This first funding act of October, , while still a bill under discussion in the Congress, was given a more severe character, but was amended in the Senate before its final passage. I C-fod. Digitized by Google I. To return to the Secretary s recommendations in January, He dilated upon the evils of a depreciated currency and the necessity of meeting the continual rise of prices with the issue of more notes. He proposed to meet the difficulty by extending the principle adopted in the legislation of the previous fall, and compel noteholde1 8 to exchange their notes for bonds, thereby reducing the amount in circulation to the desired millions.
The means he proposed were the simple declaration that notes dated previous to December 1, , should cease to be currency after July 1, , when they should no longer be fundable. Moreover, he held that" the modification of the contract is substantially for the benefit of both parties the government and the noteholder.
The object in view is to increase the value of the whole remaining currency. There was something naive in Digitized by Google. The notion that compulsory funding was an infringement of a contract between the government and the noteholder the Secretary met by saying that the Congress had already answered this objection by passing the above Funding Act of October 18, Then he justified the adoption of a simi. Justice is satisfied by giving to the party full opportunity to receive the benefit of his contract.
Examples of the same principle are afforded in private matters by the laws of partnership and for the administration of assets. In public matters the history of every nation affords like precelients, which will probably find support in the laws of every State in our Confederacy.
He admitted that they would depreciate, but claimed that any loss on this score would be compensated for by a rise in the value of the notes. If one or the other, bonds or notes, must depreciate, he preferred that the former should do so. However, he claimed "whatever may be the amount of depreciation on the bonds, it cannot exceed the depreciation in the value of the currency. Moreover, he assumed that compulsory funding was Digitized by Google.
This plan did not originate with the Confederate authorities. A resolution had been introduced in the Virginia legislature in May, , and presumably was passed, favoring the State s guaranteeing the Confederate bonds.
A similar resolution was offered in January, , but was opposed by a committee, which feared that the Confederate as well as the State s credit would suffer by adopting the course recommended.
South Carolina followed suit, and went a step further by authorizing the Governor to endorse the State s share of millions of Confederate bonds, which was two months later fixed at about 34l millions. About the same time the Florida legislature followed Alabama s example, and proposed to guarantee the State s share of the Confederate debt, provided the other States did the same. The Texas legislature did not go so far, but provided by joint resolution of February 27, , that if the State for any reason were compelled to withdraw from the Confederacy, she bound herself to pay her share of the Confederate debt.
I TreM y, Jan. In Georgia Governor Brown and the leading newspape1 8 opposed the policy as calculated to confuse Confederate and State finances and to impair the confidence of investo1 8 at home and abroad, - the Richmond B:eami.
There was some talk of the legislature s referring the matter to popular vote in the fall, but it was after much discussion, on April 15, , indefinitely postponed.
In North Carolina a similar bill failed of enactment. Opposition to it was akin to that shown in Georgia, and in addition was based on true States rights grounds, - that such action by the States was unnecessary, as the Confederate government was merely their agent, and the States were therefore without further legislation bound to pay their share of the Confede1 8te debt. The Congress took Secretary Memminger s recommendations into consideration.
These were to be sold only for Confederate treasury notes issued since December 1, ; the central government was then to wue to the States the same amount of similar Confederate bonds. The bill did not commend itself to the Finance Committee and was tabled,I but the Funding Act of March 28, , of which more below, contained a provision in line with the Secretary s recommendations. Nothing came of the matter. AuguaIII Coutillltiollali. Appeal Atlaula" Nol. I 11,; Courier, Mch. JlIlle 30, Standard, Jone 30, 8,7, Under these circumstances the voluntary funding of notes in bonds had presumably come to an end by July.
Notebolders continued to hold their notes instead of exchanging them for bonds, and thereby destroying their usefulness as a circulating medium and as a means of speculation. The Funding Act instead of correcting the redundancy of the currency threw discredit on the previous issues of notes, which dragged down the subsequent ones to their own level. As usual, this called for larger and larger appropriations and correspondingly increasing issues of notes.
Cereals, which at the beginning of sold at four times their normal ". The army requisitions, which had footed up to millions in , reached millions in , millions in , BJ? Of this amount a paltry 5 millions bad been secured by taxation, - by export and import duties and by various direct taxes; millions had been obtained by floating bonds; and The Congress had to face an appalling financial condition when it met in its session during the winter of At the opening of the sessiou on December 7, , the Secretary of the Treasury presented his report.
The public debt of the Con1 OjflIlM:. Rebtllion, lilt S. By January 1, , the total public debt of the Confederate States had increased to millions of dollars. The similar Erlanger bonds did not figure in this statement of the Secretary of the Treasury. In his report of December 7, , the Secretary of the Treasury pointed out the failure of the tax system.
The war tax established in had been based on the tax machinery of the individual States and had been changed by them into a loan. The Secretary, however, did not present a practical plan of increasing the revenue from taxation other I See pages ". This provision was aimed at making it advantageous to hold bonds. The Secretary confessed that the voluntary exchange of notes for bonds, from which 80 much had been expected, had proved a failure.
He claimed that the plan would have worked well and the redundancy of the notes been prevented by their being funded in bonds, if the interest on those bonds could have been paid in specie.
But the supply of specie had been cut off by the blockade, and to provide specie, he might have added, no adequate revenue system had been invented. The funding acts had not reduced the circulation, as had heen hoped. He recommended adding further compulsory features which would force noteholders to give up their notes and thereby correct redundancy.
About millions in notes were in circulation; millions must be retired in order to reduce those outstanding to millions, a sufficient contraction for the time being, which could be carried further when peace was attained.
Taxes could only be relied upon to a slight extent to cancel these millions of notes; the chief reliance must be put upon loans, and necessarily upon forced loans. Furthermore, noteholders were to be compelled to fund their notes of denominations above 86, - to which alone the plan applied, but Digitized by Google. Six months more were to be allowed within which the notes could be exchanged for bonds, then those still ouiBtanding were to be debarred from any further claim upon the government, that is, they were to be repudiated.
The recommendations of the Secretary had in view the direction indicated by the two previous funding acts and pointed at its logical limit.
The currency was to be forcibly reduced by compelling nomholders to withdraw their notes from circulation and turn them into bonds, by threatening them with a heavy tax in addition to eventual repudiation.
The Secretary sought to justify such a measure by the argumeniB of the year before. He granted that it would constitute an infringement of the contract between the government and the" noteholder, in that the original provision regarding the exchange of notes for bonds would be violated, and also in that the government would break iiB promise to accept and eventually pay the notes.
He attempted to minimize such a repUdiation of government obligations by claiming that in offering to exchange within a limited time the notes for the proposed new bonds, the government bad "provided a fund as nearly equal to specie as is within iiB power," that the government would act as every honest debtor does, would recognize the validity of the debt, offer the best security it could, and ask for time; in essence, then, he proposed forcing a compromise upon the creditors of the bankrupt government.
The chief argument in favor of his plan of repudiation was the familiar one that unless such a measure were adopted all would be lost, private as well as public credit would be ruined, and the noteholders would be still worse off than at present.
Any measure, involving no matter how great a breach of contract, could be justified if it averted such a calamity. The continuance of the circulation in its present dimensions Digitized by Google.
I Fiat in France, 59, ; PAl,. It objected to the injustice and bad faith they alm08t all involved, wamed the government against the demoralizing effect of any repUdiation measure, and urged heavy taxation beside a forced loan, if necessary, as an adjunct. How 8uch a loan could avoid the injustice complained of was not 8tated.
Other newspapers went the full length of advising either editorially or through contributed letters, outright repudiation of the Confederate debt. I LyaeAburg Dnil. S, ISM correep. IS, ISM. The govemment had broken ita word and was being urged to do so again. As a result, the govemment credit was ruined, and no means could be devised to compel the unwilling noteholder to exchange his position for that of a bondholder. The previous funding acta had not driven the notes out of circulation, and later and similar acta would have no different effect.
Such a proposal could not have been taken seriously, as the govemment was already fully committed to paying its interest charges in notes, and had already leamed to tamper with the terms of its contracts with ita noteholders.
The Virginia legislature appointed a committee to formulate plans to remedy the difficulties of the Confederate finances. A scheme was proposed which was framed by a Virginia banker aiming at a diminution of the Confederate currency and a stoppage of further issues. Eventually exclusive dependence was to be put on taxation. In the mean time a large issue of bonds was to fumish a sufficient revenue. The plan apparently was not further discussed, but the legislature took up a scheme to effecta forced loan of onetenth of all property with a view to reducing the currency.
The Govemor in his subsequent message urged the adoption of a fiscal policy which should retire the excess of currency above the amount necessary to the business of the oountry, 1 N. In a later message he offered more specific recommendations.
Bonds to the amount of million dollara bearing 4 interest should be authorized, and notes should be forcibly converted into them and cease to circulate. It was taken for J granted that bold measures would be adopted. The House of Representatives at once appointed a special committee to consider the various plans proposed. Numerous bills were introduced in both Houses, for instance, one to compel noteholders to exchange ninetenths of their notes for 2 bonds, and another taxing notes 6 every month for eleven months, and a similar one more in line with the Secretary s recommendations.
In January, , the matter was seriously taken up in the Congress, and in secret session. Authority was to be given for millions in new notes and millions in 6 bonds. I, ISM.
To carry out this plan the necessary bonds and notes were authorized. The authority to issue the old notes ceased on April 1, The new notes which superseded all previous issues were made payable two years after the establishment of peace, and were receivable by the government for all dues except for the cotton export duty.
These were not intended for general circulation, as they were made transferable by endorsement only. The interest and principal of these bonds were exempt from taxation, and their payment was secured by the net receipta of any export duty hereafter to be levied upon cotton, tobacco, and naval stores, and also by the net proceeds of the import duties.
The former never materialized, and the latter amounted to an insignificant sum. A provision was added making all import duties payable in specie, sterling exchange, or in the coupons of these bonds. Finally, the Secretary of the Treasury was authorized to hypothecate these bonds for notes so as to meet the appropriations of the Congress and to reduce the currency.
As to the effect of the Funding Act, the popular belief that prices would fall was not realized. Immediately upon the passage of the act there were complainta of a scarcity of currency, a familiar phenomenon at the time of inflation. L CoI. Standard, Nov. I till!! C AarWton Couri!! I Nov. I, I MiP. IoCtI Mcb. I RicAmond E. J1, 17, Juue 13, ; Mch. ArcAillW: 7,; N. All notes issued before February 17, , were declared non-taxable, a reversal of the jo. After the establisbment of peace four-ninths of the cotton tithe at 50 cents a pound, foul -ninths of the corn tithe at 2, and one-ninth of the wheat tithe at 84 a bushel should be pledged to the redemption of the notes until they were all cancelled,- the tax in kind being continued until then.
The bill was discussed by the Congress during December, , and its passage was strongly urged by Secretary Tren. Others wisely held forth upon the fact that the Confederacy had neglected.
Substitutes for the committee s bill were offered and discussed. On December 24, , the original bill was passed by the House with one important amendment. Instead of reversing the policy of the act of February 17, , and declaring notes issued before that date exempt from taxation, as recommended by the Secretary with a view to raising public confidence in the government s promises, the bill as passed exempted only the notes issued since February 17, , which the act of that date had already done.
In the Senate the bill met with opposition. I, 3, 10, ISM; Ju. Mealll Comm. A bill to that effect was introduced and passed in the House, but apparently made no headway in the Senate, It raised the cotton export duty, and imposed a similar tax on tobacco; it also provided for the confiscation of all cotton and tobacco within the Confederate States, the owners to be reimbursed at a future time and at present prices.
The Secretary further suggested establishing a government deposit office in connection with the treasury, which was to induce noteholders to deposit their notes with the government in exchange for some other form of demand obligation, and thereby remove the notes from the circulation and arrest the progress of their depreciation.
The old notes - other than those for were to be accepted on deposit at two-thirds of their face value, and the certificates issned in exchange were made payable in ninety days. The plan was further perfected by the act of February 28, , which established such a depository in each State, to receive drafts upon the treasury and all current notes.
As the deposits bore no interest and the only indncement offered to noteholders was a partial exemption from taxation of their notes deposited, presumably little advantage was taken of the government s offer. Finally, during the closing days of the Confederate Congress, an attempt was made to secure a snpply of specie. I ClumutOfl Caurirr, Jan. Roane, Mch. Booker, Mch.
Tn1lun6, Cf. Clark in So. IX, MW Jan. XLI, pt. COMt n, I, 8, ; I, 8, Pt OII. COMt n. S Report U. Diredor of the Mint, Oct. StelphllDl, nee. I ArdiilJa. John P. To him, however, the constitutional objection alone was sufficient to deter him from favoring making anything but gold and silver a legal tender. There were others who favored declaring the notes a legal tender at the outset of the war as the best way out of its attendant financial difficulties. The arguments used have a familiar sound to one acquainted with the general history of legal tender legislation.
Smedes of Vicksbnrg urged the passage of a legal tender law which, he claimed, would alone save the merchants and planters from the capitalists of Europe and the North. A correspondent of Secretary Memminger, p, H. Skipwith of Louisiana, called attention to the clause in the Constitution empowering the Congress to make laws necessary and proper to carry into execution the power to declare war and support armies, and claimed, as lateT jurists in the North have done, that this authorized the passage of a legal tender law.
Garland of Arkansas, to inquire into the. The Mississippi legislature memorialized the Congress on August 2, urging the propriety of such a measure ; but a week later the motion of James A. Seddon of Virginia was lost to amend the bill being framed to provide for millions in notes, so as to make them a legal tender in payment of all debts to corporations or individuals. Timu, Jan. Semmes of Louisiana. The discUBBion by the Congress of the expediency and constitutionality of making the government notes a legal tender offered the Secretary of the Treasury an opportunity to go on record as opposing the policy.
Secretary Memminger was asked to give his opinion upon the expediency of making treasury notes a legal tender in payment of debts, as Secretary Chase had been six weeks before.
In answer to such an inquiry from L. Gartrell, Chairman of the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives, and himself an advocate of legal tender legislation, Secretary Memminger stated his position unequivocally in a letter dated March 18, Secondly, a legal tender law could not prevent a depreciatio:Of the notes; nor could it mitigate the harm done by such depreciation.
Creditors would be unjustly treated by being required to accept less than they contracted to receive. The great body of sellers, the other class of people to whom the notes would be offered, would protect themselves by raising their prices, the more so because they would dread a further depreciation. TlUtdly, if legal tender laws should lead to attempts to legally constrain the acceptance of the notes by penalties, past experience in Virginia during the Revolution and in France somewhat later pointed to the utter failure of such a policy.
Memminger closed his letter by urging upon the Congress the necessity of increased taxation and the adoption of every means to promote confidence in the integrity and solvency of the Confederate government. I RicnmOlld pp. Utington, Court; of C1a. I Pamphlet Our in the N. I See , " Lo,t Caw" I Globe, 87th C.
I Perm. I, 6, 1. State legislatures did Jlot feel constrained by the Confederate Constitutions, and went to great lengths in ping legal. Among the memorials addressed to the Congress asking for the adoption of a legal. State legislatures appeared as petitione1 8. Some States made the Confederate treasury notes tax receivable at their face value. So, for instance, Mississippi, by acts of August 6, , and November 26, , authorized its State treasurer, tax collecto1 8, and sheriffs to accept Confederate notes at their face value in payment of public dues.
Louisiana followed suit on January 28, , and North Carolina a short time after,t both of these States making the notes receivable for both State and local. In Louisiana a meeting of citizens at Houma, July 4, , had decided that it was right and proper that the legislature should declare Confederate bonds a legal.
In South Carolina. Lyon of the Alabama delegation offered a resqlution on January 17, , calling upon President Davis to induce the various State legislatures to enact laws making debts thereafter contracted payable in Confederate notes.
Alabama had been among the fi1 Bt to carry out this plan, for by an act of December 10, , the 1 Cf. St4Jtdard, July 1, I HouflllJ, EA. Jnly 9, A CAarluttm Courier, Apt 6,. Jnlyll, Ccmlt ", I, 10, 1; cf. I lbid. I Ibid. I I See page! But very few time loans could have been made in the South during the war; there was little occasion for contracts of long duration. When the war was over, and the courts were again in active operation, some suits were brought to determine the rights of creditors to refuse Confederate notes during the war, most of them, however, to secure an equitable construction of the term "dollar" in contracts executed during the war and still unpaid.
The statui during the war of the Confederate and Southem States governments added a puzzling element to the question. In Arkansas a decision was rendered which declared all contracts based on Confederate. Other courts were similarly affected by a horror of recognizing the existence of the Confederate govemment, and held that the word "dollar" in contracts drawn in the South during the war could not be construed to mean Confederate currency.
Such an extreme position was, however, rare. In a few cases where a debtor s offer of Confederate notes during the war was refused by the creditor and suits were instituted after the war, the court held that the notes were not a legal tender, and could properly be refused. Di,gitized by Google. I 19 Gratton, Va. Their attempts to prevent the discrmnnation Frightening persons into accepting government notes by ca. I Soyeda, Hi. Digitized by Google l.
ArcAillllll: Seem Joumal Confed. The fust debtors to receive attention were those who were serving in the army. Mississippi began the policy of relieving them from their obligations at home by enacting, on January 22, , that it should be unlawful to prosecute any claim against a soldier, and enforced the law with heavy penalties. Arkansas followed suit, on May 28, , by prohibiting the i88ue of writs of attachment against the property of anyone enrolled in the army.
Louisiana, on December 21, , and Virginia a few months later,l freed all in the military service from legal proceedings. However excusable such leniency was to soldiers away from home and without the chance of profitable employment, the Southern States went much further in protecting the debtor. Early in the war the Virginia legislature provided, on Apri, , that no execution should iBBue until otherwise enacted, except against non-residents or in favor of the State, presumably in the collection of taxes.
During the matter was further discU88ed in the State legislature,1 and on January 12, , it was enacted that no proc should iBBue under any judgment or decree rendered by any State court, nor be placed in the hands of a sheriff to be levied during the year In South Carolina a similar bill was passed on December 21, , though reported unfavorably by the legislative oommittee, and opposed on the floor of the State Senate as unnecessary and unconstitutional.
J8, Sept. So, I CluJrWton Courier, nee. I Ala. Moore, 12" Ark. I Sumuer. The scanty records in the South do not furnish a sufficient basis for an estimate of the extent of the debtor interest during the Civil Wal. That it was as persistent and as effective in procuring desired legislation as under previous similar conditions is a fair inference from the adoption of the above number of stay laws.
That it did, the following ; paragraphs would indicate; how much it added to the move; ment it would be rash to guess. The same questions are Iinvolved in the causes of the American Revolution, among which must certainly be enumerated the desire of the Americans to avoid the payment of their debts due to Englishmen;. A full month before seceding from the Union, Georgia passed a stay law, in which it was provided that no levy of attachment should be allowed unless the claimant declared under oath that the defendant was about to remove from the South or any county; Mississippi and Alabama passed stay laws within a month after seceding,l and the Virginia Convention was putting difficulties in the way of Northem merchants collecting their debts in Richmond at the time the State seceded.
I These may fairly be styled suspicious circumstances; but will be passed over as the necessary concomitants of the commercial collapse of those months, itself caused by the fear of secession. We are very much in the dark as to the extent of Southem indebtedness to the North at the beginning of the war.
IO, , continued bJ ad Mch. I Jonel, DiIt. Aullll:ll , p. Tribunt, 18, I Quoted In N. The day after President Lincoln s inauguration Secretary Memminger addressed a circular letter to the Federal civil officers still in the Confederate States,1 ordering them to pay over to the Confederate Treasury any sums they held as drle to the United States government, with which the Confederate authorities would arrange an accounting.
A later Confederate act of May 21, , forbade anyone to pay a debt due to an individual or a corporation in the United States, - except in Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, or the District of Columbia, - and authorized the payment of such debts in specie or treasury notes to the Confederate Treasury, in exchange for certificates bearing the same interest as the original contract; these certificates of the government being payable in specie or its equivalent at the end of the war.
Similar provisions were made to cover moneys deposited in Confederate courts and left unclaimed during six months. On August 80, , the Congress passed an extreme measure, which confiscated all property within the Confederate States belonging to alien enemies on May 21, and three weeks before the passage of the law enacting that citizens of 1 Cllllfed. The bonds of the Confederacy and of the several Southern States were exempt from confiscation; as well as the property of nonbelligerent citizens and residents of the border States, whose adherence to the Southern cause was still thought possible.
The proceeds from the sale of the confiscated property the government was to use to indemnify those Confederate citizens who brought claims for property confiscated by the Federal government, or, as was provided for by an amendment on February 15, , to indemnify those who had in general suffered from acts of the Federal government. On the other hand, Mr. Blaine I states that the Southern policy became a precedent for later legislation in Washington.
Up to this time there bad been no Federal legislation upon confiscation. On 1 Rhodes, HUff U. This reasonable war measure was followed ten days later by the President s proclamation declaring goods imported from the insurrectionary States, which he named, forfeited to the Federal government. Confederate vessels were given fifteen days to leave Northern ports. Under this act seizures of Southern vessels in New York and other Northern ports continued during In most cases Southerne1 8 were only part owne1 8; the other owne1 8, Northerne1 8, usually bid in the vessels at the auctions.
In fact, Federal legislation confined itself to authorizing the confiscation of goods exported from the South,1I the collection of abandoned and captured property, and the seizure of the property of the civil and military OffiC81 8 of the Confederacy and of the individual Southern States.
The seizure of exported goods was a just war measure. The act of March 12, , to col. Quite similarly, when that court was called upon to indemnify Northerne1 8 for the loss of property confiscated by the Confederate government, it was found that, at the outbreak of hostilities, Northerne1 8 had tried to save their property in the South from confiscation by fictitious sales of it to Southern friends.
Wm, It authorized the President to seize all the property of Confederate army and navy officers, of the civil officers of the Confederacy and of the individual Southern States, and of abettors of the rebellion in the North; moreover, it freed slaves that reached the Federal lines. Judge A. Magrath of the Confederate District Court for South Carolina, formerly a judge of the United States Circuit Court, held that the power to wage war involved the power to confiscate property, and declared the Confederate Sequestration Act of August 80, , constitutional.
Pettigru, a Charleston lawyer, bitterly opposing it as a barbarous and useless measure. Pettigru s position was that of a typical strict constructionist. He held that Congress had only those powers which were positively delegated to that body. These did not include the power to confiscate the property of enemies. Since the Revolution only the individual States could exercise that power.
This line of argument was followed up by Mr. Pettigru s associate counsel, Nelson Mitchell, who tried to prove that the policy of confiscating enemies property had been discarded by the United States in accepting the treaty of with England, both parties to which a.
DaN, Paraguay, art. The representative of the Attomey-General and his assistants who argued in favor of the constitutionality of the act, neceBBarily departed from the familiar Southem strict construction view of the Constitution, and anticipated the position to which the United States Supreme Court was driven in npholding some years later the issne of legal tender paper money.
The right to confiscate enemies property was a sovereign right; "having, then, on this snbject, Sovereignty, with all its attributes, the provisional [Confederate] Govemment stands on the same footing with France, Russia, or Great Britain, in reference to the exercise of the power granted.
These arguments were the very ones that prevailed with the Federal Supreme Court in and , and led the majority of the Justices to uphold the constitutionality of legal tender acts as a proper exercise of the sovereign powe1 8 of the National government, by shifting upon the CongreB8 the determination of whether the measures were expedient or not.
Bradl8 l U. The hopeless opposition to the growing power of the centralized government at Richmond was apparent in the arguments before Judge Magrath. The government s attorney regretted the issue of unconstitutionality. During a war against such odds there was no time, he held, to speak of the government s "usurpation," its "tyranny," "oppression," "injustice," "inquisition. On the other hand, the attorney for one of the defendants deplored the use of arguments that construed any attack upon an unconstitutional measure as an attack upon the government.
It does not speak well for the statesmanship of either the North or the South, that both sections tried to lay hands on each other s private property; but it is especially a blot on the history of the Confederate government that it extended its confiscating policy so as to include the just debts due frGm its citizens to those of the North.
So, for instance, in the wars of the seventeenth century Frenchmen confiscated Dutch goods; the Dutchmen retaliated by ordering debts due to Frenchmen paid to the Dutch government ; the Danes pursued a similar policy toward Englishmen and wedes; and Dutchmen toward Spaniards. France confis. Even in the second I century B. There was some agitation for minor amendments to the Confederate oonfiscation measures.
A convention of cotton merchants and planters held at Macon on Ootober 15, , desired that, before turning over the Northern claims upon Southern debtors to the Confederate treasury, the damage done those debtors by acts of the Federal government should be set off; it also favored the act of August 80 taking effect from the time of its passage, not, as the law required, from May Two years later it was proposed in the South Carolina legislature to sequestrate the notes of South Carolina banks, in view of their all being avowedly in the hands of the enemy,.
In the Confederate House of Representatives E. Barksdale of Miuiuippi proposed an amendment, on November 9, , aimed, as the similar Federal law was, at confiscating the property abandoned by persons who had gone over to the enemy.
He claimed that such property did not come under the provisions of the original act, as the Attorney-General had decided that its owners were not "aliens.
It provided the. W Il, 92 et. Bench, Feh. CfIIIf itrr, No". Ezaairw, nee. Cues, ; 14 ; 19 ibid. I Richmond NOT. TO TB. MiUWu of Dollan Oct. Dec Dec. Cowier Gild NOT. BaIIbnI 4,1 1 Dec. I cmm. I, ; Meh. I Duliole, ; Rec d, Rebellill! I Banl Dllem July 30, The suspending banks were required to subscribe to spe,cified amounts of State bonds, to be paid for in coin if the government required.
Moreover, the suspending banks were compelled to lend the State 2,, with which to pay the State s quota of the war tax of August 16, , each bank to contribute to this loan in proportion to its capital.
Evidently the privilege of suspending was one the banks were willing to pay for. This practice of buying immunity from the claims of the note-holder by doing the State government a favor was a. For on December 19, , the suspension of two Alabama banks had been legalized on condition that they paid into the State treasury , within three months. We need only recall the suspension of specie payments in the history of the great national banks of Europe and its connection with bank loans to the respective governmenta.
The State Convention legalized this action on December A difficulty arose from the fact that the Federal law called for payment of customs duties in gold. To relieve the importers, who were in a quandary, a resolution 1 81UDJl8r, Hi.
Gnmwald, Finau-ArcAip. XI, 85 18M. D Digitized by Google. The suspension of the banks was extended by successive acts,2 the last one providing that the privilege to suspend should be forfeited by any bank which declared or paid dividends in gold or silver coin, or one that sold its specie to anyone except the State or Confederate governments. The much less important banks of Mississippi and Florida presumably suspended specie payments before the end of Later State legislation legalized their action during the continuance of the war,8 in the case of Florida for the avowed purpose of relieving the community and affording a safe, adequate, and reliable currency.
The suspension of the New Orleans banks is a story by itself, best told in connection with the relation between the Confederate government and the banks and its attempts to force them to accept treasury notes. At the outbreak of hostilities all the banks in the South except those in New Orleans and some in Mobile had suspended specie payments. This general movement was accompanied, as so generally has been the case in banking history, by an increase in the banks business, primarily by an enlargement of their note issues.
In Virginia many bank charters about to expire in were renewed for twenty years, and some banks increased their capital. In Alabama during the last weeks of four banks were chartered; one of them, a savings bank, was authorized to deposit Confederate or State bonds with the State Comptroller as a basis for the issue of twice that amount of circulating notes, in denominations as low as one dollar.
About the same time, on November 18, , Arkansas repealed all acts prohibiting the circulation of banknotes of any denominations; the same act, however, legislated 1 Claarle. New Orleans Banks for Jan. I nee. CAarlutOll Courier, Nov. Convml ion, , I Mon, Pub. Doe ,. The aggregate capital to be subscribed for in cotton exceeded 85,, Some of these banks were actually organized.
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Study Guides. Trending Questions. What can you hold in your right hand but not in your left hand? Still have questions? Find more answers. Previously Viewed. How much is confederate Fifty dollar bill serial ? Unanswered Questions. Coins and Paper Money. Study now. See Answer. Best Answer. While individual states did produce their own currency, these were not issued by the CSA itself and are sometimes referred to as "rebel state s currency" to distinguish them from CSA bills.
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