1. The Act of March 12, 1863, 12 Stat. 820, relative to
abandoned and captured property, as extended by the Act of July 2,
1864, 13
id. 375, authorizes the recovery in the Court of
Claims of the proceeds of property captured and, without judicial
condemnation, sold by the military authorities after July 17, 1862,
and before March 12, 1863, if such proceeds were accounted for and
credited by the Secretary of the Treasury to the abandoned and
captured property fund.
2. Where, in a suit arising under those acts, no direct proof
was given that the proceeds of the sale of the property were paid
into the treasury, if the circumstantial facts which are
established by the evidence are set forth in the finding of the
Court of Claims, which it sends here as that upon which alone its
judgment was rendered, and they are, in the absence of anything to
the contrary, the legal equivalent of a direct finding that such
proceeds were so paid, this Court will not on that account reverse
the judgment.
3. The judgment of the Court of Claims as to the legal effect of
what may, perhaps not improperly, be termed the ultimate
circumstantial facts of the case, is, if the question is properly
presented, subject on appeal to be here reviewed, and where the
rights of the parties depend upon such circumstantial facts alone,
and there is doubt as to the legal effect of them, it is the duty
of that court to frame its findings so that the question as to such
effect shall be presented by the record.
4.
United States v.
Crusell, 14 Wall. 1,
Same v. Ross,
92 U. S. 281, and
Intermingled Cotton
Cases, 14 Wall. 651, so far as they bear upon the
rule requiring, on an appeal from the Court of Claims, a finding by
that court of the facts in the case established by the evidence in
the nature of a special verdict, but not the evidence establishing
them, cited and explained.
This was an action, brought by Walter Pugh against the United
States to recover the proceeds of certain property. The Court of
Claims found the following facts:
Page 99 U. S. 266
1. In December, 1862, the claimant was in possession as owner of
a plantation in Louisiana. The sugar and molasses described in the
petition were a part of the products of such plantation and were
stored thereon and in the possession of the claimant's agents.
2. In December, 1862, this said sugar and molasses were seized
by the military forces of the United States and turned over to a
military commission, known as the sequestration commission, on the
12th of January, 1863. The commission was directed by general order
No. 8, Department of the Gulf,
"to sell at public auction all property in its possession that
has not been or may not be claimed or released, except such as may
be required for the use of the army, and turn over the proceeds
thereof to the chief quartermaster."
The said sugar and molasses were then in the possession of the
commission. On the 4th of February, 1863, the commission caused the
same to be sold, with other property, at public auction in New
Orleans. By the accounts kept by the commission, it appears that
the net proceeds of the sugar and molasses amounted to $4,362.23.
It does not appear specifically that the proceeds were paid over to
the chief quartermaster of the Department of the Gulf, but it
appears, and the court finds the fact to be, that he received money
at various times in the year 1863 from the sales of sugar and
molasses in New Orleans, to the amount of $33,796.02. For this
amount the chief quartermaster accounted on the final settlement of
his accounts, and the same was credited by the Secretary of the
Treasury to the abandoned and captured property fund in the
treasury.
3. That, as appears from the accounts of the chief
quartermaster, the said amount of $33,796.02 was received by him as
the net proceeds of sales of sugar and molasses in New Orleans, and
the whole of said amount was received in and subsequent to the
month of February, 1863. That it does not appear what became of the
fund resulting from the said sale of claimant's sugar and molasses,
unless the same was paid over to the chief quartermaster of the
Department of the Gulf, in pursuance of said order of General
Banks, and was included in said sum of $33,796.02.
4. On June 13, 1863, the said commission notified the agent
Page 99 U. S. 267
of Mrs. Walter Pugh, wife of the claimant, who had applied for
the release of a portion of the said proceeds, that the application
was denied.
Upon these facts, the claimant had judgment for $4,362.23. The
United States thereupon appealed to this Court.
MR. CHIEF JUSTICE WAITE delivered the opinion of the Court
Two questions are presented by the finding of facts in this
case, to-wit:
1. Does the Abandoned and Captured Property Act, as extended by
the Act of July 2, 1864, 13 Stat. 375, authorize a recovery in the
Court of Claims for the proceeds of property captured and sold by
the military authorities, without judicial condemnation, after July
17, 1862, and before March 12, 1863, but accounted for and credited
by the Secretary of the Treasury to the abandoned and captured
property fund in the treasury?
2. Does it appear that the proceeds sued for in this case were
actually paid into the treasury?
The first of these questions has been often the subject of
consideration in the Court of Claims, but has never, until now,
been brought here for determination. It was first decided adversely
to the United States as early as 1867, in
Barringer's
Case, 3 Ct. of Cl. 358; and although that court has ruled the
same way many times since, no appeal was taken by the government
until the rendition of this judgment in 1876. Under these
circumstances, we ought not to disturb what may fairly be
considered a rule of decision in that court acquiesced in by the
United States, unless the error is manifest.
The Abandoned and Captured Property Act was undoubtedly intended
to be prospective only in its operation. It provided the mode by
which that class of property was thereafter to be collected and
disposed of, and directed what should be done with the proceeds. By
the Act of July 17, 1862, 12 Stat. 589, the seizure of certain
kinds of property owned by those engaged in the rebellion, and an
application of the property or its proceeds
Page 99 U. S. 268
to the support of the Army of the United States, were
authorized. This act contemplated, however, a condemnation of the
property by judicial proceedings in rem instituted in the name of
the United States in some court having jurisdiction of the
territory within which the property was found, or to which it might
be removed. The title did not pass by a seizure under the authority
of this act until a decree of condemnation was rendered.
The sixth section of the Abandoned and Captured Property Act
made it the duty of every officer or soldier of the Army of the
United States who took or received any abandoned property, or
cotton, sugar, rice, or tobacco, from persons in the
insurrectionary districts, or who had it under his control, to turn
it over to the treasury agent provided for in the act, and take a
receipt therefor. As the property captured in this case had been
sold by the sequestration commission before this act took effect,
no question arises as to whether, after the act did take effect,
the property should have been turned over to the proper treasury
agent, or proceeded against for condemnation under the act of 1862.
Having been converted into money by the action of the capturing
military authorities, without judicial condemnation, there was
nothing left for the treasury agent to do, and as the property had
been released from custody, there could be no proceeding against it
in rem.
By sec. 3 of the Act of July 2, 1864, secs. 1 and 6 of the
Abandoned and Captured Property Act were extended so as to include
every description of property mentioned in the act of 1862. This
has been supposed by the Court of Claims to give that court
jurisdiction over cases for the recovery of money actually paid
into the treasury as the proceeds of property captured after July
17, 1862, and before March 12, 1863.
Barringer's Case, supra;
Mrs. Minor's Case, 6 Ct. of Cl. 393;
Terry Carne's
Case, 8
id. 277;
Miss Moore's Case, 10
id. 375. It is also understood to have been the practice
of the executive departments of the government from the beginning
to credit the abandoned and captured fund in the Treasury with the
proceeds of all property captured after July 17, 1862, and before
March 12, 1863, paid over to the quartermasters, and accounted for
by them in their settlements with the Treasury Department.
Page 99 U. S. 269
No distinction was made in this particular between captures
after March 12, 1863, and those before. It is a familiar rule of
interpretation that in the case of a doubtful and ambiguous law the
contemporaneous construction of those who have been called upon to
carry it into effect is entitled to great respect.
Edward's Lessee v.
Darby, 12 Wheat. 210. While, therefore, the
question is one by no means free from doubt, we are not inclined to
interfere, at this late day, with a rule which has been acted upon
by the Court of Claims and executive for so long a time. Besides,
the interpretation which has been given the act is in strict
accordance with the well settled policy of the government not to
enforce the right of capture during the late war against the
property of the inhabitants of the insurrectionary districts
without giving the owners an opportunity of proving in a court of
justice that, although they were in law enemies, they were in fact
friends of the United States. Under the act of 1862, this proof
might be made in the suit for condemnation, and under the Abandoned
and Captured Property Act, in a suit instituted to recover the
proceeds in the treasury. Under these circumstances, it can hardly
be considered a forced construction of the act of 1864 to hold, as
has been done, that it was intended to subject the proceeds in the
treasury, of property captured after July 17, 1862, and sold
without judicial condemnation before March 12, 1863, to the same
suits that were allowed in cases of captures and sales after that
date. If this practice is not supported by the exact letter of the
law, it is by the spirit, and it is certainly just. We are not
disposed to change it.
The second question presents for consideration a subject of much
importance connected with the practice under our rule in reference
to appeals from the Court of Claims, which requires "a finding" by
that court, "of the facts in the case established by the evidence,
in the nature of a special verdict, but not the evidence
establishing them." The ultimate fact to be determined in this case
is whether the proceeds of the sale of the captured property
belonging to the claimant have been paid into the treasury. No
direct proof to that effect has been given, but if shown at all, it
is by way of inference from certain circumstantial facts which have
been established by the evidence.
Page 99 U. S. 270
These circumstantial facts are set forth in the finding which
has been sent here as the finding upon which alone the judgment was
rendered, and as the case stands, the question we are to decide is
whether those facts are sufficient to support the judgment.
Confessedly the court has found all the facts which have been
directly established by the evidence. These facts are not evidence,
in the sense that evidence means the statements of witnesses or
documents produced in court for inspection. They are the results of
evidence, and whether they establish the ultimate fact to be
reached is, if a question of fact at all, to say the least, in the
nature of a question of law. If what has been found is, in the
absence of anything to the contrary, the legal equivalent of a
direct finding that the proceeds of this claimant's property have
been paid into the treasury, the judgment is right. Otherwise it is
wrong. The inquiry thus presented is as to the legal effect of
facts proved, not of the evidence given to make the proof, and the
question of practice to be settled is whether, under our rule, the
judgment of the Court of Claims as to the legal effect of what may,
perhaps not improperly, be called the ultimate circumstantial facts
in a case is final and conclusive, or whether it may be brought
here for review on appeal.
From what is said in
Ross' Case, 12 Ct. of Cl. 565, and
by the reporters in a note, 11
id. 344, we are led to
suppose that the Court of Claims understands that our decisions in
United States v. Ross, 92 U. S. 281, and
Intermingled Cotton Cases, 92 U. S.
651, leave this question somewhat in doubt. To avoid
misapprehension in the future, we take this opportunity to say that
we not only think such a judgment may be reviewed here if the
question is properly presented, but that when the rights of the
parties depend upon circumstantial facts alone, and there is doubt
as to the legal effect of the facts, it is the duty of the court,
when requested, to so frame its findings as to put the doubtful
question into the record. This would not require us on the appeal
to decide upon the weight of evidence. That is done in the court
below, when the particular fact is found which the evidence tends
to prove. The effect of mere evidence stops when the fact it proves
is established. After that, the question is as to the effect of the
fact, and when the evidence
Page 99 U. S. 271
in a case has performed its part and brought out all the facts
that have been proved, these facts thus established are to be
grouped, and their legal effect as a whole determined. If the case
could come here in such a form as to require us to consider the
evidence, we should be required to trace the evidence to its
logical results, find in this way all the facts that had been
proven, and then declare the final legal conclusion. The rule
relieves us from the necessity of considering the evidence at all,
and confines our attention to the legal effect upon the rights of
the parties of the facts proven as they have been sent up from the
court below. In this way the weight of the evidence is left for the
sole consideration of the court below, but the ultimate effect of
the facts which the direct evidence has established is left upon
for review here on appeal. The position which the case occupies
when it comes here under such circumstances is precisely the same
as it would be if the facts, instead of being found by the court,
had been agreed upon by the parties and their agreement embodied in
the record.
In
United States v.
Crusell, 14 Wall. 1, the question was whether the
particular facts found justified the conclusion that the money sued
for had been paid into the treasury, and inasmuch as the legal
presumption is, in the absence of anything to the contrary, that
the officers of the government perform their duties when called
upon to act in their official capacities, we thought that the law
would infer from the facts found that the money which ought to have
been paid over by a quartermaster to his superior officer was
actually paid over, and that in this way it had reached the
treasury. So in
Intermingled Cotton Cases, supra, when it
was found that the cotton of the several claimants contributed to
and formed part of the captured mass from which the cotton sold was
taken, we concluded that the claimants were entitled to their
respective shares of the money in the treasury as the proceeds of
the sale. In
United States v. Ross, supra, however, we
thought a similar conclusion from the particular facts there found
was too remote, and so reversed the judgment and sent the cause
back for a new trial. The premises we considered too uncertain to
justify the inference that had been drawn. We thought independent
and material facts were wanting, and that the law would not
Page 99 U. S. 272
raise the presumption from what did appear that the plaintiff
was entitled to recover. The difficulty in that case was not as to
the power of this Court to act upon the facts as found, but as to
the sufficiency of the facts to support the judgment.
Upon the facts found in this case, we have no difficulty in
presuming that the money sued for is in the Treasury within the
meaning of the Abandoned and Captured Property Act. The
sequestration commission was directed to sell captured property and
turn the proceeds over to the chief quartermaster. The property in
question was sold and an account of sales stated by the commission.
The case shows that at various times during the year 1863, the
chief quartermaster received from the commission the proceeds of
sugar and molasses sold, amounting in the aggregate to $33,796.02,
and that this amount was all duly accounted for to the Treasury,
and there passed to the credit of the fund. This has always been
treated in that department as equivalent to an actual payment into
the Treasury. In June, 1863, the commission refused the application
of the wife of the claimant for a restoration of the proceeds. This
raises the presumption that down to that time, the money had not
been released, and as it is specially found that it does not appear
what did become of the money unless it was paid over, as it should
have been, to the chief quartermaster, we think the law will
presume it was disposed of as the order of the commanding general
required it should be. If any evidence to the contrary exists, the
burden was cast upon the United States to produce it. Until the
presumption in favor of the claimant is repelled, the law gives him
the right to the judgment he has obtained.
Judgment affirmed.
