Taylor v. Thomas

by Nathan Clifford

United States Supreme Court

89 U.S. 479

Taylor  v.  Thomas

IN error to the Supreme Court of Mississippi.

This case involved the question of the validity of certain notes, commonly known as 'cotton money,' issued and put in circulation by the State of Mississippi as currency during the late rebellion, and also the obligation of the State to receive the same in payment of taxes after the rebellion, and after the reorganization of the State government.

The case was thus:

Mississippi, through a convention convened by the action of the legislature, passed, on the 9th of January, 1861, an ordinance of secession, by which it was ordained 'that all the laws and ordinances by which the State became a member of the Federal Union were repealed, and that all obligations on the part of the said State, or the people thereof, were withdrawn, and that the State now resumed all the rights, functions, and powers which by any of the said laws and ordinances were coveyed to the government of the said United States, and was absolved from all the obligations, restraints, and duties incurred to the said Union, and should be henceforth a free, sovereign, and independent State.'

And in March of the same year, persons from different rebel States having met at Montgomery, Alabama, and made what they called a constitution for the permanent Federal government of the Confederate States of America, an additional ordinance was passed by the convention in Mississippi, ordaining that said constitution was adopted and ratified by the State of Mississippi, acting in its sovereign and its independent character; and that the State acceded to and became a member of the Confederacy provided for by the same.

Immediately after this the constitution of the State was so amended as to abrogate all provisions adapting it to the Constitution of the United States, and so changing it as to conform it to the connection between the State and the Southern Confederacy.

This was followed by measures taxing all the resources of the States in various forms to provide the means to sustain the Confederacy in its separation from the United States.

In the spring of 1861, the insurrection having broken out into war throughout the Southern States, military and naval measures became necessary to suppress it, and the government of the United States instituted a blockade of all the Southern ports, so that no staple of the States in rebellion could find a market.

On the 19th December, 1861, under such circumstances and in the condition of affairs just described, the insurrectionary government of the State passed an act entitled 'An act authorizing the issue of treasury notes as advances upon cotton.'

The act provided for the issue of $5,000,000, in notes of the donomination of $1, $2, $3, $5, $10, $20, and $100, to be paid out of the State treasury as advances to the people of the State on the crop of cotton grown in the State in the year 1861, at the rate of 5 cents per pound. The notes were to be in the following form:

Receivable in payment of all dues to the State and counties, except the military tax.

On demand, after proclamation to present, the State of Mississippi will pay to the bearer the sum of _____ dollar(s) out of proceeds of cotton pledged for the redemption of this note, at the Treasurer's office, in Jackson, Mississippi.

Issued ___ day of _____, 186_.

________,

Auditor of Public Accounts.

________,

Treasurer.

On the petition of parties owning cotton and having it in their actual possession or control, and on their executing a bond with approved securities in double the amount of the advance conditioned for the delivery of the cotton, &c., the auditor was required to advance these notes to the amount and at the rate per pound above stated. The owner of the cotton was to keep it safely until after the removal of the then existing blockade of the Confederate ports, when, on the proclamation of the governor demanding it, the cotton was to be delivered at some city or seaport in the Confederate States within ninety days, and sold either for gold and silver or for these cotton notes, and the funds so received for the cotton were pledged for the redemption of the notes, and were not to be appropriated to any other purpose whatever; and such of the cotton notes as might be received in payment for the cotton were to be cancelled and destroyed. If the proceeds of the sale were not sufficient to discharge the advance in gold or silver, or in treasury notes, then the owner was to pay the amount requisite to make up the deficit. All funds received by the governor, whether in payment of the advances or for the proceeds of sales of the cotton, or for deficits, or recovered in suits on the bonds, were to be deposited with the State treasurer and placed in the State treasury. And the treasury notes issued under the act were to be receivable in payment of all taxes due or to become due to the State, or to any connty or school fund, or municipal corporation, except a military tax previously levied under 'An ordinance (of January 26th, 1861) to raise means for the defence of the State;' and when so received for taxes might be 'again paid out upon any warrant of the auditor drawn upon the general treasury,' until redeemed and cancelled as above stated. The cotton, until sold, was to be at the risk of the owner receiving the advance; but when sold the proceeds were to be subject to the order of the governor.

The legislature of Mississippi, which passed the law of 1861, had been elected prior to the so-called secession of the State.

In the year 1865-the rebellion being now suppressed and the supremacy of the government re-established-the legislature of Mississippi passed a law laying a tax of $2 per bale on cotton, and enacting that the collectors of taxes should collect it 'in the currency of the United States.'

A certain Taylor having fifty bales, the tax on which was of course $100, the collector of the taxes, one Thomas, demanded of him payment in currency of the United States. Taylor tendered to him the amount in $100 of the cotton notes, and refused to pay in currency of the United States. Hereupon the collector was about to distrain, when Taylor filed a bill-the present bill-to enjoin him, and to make him receive the $100 'cotton-note' in payment of the tax; he, Taylor, contending that the agreement of the State made in the act authorizing their issue, to receive the cotton bills in payment of taxes, was a 'contract' which the State had no power by its subsequent act of 1865 to impair.

The Supreme Court of the State, where the case finally came, adjudged the notes to be void. It said, in substance,

'We regard the act, in its operation and effects, to have been in aid of the late rebellion; a part of the financial system of the State, at a time of great pecuniary want, to supply not only a circulating medium for the people in the transactions of their ordinary business, but also to furnish the means by which an empty treasury of the State might be replenished.

'One section of the act provides that the notes shall be receivable in payment of all taxes now due or that may hereafter become due to the State, or to any county, or school fund, or municipal corporation, except the military tax; and that the said notes, when so received for taxes, may again be paid out by the treasurer upon any warrant of the auditor, drawn upon the general treasury. It will be thus seen that the notes were intended to supply an important part of the revenue by which the State government was to be sustained and enabled more effectually to aid the Confederate government in the prosecution of a sanguinary war, waged expressly for the purpose of subverting the government of the United States. The notes are therefore illegal and void.'

Taylor now brought the case here on error.

Messrs. F. P. Stanton and H. S. Foote, for the plaintiff in error:

I. The character of the act of 1861, authorizing the issue of the treasury notes, does not warrant the conclusion reached by the Supreme Court of Mississippi, that it was passed in aid of the rebellion.

The act was one of ordinary legislation. The shipment and sale of cotton hand been effectually prevented by the blockade. The crop of 1861 was on hand, wholly unavailable, although in ordinary times the cotton raised in the State was the chief, if not the only resource of the people, to supply a currency and to enable them to make the exchanges necessary to the very existence and support of society. This measure was a local one simply, avoiding all connection with any military operations, and providing only for the internal commerce of the State. The substance of it was to base a currency to the extent of $5,000,000 on the crop of cotton made in the year 1861, then fully matured and in hand, and to preserve this crop for shipment and sale until the raising of the blockade, which had suddenly arrested the whole trade of the region.

The act distinguishes these cotton-notes from the notes issued under the ordinance of the convention, entitled 'An ordinance to raise means for the defence of the State,' passed January 26th, 1861. This ordinance of the convention was confessedly passed in furtherance of the rebellion. But the act in question had no connection with it, but was in absolute contrast to it. The cotton notes were no more issued to aid in the war than if the government of Mississippi had procured so much gold and silver coin and advanced it to the people of the State on the pledge of their cotton crop of that year.

II. The decision made by the Supreme Court of Mississippi has been overruled by subsequent decisions in the same court.

The ruling in this case was a departure from the law as it had previously been settled in that State in the case of Hill v. Boyland, ^[1] and other cases decided about the same time. The Supreme Court subsequently re-established the doctrine established in Hill v. Boyland, and thus overruled its own decision in the case now brought before this court. This, we think, will appear on reference to the cases of Mister v. McLean, ^[2] Buchanan v. Smith et al., ^[3] and Lawson v. Jeffries. ^[4]

III. Decisions of this court, also, are inconsistent with the conclusion that the act of 1861 was in aid of the rebellion.

In the cases of White v. Hart, ^[5] Huntington v. Texas, ^[6] and Horn v. Lockhart, ^[7] this court has settled the principle that 'at no time were the rebellious States out of the pale of the Union;' that 'if the government was in actual control of the State, the validity of its act must depend on the object and purpose of it;' and 'that the acts of the several States, executive, judicial, and legislative, during the war, so far as they did not impair or intend to impair the supremacy of the National authority, or the just rights of citizens under the Constitution, are, in general, to be treated as valid and binding.' The decision of the court below in this case was the opposite of these principles.

IV. In view of these decisions, which recognize the validity of acts passed by the insurrectionary States, so far as the acts were acts of ordinary legislation, it is unnecessary to advert to the circumstance, that the Mississippi legislature of 1861 had been elected prior to the secession of the State, and was the legislative power of the State not only de facto, but de jure, as well.

Messrs. G. F. Edmunds and T. W. Bartley, contra:

I. The legislation, and the acts done in pursuance of it, were in aid of the rebellion.

1. They were meant, palpably meant, to circumvent a state of things produced by the war. The shipment and sale of cotton, the chief staple of the South, and the one by which the rebellion was meant to be carried on, was cut off by the blockade, and this act was passed to enable it to hold out.

2. The notes were receivable in payment of all taxes except 'the military tax' (whatever that was), and were the general fund for paying the legislators, governors, and State troops.

To say that such a proceeding was a pure one and legal, is to offend common sense.

II. The impression of opposing counsel that the decision of the Supreme Court of Mississippi, in this case, has been overruled by subsequent cases in that court, is inaccurate. The cases cited were not strictly analogous, and turned upon questions essentially different.

III. The same may be said of the cases cited from this court as having overruled the position taken by the Supreme Court of Mississippi in this case. Those cases do not touch the questions in the present case; a reference to the cases cited will show this.

IV. If the lawfully elected legislature of Mississippi betrayed its trust by passing a law to assist in overthrowing the Constitution and government which it had taken an oath to support and maintain, this cannot help the case of the opposite side. It does but add turpitude and perfidy to illegal legislation.

[In addition to the argument of these points, the counsel on both sides argued the question as to whether the notes under consideration were 'bills of credit' within the Constitution, and such as that instrument ordains that 'no State shall emit.']

Mr. Justice CLIFFORD delivered the opinion of the court.

Notes

1. 40 Mississippi, 619.
2. 43 Id. 270.
3. Id. 97.
4. 47 Id. 686.
5. 13 Wallace, 165.
6. 16 Id. 413.
7. 17 Id. 580.