Opinion of the court.

There is another consideration in the case entitled to weight in the interpretation of this contract; and that is the language of the contract made between the city and the company in 1864.* This ordinance is in pari materia with the one of 1859, and helps to explain any ambiguity in it.

We may add, also, that the learned judge who delivered the opinion of the court, maintaining the liability of this company to the payment of the assessment, does not place his opinion upon the ground that the contract did not exempt it, but that the legislature were disabled by the constitution of the State from couferring any such power on the city. The objection is founded on the clauses of the constitution, which provide that taxes shall be levied so that each person shall pay in proportion to the value of his property; and that where corporate authorities of counties, cities, &c., are authorized to levy and collect taxes for corporate purposes, the taxes shall be uniform in respect to persons and property.

We are not concerned to deal with these provisions, as it is perfectly settled by the decisions of the Supreme Court of the State that, according to the true construction of them, they do not forbid the legislature commuting with individuals or corporate bodies the burdens of general or specific taxes or assessments, of the character of those in question, for what they may deem an equivalent. This has been so frequently decided that we need only refer to the cases.† It is supposed by the counsel for the city that this doctrine has been modified by the recent cases of Chicago v. Larned, decided in 1864, and The Same v. Baer, in 1866. But, on looking into these cases, we find no references to the cases above cited, or to the doctrine they maintain. If it were otherwise, however, we could not agree that such decisions could have the effect to invalidate the contract in question. A contract having been entered into between the parties, valid at the time, by the laws of the State, it is not competent

* Bee it, supra, p. 52.

+ Illinois Central Railroad v County of McLean, 17 Illinois, 291; Hunsaker v. Wright, 30 Id. 146; Neustadt v. Illinois Central Railroad, 31 Id.

Statement of the case.

even for its legislature to pass an act impairing its obligation, much less could any decision of its courts have that effect.

A point is made, that the legislature have not conferred, or intended to confer, authority upon the city to make this contract. We need only say that full power was not only conferred, but that the contract itself has been since ratified by this body.

JUDGMENT Affirmed.

UNITED STATES v. ANDerson.

1. Under the act of March 12th, 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 any one else.

2. Notwithstanding the 4th section of the act of June 25th, 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.

8. 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 20th, 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.

APPEAL from the Court of Claims; the case being this: Congress by act of July 13th, 1861,* passed soon after the outbreak of the late rebellion, enacted that it might be

*12 Stat. at Large, 257.

Statement of the case.

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, 17th, 1862,* 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 prop-

* 12 Stat. at Large, 590.

Statement of the case.

erty, 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 12th, 1863*—entitled "An act to provide for the collection of abandoned property, &c., in insurrectionary districts within the United States," it was provided as follows:

Any 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, tc 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, ou 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 gov ernment 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 else

* 12 Stat. at Large, 820.

Statement of the case.

where, some wandering bands of robbers. Still, after Kirby Smith's surrender, May 26th, 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 (20th 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;* the letting of contracts for mail service throughout the rebellious States resumed;† and the revenue system extended throughout the same States.

The Federal courts, too, were reopened in the insurrectionary districts.

But notwithstanding all this, the late rebellious Stateswere 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

*Postmaster-General's Report, 1868, p. 263. † Ib. 1865, pp. 9, 10. Report of the Secretary of the Treasury, 1865, pp. 29, 30.