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[289] Turney, J., delivered the opinion of the Court.

The circuit judge charged the jury: “If the officers of the Bank had notice that the money was to be used by the defendant's intestate in. aid of the Southern Confederacy, as for the manufacture of one of the ingredients of gunpowder, and with a view and for the purpose of so aiding the Confederacy they advanced the money, then your verdict should be for the defendant.”

This is error. In Thorrington v. Smith, 8 Wallace, 12-13, the Supreme Court of the United States say: “We have already seen that the people of the insurgent States, under the Confederate Government, were in legal contemplation substantially in the same condition as inhabitants of districts of country occupied and controlled by an invading belligerent. The rules which would apply in the former case would apply in the latter; and, as in the former case, the people must be regarded as subjects of a foreign power; and contracts among them be interpreted and enforced with reference to the conditions imposed by the conqueror; so in the latter case, the inhabitants must be regarded as under the authority of the insurgent beligerent power, actually established as the government of the country, and contracts made with them must be interpreted and enforced with reference to the condition of things created by the acts of the governing power.”

Now, what was “the condition of things created by the acts of the governing power,” at the making of the note in suit? It was, the seceding States, including the State of Tennessee, had by the solemn acts of their peoples in convention assembled, or by overwhelming majorities at the ballot box, withdrawn from the Union, and organized and called into real active existence an integral, independent Government,--under the name of “The Confederate States of America,” --complete in its several deepartments, clothed with all the powers, and discharging all the functions incident to a Sovereign State. Under its Constitution, which had been formally and enthusiastically adopted, without appreciable dissent, by a tremendous popular vote, the seceding States had reorganized their Governments,--elected their governors and legislators, and established their courts,--and had achieved every act necessary to the perfection and successful administration of a civil government, and were maintaining its supremacy and asserting its authority by arms.

The United States Government was unable to give to those within the Confederate States Government who adhered to the cause of the Union any assistance, hence they were compelled to look to the Confederate laws and authority for protection, and in return to yield submission and obedience to those laws and authority.

Just so were the friends of secession within the loyal States compelled to yield obedience to the laws of the United States;--the one was as much without relief as the other ;--and the one government was as unable to give assistance to its friends within the enemy's lines as was the other.

Vattel, p. 97, says: “The State is obliged to defend and preserve all its members, and the Prince owes the same assistance to his subjects. If, therefore, ”

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