The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union And Confederate Armies. Series 3, Volume 2. Page: 261
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UNION AUTHORITIES.
treasonable rebellion. To this feeling, leaning as it does to virtue's
side, is to be ascribed the occasional violation of constitutional guar-
antees. Pure as the motive may be, I am sure your sound sense,
patriotic wisdom, and reverence for all the securities of constitutional
liberty, will cause you to restrain it within legitimate bounds when-
ever the opportunity offers itself. The restoration of the Union, you
will agree with me, will not repay us for the blood and treasure being
so profusely expended to accomplish it, if it is to come to us deprived
of the guarantees which our fathers thought and all experience proves
are so essential to human freedom, and especially of that guarantee
which the definition of treason was obviously designed to offer. Per-
mit me to say, my dear general, that no court in any part of our loyal
country would permit a prosecution for treason against Messrs. Ken-
nedy & Co., upon the facts that were and are before me, to stand for
a moment. The violation of the revenue laws, the postage laws, or
"the laws forbidding trade with foreign countries," cannot be con-
strued into the "levying war against " the United States or "'adhering
to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort." To offend in these
particulars is to commit the offense which the special laws may define,
and to subject the party to such punishment as the laws may provide.
But such conduct is not treason, nor could Congress, the sole body
vested with legislative power, make it treason without totally and ille-
gally disregarding the constitutional inhibition. If I am right in this
view, your power over the parties was just that, and no other, that
the law gives.
You say: " Their lives by every law were forfeited to the country
of their allegiance." Consider of this again, general, I invoke you.
To make the running of a blockade a capital offense, forfeiting the
life of the perpetrator; to do the same with the violator of postal
regulations, or regulations of trade; to punish, as for treason, acts
which the Constitution declares Congress itself shall not so punish,
would be a stretch of military power not sanctioned even by that most
fruitful of all reasons for passing by, as obsolete and unsuited to the
times, all constitutional securities-military necessity.
But in this instance you did not impose nor assume to impose a
fine at all. You seized the specific thing-the third of exchange.
You evidently considered that the representative of the original
offending cargo. You sequestered that, and it was the exact amout
of what you considered its actual value that you held to be forfeited
or liable to be forfeited to the United States, because of the original
illegal shipment. You now, in the paper to which I am replying,
take another ground: You abandon the right to the specific thing as
forfeited. You rely upon the alleged traitorous conduct of the ship-
pers as justifying you in mulcting them in a penalty or fine. You
now say that this fine was imposed in a spirit of mercy, "as their lives
by every law were forfeited to the country." The question which you
told one of the house you would submit to the Government was their
liability to have the value of the bill sequestered-the specific bill-
not whether, because of treasonable or other illegal facts, you had a
right to fine them to the amount of the bill, or to any other amount,
or to impose upon them any other punishment. As the representative
of the country you now allege that, notwithstanding your assured
heinousness of their offense, you imposed upon them a "compara-
tively small fine, and that I, as a commissioner of the same country,
refund it because of its impropriety." You forget, general, that the
question of your right, in behalf of our common country, to impose a261
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The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union And Confederate Armies. Additions and Corrections to Series 3, Volume 2. (Pamphlet)
Errata sheets for the Records of the War of the Rebellion include additions and corrections to the text and the index for Series 3, Volume 2.
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United States. War Department. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union And Confederate Armies. Series 3, Volume 2., book, 1899; Washington D.C.. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth139264/m1/270/: accessed July 16, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.