times has introduced into practice, might more or
less affect the exercise of this right, but could not impair the
right itself. "That," said the Court,
"remains undiminished, and when the sovereign authority shall
choose to bring it into operation, the judicial department must
give effect to its will."
"But," added the Court,
"until that will shall be expressed,
no power of condemnation can exist in the court."
It may be doubted whether the right to confiscate property of
the enemy wherever found, which is here stated to have been
conceded, would at this day be admitted without some qualification
excepting private property on land not engaged in actual
hostilities or taken as booty, or levied as a military
contribution, as stated by Mr. Wheaton. Be that as it may, the
decision is emphatic that until Congress by some legislative act
directs the confiscation of private property on land, none can be
ordered by the courts. [
Footnote
2/4]
Now Congress has only provided for the confiscation of private
property of persons engaged in the rebellion by the Act of August
6, 1861, [
Footnote 2/5] and that of
July 17, 1862. [
Footnote 2/6] Both
of these acts require legal proceedings resulting in a judicial
decree of condemnation before the title of the owner can be
divested. The present case is not brought under either of these
acts. No proceedings for the condemnation
Page 87 U. S. 470
and forfeiture of the cotton seized, or of its proceeds, have
ever been instituted by the government. The title of the claimant
remains, therefore, at this day as perfect as it did on the day the
cotton was seized.
In the case of
United States v. Klein, [
Footnote 2/7] this Court had occasion to consider
the rights of property, as affected by the war, in the hands of
citizens engaged in hostilities against the United States, and it
held after mature consideration that the effect of the Act of
Congress of March 12, 1863, to provide for the collection of
captured and abandoned property in insurrectionary districts, under
which the present action is brought, is not to confiscate or in any
case absolutely divest the property of the original owner, even
though disloyal, and that by the seizure, the government
constituted itself a trustee for those who were by that act
declared entitled or might thereafter be recognized as entitled to
the proceeds.
But it is contended that the Confederate government, being
unlawful in its origin and continuance, was incapable of acquiring,
holding, or transferring a valid title to the property. The court
below so held in terms, and this Court so far sustains that ruling
as to declare that the claimant could not acquire any title to the
cotton seized by purchase from that government.
Assuming that the Confederate government was thus incapable of
acquiring or transferring title to property, the result claimed by
the Attorney General, and held by the majority of this Court, would
not, in my judgment, follow. That organization, whatever its
character, acted through agents. Those agents purchased and sole
property. The title of the vendors passed to somebody; if it did
not vest in the Confederate government because that organization
was incapable of taking the property, it remained with the agents.
The sale of the vendors was a release and quitclaim of their
interest, and when that took place, the property was not derelict
and abandoned. Whatever title existed to the
Page 87 U. S. 471
property was, therefore, in the agents if their assumed
principal had no existence, and by their sale passed to purchasers
from them. Undoubtedly larceny could be alleged against one who
feloniously took the property from such purchaser. The taker would
not be allowed in any court which administers justice to escape
punishment by showing that no title passed to the purchaser because
his vendor was the agent, or assumed to be the agent, of a
government which had no legal existence. And it is equally clear
that the purchaser could have maintained an action for injuries to
the property thus purchased or for its recovery if forcibly removed
from his possession by a third party. The plea that the property
was not his because obtained from the agent, or a person assuming
to be the agent, of an unlawful political organization would not be
held a justification for the injuries or the detention.
But I do not desire to place my objection to the decision of the
Court upon this view of the case. I place it on higher ground, one
which is recognized by all writers on international law, from
Grotius, its father, to Wheaton and Phillimore, its latest
expounders, and that is that a government
de facto has,
during its continuance, the same right within its territorial
limits to acquire and to dispose of movable personal property which
a government
de jure possesses. And that the Confederate
government, whatever its character in other respects, possessed
supreme power over a large extent of territory, embracing several
states and a population of many millions, and exercised that power
for nearly four years, we are all compelled to admit. As stated by
this Court, speaking through Mr. Justice Nelson, [
Footnote 2/8] it cannot be denied that, by the use
of unlawful and unconstitutional means,
"a government in fact was erected greater in territory than many
of the old governments in Europe, complete in the organization of
all its parts, containing within its limits more than eleven
millions of people, and of sufficient resources in men and money to
carry on a civil war of unexampled
Page 87 U. S. 472
dimensions, and during all which time the exercise of many
belligerent rights were either conceded to it or were acquiesced in
by the supreme government, such as the treatment of captives both
on land and sea as prisoners of war, the exchange of prisoners,
their vessels captured recognized as prizes of war and dealt with
accordingly, their property seized on land referred to the judicial
tribunals for adjudication, their ports blockaded, and the blockade
maintained by a suitable force, and duly notified to neutral
powers, the same as in open and public war."
In
Thorington v. Smith, [
Footnote 2/9] this Court placed the Confederate
government among that class of governments
de facto of
which the temporary governments at Castine and Tampico were
examples, and said, speaking through Chief Justice Chase, that
"to the extent of actual supremacy, however unlawfully gained,
in all matters of government within its military lines, the power
of the insurgent government cannot be questioned. That supremacy
did not justify acts of hostility to the United States. How far it
should excuse them must be left to the lawful government upon the
reestablishment of its authority. But it made obedience to its
authority in civil and local matters not only a necessity, but a
duty. Without such obedience, civil order was impossible."
With these authorities before me, I should unhesitatingly have
said -- but for the fact that a majority of my associates differ
from me, and the presumption is that they are right and I am wrong
-- that it was impossible for any court to come to the conclusion
that a government thus organized, having such immense resources and
exercising actual supremacy over such vast territory and millions
of people, did not possess the power to acquire and to transfer the
title to personal property within its territorial limits.
Our government, in its efforts to reach the property of the
extinct Confederacy, has asserted a very different doctrine from
that announced in the court below, and, so far as the cotton seized
in this case is concerned, approved here. It
Page 87 U. S. 473
has alleged in the courts of England that that Confederacy did
acquire property to a vast amount and attempted to reach it in the
hands of its agents.
In United States v. McRae, [
Footnote 2/10] it filed a bill in the
Court of Chancery in England to obtain an account of all moneys and
goods which came to the hands of the defendant, as agent or
otherwise, on behalf of the Confederate government during the
insurrection, and the payment of the moneys which, on taking such
account, might be in his hands, and a delivery over of the goods in
his possession. The bill alleged that the Confederate government
possessed itself of divers moneys, goods, and treasure, part of the
public property of the United States, and that other moneys and
goods were from time to time paid and contributed to it by divers
persons, inhabitants of the United States, or were seized and
acquired by that government in the exercise of its usurped
authority; that it had sent to agents and other persons in England
large amounts of money to be laid out in purchasing goods for its
use, and had sent there large quantities of goods to be sold; that
it had thus sent large sums of money and large quantities of goods
to the defendant, and that on the dissolution of that government,
he had them in his possession. And the bill claimed that all the
joint or public property of the persons constituting the
Confederate government, including the said moneys and goods, had
vested in the United States and constituted their absolute
property, and ought to be paid and delivered to them. The court
held that the moneys, goods, and treasure which were at the
outbreak of the rebellion the public property of the United States
and which were seized by the rebels still continued the moneys,
goods, and treasure of the United States, their rights of property
and rights of possession being in no wise divested or defeated by
the wrongful seizure. But that with respect to property which had
been voluntarily contributed to or acquired by the insurrectionary
government and impressed in its hands with the character of public
property, the right of the United
Page 87 U. S. 474
states was that of a successor of the Confederate government,
and that they could recover such property from an agent of that
government, but subject, however, to the same rights and
obligations, to which that government would have been subjected had
it not been overthrown.
In the case of
United States v. Prioleau, [
Footnote 2/11] the same court again held
that the government of the United States could recover the property
of the Confederate government as its successor or representative in
the hands of its agents, but that they must take it subject to all
the liens and conditions arising from the contract upon which the
property was received by the agents. Neither the United States, in
the prosecution of these suits, nor the courts of England in
deciding them, expressed the slightest doubt that the title to the
property not originally owned by the United States had been
acquired by the Confederate government, which was in the hands of
its agents. And I submit that a response by those courts to the
claim of the United States that the insurgent government, being
illegal in its origin and continuance, could neither take, hold,
nor transfer title to personal property would not have been
acquiesced in nor deemed respectful by our government. And I submit
respectfully that the earnest denunciation of the wickedness of the
rebellion contained in the opinion of the majority is no legal
answer to the demand of the claimant for the proceeds of his
property seized and sold by our government when that government
long since pardoned the only offense of which that claimant was
guilty, and thus gave him the assurance that he should stand in the
courts of his country in as good plight and condition as any
citizen who had never sinned against its authority.
I am therefore of opinion that the judgment of the Court of
Claims should be reversed.
[
Footnote 2/1]
83 U. S. 16
Wall. 151.
[
Footnote 2/2]
Law of Nations, Lawrence's edition, 596.
[
Footnote 2/3]
12 U. S. 8
Cranch 152.
[
Footnote 2/4]
See also instructions of Mr. Adams, when Secretary of
State, to our Minister at St. Petersburg, July 5, 1820, and Halleck
457; Hefter ยง 133; and
United States v.
Percheman, 7 Pet. 51.
[
Footnote 2/5]
12 Stat. at Large 319.
[
Footnote 2/6]
Ib., 589.
[
Footnote 2/7]
80 U. S. 13
Wall. 136.
[
Footnote 2/8]
Mauran v. Insurance
Company, 6 Wall. 14.
[
Footnote 2/9]
75 U. S. 8 Wall.
10.
[
Footnote 2/10]
8 Law Reports, Equity 69.
[
Footnote 2/11]
2 Hemming & Miller's Chancery Cases 559.