material, whether commercial or otherwise, after the capture and possession, it was subject to regulation by the municipal laws, and which is much more efficient and absolute and less expensive than the measure of blockade. It is true, these laws cannot operate extra-territorially ; but within the limit of the jurisdiction, and which extends to a marine league from the coast, their control over all intercourse with the port or town is complete. Seizures of neutral vessels and cargo on the high seas are, indeed, not admissible, but blockades are not established for the purpose of these seizures; they are but incidental to the exercise of the belligerent right against the port of the enemy.

The proclamation of the President of the 12th of May, 1862, which announces that the blockade of the port of New Orleans shall cease p. 160 after the 1st of June following, has been | referred to as evidence of its continuance to that period. But I think it will be difficult to maintain the position upon any principle of international law, that the belligerent may continue a blockading force at the port after it has not only ceased to be an enemy's, but has become a port of its own. It is not necessary that the belligerent should give notice of the capture of the town, in order to put in operation the municipal laws of the place against neutrals. The act is a public event of which foreign nations are bound to take notice, and conform their intercourse to the local laws. The same principle applies to the blockade, and the effect of the capture of the port upon it. The event is public and notorious, and the effect and consequences of the change in the state of war upon the blockading force well understood.

I have felt it a duty to state the grounds of my dissent in this case, not on account of the amount of property involved, though that is considerable, or from any particular interests connected with the case, but from a conviction that there is a tendency, on the part of the belligerent, to press the right of blockade beyond its proper limits, and thereby unwittingly aid in the establishment of rules that are often found inconvenient, and felt as a hardship, when, in the course of events, the belligerent has become a neutral. I think the application of the law of blockade, in the present case, is a step in that direction, and am, therefore unwilling to give it my concurrence.

[See infra, The Venice; a case, in some senses, suppletory or complemental to the present one.]

The Venice.

(2 Wallace, 258) 1864.

1. The military occupation of the city of New Orleans by the forces of the United States, after the dispossession of the rebels from that immediate region in May, 1862, may be considered as having been substantially complete from the publication of General Butler's proclamation of the 6th (dated on the 1st) of that month; and all the rights and obligations resulting from such occupation, or from the terms of the proclamation, existed from the date of that publication. 2. This proclamation, in announcing, as it did, that all rights of property' would be held 'inviolate, subject only to the laws of the United States;' and that P. 259 'all foreigners not naturalized, claiming allegiance to their respective governments, and not having made oath of allegiance to the government of the Confederate States,' would be 'protected in their persons and property as heretofore under the laws of the United States,' did but reiterate the rules established by the legislative and executive action of the national Government, and which may also be inferred from the policy of the war, in respect to the portions of the States in insurrection occupied and controlled by the troops of the Union. It was the manifestation of a general purpose, which seeks the re-establishment of the national authority, and the ultimate restoration of States and citizens to their national relations under better forms and firmer guarantees, without any view of subjugation by conquest.

3. Substantial, complete, and permanent military occupation and control, as distinguished from one that is illusory, imperfect, and transitory, works the exception made in the act of July 13th, 1861 (§ 5), which excepts from the rebellious condition those parts of rebellious States from time to time occupied and controlled by forces of the United States engaged in the dispersion of the insurgents;' and such military occupation draws after it the full measure of protection to persons and property consistent with a necessary subjection to military government.

4. The President's proclamation of 31st of March, 1863, affected in no respect the general principles of protection to rights and property under temporary government, established after the restoration of national authority.

5. Vessels and their cargoes belonging to citizens of New Orleans, or neutrals residing there and not affected by any attempts to run the blockade, or by any act of hostility against the United States, were protected after the publication of General Butler's proclamation, dated May 1st, 1862, and published on the 6th; though such persons, by being identified by long voluntary residence and by relations of active business with the enemy, may have themselves been 'enemies' within the meaning of the expression as used in public law.

THE Schooner Venice, with a cargo of cotton, was captured in Lake Pontchartrain, Louisiana, by the United States ship-of-war Calhoun, on the 15th of May, 1862; was taken to Key West, libelled as a prize of war in the District Court, but was restored, with her cargo, to the claimant, Cooke, by its decree. The United States appealed.

The case, as appearing from the proofs,1 and from the public history of the country, was in substance thus : |

These consisted of the papers found on board at the time of capture, the depositions of the master and of the claimant, taken on the standing interrogatories, and a special affidavit.

P. 260

P. 261

The claimant, Cooke, was a native British subject, and had resided, and been engaged in business, in New Orleans, without being naturalized as a citizen of the United States, for nearly ten years previously to the capture. About the 1st of April, 1862, he purchased, in the interior of the State of Mississippi, two hundred and five bales of cotton. This cotton, as he alleged, was bought as an investment for 'Confederate notes,' which he had become possessed of in previous employments in New Orleans; his intention being to let the cotton remain in the interior, away from the seaboard, until the rebellion should be over, and the cotton could be shipped and sold for gold or its equivalent. To prevent the threatened destruction of it under rebel order in Mississippi, he shipped it to New Orleans, where it arrived about the 7th of April. The same danger awaited it there. General Lovell, the rebel commanding general, gave him notice that his cotton must be immediately removed, or prepared for complete destruction in the event of the capture of the city. The schooner Venice was then lying near New Orleans, in the basin of the Pontchartrain Canal. This vessel the claimant purchased from her New Orleans owner, and about the 12th of April stowed the cotton, purchased as above stated, on board of her, together with twenty other bales of the same article, which were purchased in New Orleans, and put on board to complete the lading of the vessel, in order that it might be out of danger of burning in case of the capture of New Orleans by the United States forces. After being thus loaded, the Venice, on the 17th April, was towed out into Lake Pontchartrain.

During all this time, New Orleans and the surrounding region was in open rebellion and war against the United States, and the port of New Orleans and Lake Pontchartrain under blockade.

The Venice remained at anchor in the lake from the time she was taken there, April 17th, 1862, till her capture, on May 15th, 1862, being unfit for service; and though undergoing repairs, having had no intention of breaking the blockade. I

Between these two dates, however, important naval and military events took place at New Orleans. The Government fleet, under Flagofficer Farragut, reached New Orleans on the 25th April; and on the 26th, the flag-officer sent one of his commanders to demand of the mayor the surrender of the city. The reply of the mayor was that the city was under martial law, and that he would consult General Lovell.' General Lovell declared in turn that he would surrender nothing,' but at the same time that he would retire and leave the mayor unembarrassed. On the 26th, the flag-officer sent a letter, No. 2, to the mayor, in which he says:

'I came here to reduce New Orleans to obedience to the laws, and to vindicate the offended majesty of the Government. The rights of

persons and property shall be secured. I therefore demand the unqualified surrender of the city, and that the emblem of sovereignty of the United States be hoisted upon the City Hall, Mint, and Custom House, by meridian of this day. And all emblems of sovereignty other than those of the United States must be removed from all public buildings from that hour.'

To this the mayor transmitted, on the same day, an answer, which he says is the universal sense of my constituents, no less than the prompting of my own heart.' After announcing that out of regard for the lives of the women and children who crowd this metropolis,' General Lovell had evacuated it with his troops, and restored to me the custody of its power,' he continues:

'The city is without the means of defence. To surrender such a place were an idle and an unmeaning ceremony. The place is yours by the power of brutal force, not by any choice or consent of its inhabitants. As to hoisting any flag other than the flag of our own adoption and allegiance, let me say to you that the man lives not in our midst whose hand and heart would not be paralyzed at the mere thought of such an act; nor. can I find in my entire constituency so wretched and desperate a renegade as would dare to profane with his hand the sacred emblem of our aspirations. ... Your occupying the city does not transfer allegiance from the government | of their choice to one which they have deliberately repudiated, and they p. 262 yield the obedience which the conqueror is entitled to extort from the conquered.'

At 6 A.M. of the 27th, the National flag was hoisted, under directions of Flag-officer Farragut, on the Mint, which building lay under the guns of the Government fleet; but at 10 A.M. of the same day an attempt to hoist it on the Custom House was abandoned; the excitement of the crowd was so great that the mayor and councilmen thought that it would produce a conflict and cause great loss of life.'

On the 29th, General Butler reports that he finds the city under the dominion of the mob. They have insulted,' he says, 'our flag; torn it down with indignity. . . . . I send a marked copy of a New Orleans paper containing an applauding account of the outrage.'

On the same day that General reported thus:

'The rebels have abandoned all their defensive works in and around New Orleans, including Forts Pike and Wood on Lake Pontchartrain, and Fort Livingston on Barataria Bay. They have retired in the direction of Corinth, beyond Manchac Pass, and abandoned everything in the river as far as Donaldsonville, some seventy miles beyond New Orleans.'

Transports conveying troops under General Butler reached New Orleans on the 1st of May, and the actual occupation of the city was begun. There was no armed resistance, but there were constant exhibitions of a malignant spirit and temper both by the people and the

authorities. On the 2d of May, the landing of troops was completed, and on the 6th a proclamation of General Butler, which had been prepared and dated on the Ist, and printed on the 2d by some soldiers, in an office seized for the purpose, was published in the newspapers of p. 263 the city. Some copies of the proclamation | had been previously dis

tributed to individuals, but it was not made known generally until thus published.1

On this same 6th of May, Flag-officer Farragut made a report to the Government confirming a previous account of his, and stating the arrival of General Butler, on the 29th of April, at New Orleans; the recital of events terminating with the hauling down of the Louisiana State flag from the City Hall, and the hoisting of the American flag on the Custom House on that day, the report closing with this statement :

'Thus, sir, I have endeavored to give you an account of my attack P 264 upon New Orleans from our first movement to the surrender | of the city to General Butler, whose troops are NOW in full occupation.'

See the work entitled 'General Butler in New Orleans,' by Parton: New York, 1864; pp. 182-3.