Keith v. Clark/Opinion of the Court

by Samuel Freeman Miller

United States Supreme Court

97 U.S. 454

Keith  v.  Clark

The plaintiff in error, who was plaintiff below, sued the defendant for the sum of $40, which he had paid in lawful money under protest for taxes due the State of Tennessee, after he had tendered to the defendant that sum in the circulating notes of the Bank of Tennessee, which defendant refused to receive.

The suit was commenced before a justice of the peace, taken by appeal to the Common-Law Chancery Court of Madison County, and from there to the Supreme Court of Tennessee, and by writ of error from this court it is now before us for review.

In all the trials in the State courts, judgment was rendered against the plaintiff. The jurisdiction of this court is denied again, though it was affirmed in the analogous cases of Woodruff v. Trapnall, 10 How. 190, and Furman v. Nichol, 8 Wall. 44.

As the same facts are involved in the question of jurisdiction and the issue on the merits, it may be as well to state them.

They appear in a bill of exceptions taken at the trial on the first appeal, which was a trial de novo before a jury. The defendant was a collector of taxes, to whom plaintiff had tendered $40 of the bills of the Bank of Tennessee, which, with other lawful money tendered at the same time, was the amount due. The offer of plaintiff was founded on the twelfth section of the charter of the bank, enacted in 1838 by the legislature of the State, which reads thus:--

'Be it enacted that the bills or notes of the said corporation originally made payable, or which shall have become payable on demand, in gold or silver coin, shall be receivable at the treasury of this State, and by all tax-collectors and other public officers, in all payments for taxes or other moneys due to the State.'

It was proved that the bills were issued subsequently to May 6, 1861, and were known as the 'Torbet or new issue,' and were worth in the brokers' market about twenty-five cents on the dollar.

The court charged the jury that if the notes tendered were issued subsequently to May 6, 1861, and during the existence of the State government established at that date in hostility to the government of the United States, then defendant was not legally bound to receive them in payment of plaintiff's taxes. And the reason given for this was, that while the Constitution of the United States protected the contract or the section of the charter we have cited from repudiation by State legislation as to notes issued prior to the act of secession of May 6, 1861, it conferred no such protection as to notes issued while the State was an insurrectionary government; and that consequently the provisions of sect. 6 of the schedule to the constitutional amendment of 1865, which declared that all the notes of the bank issued after the date above mentioned were null and void, and forbade any legislature to pass laws for their redemption, was a valid exercise of State authority. On this instruction the jury found a verdict for the defendant.

In the Supreme Court the judgment rendered on this verdict was affirmed, without any opinion or other evidence of the grounds on which it was so affirmed.

There can be no question that the charge of the trial judge to the jury decided against the plaintiff in error a question which gives this court jurisdiction; and this is admitted by counsel, who ask us to dismiss the writ of error.

The ground assumed in support of the motion is, that we ought to presume that the Supreme Court did not decide the question which the court below did, but affirmed the judgment, on the ground that, by the laws of Tennessee, no suit could be brought against the State or against the collector of taxes, and that the justice of the peace who first tried the case, and the court to which the appeal was taken, had no jurisdiction. It would follow, say counsel, that as this was a question of State law, it could not be reviewed in this court.

The answers to this are several and very obvious.

1. Where an appellate court decides a case on the ground that the inferior court had no jurisdiction, it in some mode indicates that it was not a decision on the merits, to prevent the judgment being used as a bar in some court which might have jurisdiction. Barney v. Baltimore City, 6 Wall. 280; House et al. v. Mullen, 22 id. 42; Kendig v. Dean, supra, p. 423.

2. In Tennessee v. Sneed (96 U.S. 69), this court decided that the courts of Tennessee did have the jurisdiction which this suggestion denies them; and we will not presume, without very strong reason for it, that the Supreme Court of Tennessee disagreed with this court on that point.

3. There is not the slightest evidence in the record, nor any reason to be drawn from it, to believe that the court decided any such question. It nowhere appears that it was raised. Nothing like it is found in the bill of exceptions. There is no plea to the jurisdiction, or motion to dismiss for want of it.

And we are bound by every fair rule of sound construction to hold that the Supreme Court, in affirming the judgment of the court below, did it on the only ground on which that court acted, or which was raised by the record.

That question was, whether the twelfth section of the charter of the bank constituted a contract which brought the issues of the bank after the 6th of May, 1861, within the protective clause of the Constitution of the United States against impairing the obligation of contracts by State laws. Of that question this court has jurisdiction, and we proceed to its consideration.

In Furman v. Nichol (supra), the twelfth section of the charter of the bank-the same now under consideration-was held to constitute a contract between every holder of the circulating notes of the bank and the State of Tennessee, that the State would receive the notes in payment of taxes at their par value. And it was held that the same provision of the State Constitution of 1865, which is relied on here, was void, as impairing the obligation of that contract.

The case of Woodruff v. Trapnall (supra) was referred to as being perfect in its analogy, both in the character of the bank and its relation to the State, and the contract to receive its notes in payment of taxes. In Furman v. Nichol, however (which is the identical case before us, except that in the former case the notes were issued prior to May 6, 1861), the court, out of abundant caution, said, that it did not consider or decide any thing as to the effect of the civil war on that contract, or to notes issued subsequently to that date. We are invited now to examine that point, and to hold that as to all such notes the twelfth section creates no valid contract.

In entering upon this inquiry we start with the proposition, that unless there is something in the relation of the State of Tennessee and the bank, after the date mentioned, to the government of the United States, or something in the circumstances under which the notes now sued on were issued, that will repel the presumption of a contract under the twelfth section, or will take the contract out of the operation of the protecting clause of the Federal Constitution; this court has established already that there was a valid contract to receive them for taxes, and that the law which forbade this to be done is unconstitutional and void.

Those who assert the exception of these notes from the general proposition are not very well agreed as to the reasons on which it shall rest, and we must confess that, as they are presented to us, they are somewhat vague and shadowy. They may all, however, as far as we understand them, be classed under three principal heads.

1. The first is to us an entirely new proposition, urged with much earnestness by the counsel who argued the case orally for the defendant.

It is, in substance, that what was called the State of Tennessee prior to the 6th of May, 1861, became, by the ordinance of secession passed on that day, subdivided into two distinct political entities, each of which was a State of Tennessee. One of them was loyal to the Federal government, the other was engaged in rebellion against it. One State was composed of the minority who did not favor secession, the other of the majority who did. That these two States of Tennessee engaged in a public war against each other, to which all the legal relations, rights, and obligations of a public war attached. That the government of the United States was the ally of the loyal State of Tennessee, and the confederated rebel States were the allies of the disloyal State of Tennessee. That the loyal State of Tennessee, with the aid of her ally, conquered and subjugated the disloyal State of Tennessee, and by right of conquest imposed upon the latter such measure of punishment and such system of law as it chose, and that by the law of conquest it had the right to do this. That one of the laws so imposed by the conquering State of Tennessee on the conquered State of Tennessee was this one, declaring that the issues of the bank during the temporary control of affairs by the rebellious State was to be held void; and that, as conqueror and by right to conquest, the loyal State had power to enact this as a valid law.

It is a sufficient answer to this fanciful theory that the division of the State into two States never had any actual existence; that, as we shall show hereafter, there has never been but one political society in existence as an organized State of Tennessee, from the day of its admission to the Union in 1796 to the present time. That it is a mere chimera to assert that one State of Tennessee conquered by force of arms another State of Tennessee, and imposed laws upon it; and, finally, that the logical legerdemain by which the State goes into rebellion, and makes, while thus situated, contracts for the support of the government in its ordinary and usual functions, which are necessary to the existence of social life, and then, by reason of being conquered, repudiates these contracts, is as hard to understand as similar physical performances on the stage.

2. The second proposition is a modification of this, and deserves more serious attention. It is, as we understand it, that each of the eleven States who passed ordinances of secession and joined the so-called Confederate States so far succeeded in their attempt to separate themselves from the Federal government, that during the period in which the rebellion maintained its organization those States were in fact no longer a part of the Union, or, if so, the individual States, by reason of their rebellious attitude, were mere usurping powers, all of whose acts of legislation or administration are void, except as they are ratified by positive laws enacted since the restoration, or are recognized as valid on the principles of comity or sufference.

We cannot agree to this doctrine. It is opposed by the inherent powers which attach to every organized political society possessed of the right of self-government; it is opposed to the recognized principles of public international law; and it is opposed to the well-considered decisions of this court.

'Nations or States,' says Vattel, 'are bodies politic, societies of men united together for the promotion of their mutual safety and advantage by the joint efforts of their combined strength. Such a society has her affairs and her interests. She deliberates and takes resolutions in common, thus becoming a moral person who possesses an understanding and a will peculiar to herself, and is susceptible of obligations and rights.' Law of Nations, sect. 1.

Cicero and subsequent public jurists define a State to be a body political or society of men united together for the purpose of promoting their mutual safety and advantage by their combined strength. Wheaton, International Law, sect. 17. Such a body or society, when once organized as a State by an established government, must remain so until it is destroyed. This may be done by disintegration of its parts, by its absorption into and identification with some other State or nation, or by the absolute and total dissolution of the ties which bind the society together. We know of no other way in which it can cease to be a State. No change of its internal polity, no modification of its organization or system of government, nor any change in its external relations short of entire absorption in another State, can deprive it of existence or destroy its identity. Id., sect. 22.

Let us illustrate this by two remarkable periods in the history of England and France.

After the revolution in England, which dethroned and decapitated Charles I., and installed Cromwell as supreme, whom his successors called a usurper; after the name of the government was changed from the Kingdom of England to the Commonwealth of England; and when, after all this, the son of the beheaded monarch came to his own, treaties made in the interregnum were held valid, the judgments of the courts were respected, and the obligations assumed by the government were never disputed.

So of France. Her bloody revolution, which came near dissolving the bonds of society itself, her revolutionary directory, her consul, her Emperor Napoleon, and all their official acts, have been recognized by the nation, by the other nations of Europe, and by the legitimate monarchy when restored, as the acts of France, and binding on her people.

The political society which in 1796 became a State of the Union, by the name of the State of Tennessee, is the same which is now represented as one of those States in the Congress of the United States. Not only is it the same body politic now, but it has always been the same. There has been perpetual succession and perpetual identity. There has from that time always been a State of Tennessee, and the same State of Tennessee. Its executive, its legislative, its judicial departments have continued without interruption and in regular order. It has changed, modified, and reconstructed its organic law, or State Constitution, more than once. It has done this before the rebellion, during the rebellion, and since the rebellion. And it was always done by the collective authority and in the name of the same body of people constituting the political society known as the State of Tennessee.

This political body has not only been all this time a State, and the same State, but it has always been one of the United States,-a State of the Union. Under the Constitution of the United States, by virtue of which Tennessee was born into the family of States, she had no lawful power to depart from that Union. The effort which she made to do so, if it had been successful, would have been so in spite of the Constitution, by reason of that force which in many other instances establishes for itself a status, which must be recognized as a fact, without reference to any question of right, and which in this case would have been, to the extent of its success, a destruction of that Constitution. Failing to do this, the State remained a State of the Union. She never escaped the obligations of that Constitution, though for a while she may have evaded their enforcement.

In Texas v. White (7 Wall. 700), the first and important question was, whether Texas was then one of the United States, and as such capable of sustaining an original suit in this court by reason of her being such State. And this was at a time when Congress had not permitted her, after the rebellion, to have representatives in either house of that body.

Mr. Chief Justice Chase, in delivering the judgment of the court on this question, says: 'The ordinance of secession, adopted by the convention and ratified by a majority of the citizens of Texas, and all the acts of her legislature intended to give effect to that ordinance, were absolutely null. They were utterly without operation in law. The obligations of the State, as a member of the Union, and of every citizen of the State, as a citizen of the United States, remained perfect and unimpaired. It certainly follows that the State did not cease to be a State, nor her citizens to be citizens, of the Union. If this were otherwise, the State must have become foreign, and her citizens foreigners. The war must have ceased to be a war for the suppression of rebellion, and must have become a war for conquest and subjugation. Our conclusion, therefore, is, that Texas continued to be a State, and a State of the Union, notwithstanding the transactions to which we have referred.'

In White v. Hart (13 id. 646), Mr. Justice Swayne, after a full consideration of the subject, states the result in this forcible language: 'At no time were the rebellious States out of the pale of the Union. . . . Their constitutional duties and obligations were unaffected, and remained the same.' And he shows by reference to the formula used in the several reconstruction acts, as compared with those for the original admission of new States into the Union, that in regard to the States in rebellion there was a simple recognition of their restored right to representation in Congress, and no readmission into the Union.

These cases, and especially that of Texas v. White, have been repeatedly cited in this court with approval, and the doctrine they assert must be considered as established in this forum at least.

If the State of Tennessee has through all these transactions been the same State, and has been also a State of the Union, and subject to the obligations of the Constitution of the Union, it would seem to follow that the contract which she made in 1838 to take for her taxes all the issues of the bank of her own creation, and of which she was sole stockholder and owner, was a contract which bound her during the rebellion, and which the Constitution protected then and now, as well as before. Mr. Wheaton says: 'As to public debts,-whether due to or from the State,-a mere change in the form of the government, or in the person of the ruler, does not affect their obligation. The essential power of the State, that which constitutes it an independent community, remains the same: its accidental form only is changed. The debts being contracted in the name of the State, by its authorized agents, for its public use, the nation continues liable for them, notwithstanding the change in its internal constitution. The new government succeeds to the fiscal rights, and is bound to fulfil the fiscal obligations, of the former government.' International Law, sect. 30. And the citations which he gives from Grotius and Puffendorf sustain him fully.

We are gratified to know that the Supreme Court of the State of Tennessee has twice affirmed the principles just laid down in reference to the class of bank-notes now in question. In a suit brought by the State of Tennessee, against this very bank of Tennessee, to wind up its affairs and distribute its assets, that court, in April, 1875, decreed, among other things, 'that the acts by which it was attempted to declare the State independent, and to dissolve her connection with the Union, had no effect in changing the character of the bank, but that it had the same powers, after as before those acts, to carry on a legitimate business, and that the receiving of deposits was a part of such legitimate business.' 'That the notes of the bank issued since May 6, 1861, held by Atchison and Duncan, and set out in their answer, are legal and subsisting debts of the bank, entitled to payment at their face value, and to the same priority of payment out of the assets of the bank as the notes issued before May 6, 1861.'

At a further hearing of the same case, in January, 1877, that court reaffirmed the same doctrine, and also held that the notes were not subject to the Statute of Limitations, and were not bound by it. State of Tennessee v. The Bank of Tennessee, not reported. This decision was in direct conflict with schedule 6 of the constitutional amendment of 1865, which declared all issues of the bank after May 6, 1861, void, and it necessarily held that the schedule was itself void as a violation of the Federal Constitution.

3. The third proposition on which the judgment of the courts of Tennessee is supported is, that the notes on which the action is brought were issued in aid of the rebellion, to support the insurrection against the lawful authority of the United States, and are therefore void for all purposes.

The principle stated in this proposition, if the facts of the case come within it, is one which has repeatedly been discussed by this court. The decisions establish the doctrine that no promise or contract, the consideration of which was something done or to be done by the promisee, the purpose of which was to aid the war of the rebellion or give aid and comfort to the enemies of the United States in the prosecution of that war, is a valid promise or contract, by reason of the turpitude of its consideration.

In Texas v. White (supra), the suit was for the recovery of certain bonds of the United States which, previously to the war, had been issued and delivered to the State of Texas. During the rebellion the legislature of that State had placed these bonds in the hands of a military commission, and they were delivered by that committee to White and Childs, to pay for supplies to aid the military operations against the government. This court held that while the State was still a State of the Union, and her acts of ordinary legislation were valid, it was otherwise in regard to this transaction. As this is the earliest assertion of the doctrine in this court, and this branch of the opinion received the assent of all the members of the court but one, and has been repeatedly cited since with approval, we reproduce a single sentence from it: 'It may be said,' says the court, 'perhaps with sufficient accuracy, that acts necessary to peace and good order among citizens, such, for example, as acts sanctioning and protecting marraige and the domestic relations, governing the course of descents, regulating the conveyance and transfer of property, personal and real, and providing remedies for injuries to person and estate, and other similar acts which would be valid if emanating from a lawful government, must be regarded in general as valid when proceeding from an actual though unlawful government; and that acts in furtherance or support of rebellion against the United States, or intended to defeat the just rights of citizens, and other acts of like nature, must, in general, be regarded as invalid.'

In Hanauer v. Doane (12 Wall. 342), it was held that due-bills, given in purchase of supplies by a purchasing agent of the Confederate States, were void, though in the hands of a third party; and in support of the judgment Mr. Justice Bradley said: 'We have already decided, in the case of Texas v. White, that a contract made in aid of the late rebellion, or in furtherance and support thereof, is void. The same doctrine is laid down in most of the circuits, and in many of the State courts, and must be regarded as the settled law of the land.'

The latest expression of the court on the subject was by Mr. Justice Field, without dissent, in Williams v. Bruffy (96 U.S. 176), in which the whole doctrine is thus tersely stated: 'While thus holding that there was no validity in any legislation of the Confederate States which this court can recognize, it is proper to observe, that the legislation of these States stands on very different grounds. The same general form of government, the same general laws for the administration of justice and the protection of private rights, which had existed in the State prior to the rebellion, remained during its continuance and afterwards. As far as the acts of the States did not impair, or tend to impair, the supremacy of the national authority, or the just rights of the citizens under the Constitution, they are, in general, to be treated as valid and binding.' See Horn v. Lockhart et al., 17 Wall. 570; Sprott v. United States, 20 id. 459.

There is, however, in the case before us nothing to warrant the conclusion that these notes were issued for the purpose of aiding the rebellion, or in violation of the laws or the Constitution of the United States. There is no plea of that kind in the record. No such question was submitted to the jury which tried the case. The sole matter stated in defence, either by facts found in the bill of exceptions, or in the decree of the court, is that the bills were issued after May 6, 1861, while the State was in insurrection, and therefore come within the amended Constitution of 1865, declaring them void. The provision of the State Constitution does not go upon the ground that the State bonds and bank-notes, which it declared to be invalid, were issued in aid of the rebellion, but that they were issued by a usurping government,-a reason which we have already demonstrated to be unsound. Not only is there nothing in the Constitution or laws of Tennessee to prove that these notes were issued in support of the rebellion, but there is nothing known to us in public history which leads to this conclusion. The opinion of the Supreme Court, which we have already cited, states that the bank was engaged in a legitimate business at this time, receiving deposits, and otherwise performing the functions of a bank; and though, as is abundantly evident, willing enough to repudiate these notes as receivable for taxes, that court held them to be valid issues of the bank, in the teeth of the ordinance declaring them void.

It is said, however, that considering the revolutionary character of the State government at that time, we must presume that these notes were issued to support the rebellion.

But while we have the Supreme Court of Tennessee holding that the bank during this time was engaged in a legitimate banking business, we have no evidence whatever that these notes were issued under any new law of the rebel State government, or by any interference of its officers, or that they were in any manner used to support the State government. If this were so, it would still remain that the State government was necessary to the good order of society, and that in its proper functions it was right that it should be supported.

We cannot infer, then, that these notes were issued in violation of any Federal authority.

On the other hand, if the fact be so, nothing can be easier than to plead it and prove it. Whenever such a plea is presented, we can, if it comes to us, pass intelligently on its validity. If issue is taken, the facts can be embodied in a bill of exceptions or some other form, and we can say whether those facts render the contract void. To undertake to assume the facts which are necessary to their invalidity on this record is to give to conjecture the place of proof, and to rest a judgment of the utmost importance on the existence of facts not found in the record, nor proved by any evidence of which this court can take judicial notice. We shall, when the matter is presented properly to us, be free to determine, on all the considerations applicable to the case, whether the notes that may be then in controversy are protected by the provision of the Constitution or not. And that is the only question of which, in a case like the present, we would have jurisdiction.

The judgment of the Supreme Court of Tennessee will, therefore, be reversed, and the case remanded to that court for further proceedings in accordance with this opinion; and it is

So ordered.

MR. CHIEF JUSTICE WAITE, MR. JUSTICE BRADLEY, and MR. JUSTICE HARLAN dissented.

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