“
[535]
The Secretary found half his time engrossed with these questions.
He determined that it would be wise to establish some tribunal at New Orleans to examine and decide upon them. . . . It had become necessary to constitute a Provisional Court.
Charles A. Peabody of New York was appointed the Provisional Judge, and vested with full jurisdiction, ‘his judgment to be final and conclusive.’
”. . .
While General Butler was the military commander, he had enforced order, maintained quiet, and adopted praiseworthy sanitary regulations, regardless of protests or resistance.
He ruled with a firm hand, and in return encountered a storm of vituperation.
Seward's circular to Foreign Ministers, December 15 (pp. 149, 150), says:--
General Banks sailed from New York fifteen days ago, with reinforcements for New Orleans, and we suppose that he must before this time have reached and taken command of that city.
We are inaugurating a system of administration in New Orleans, under General Banks, which will relieve the condition there of much of the uneasiness which it is supposed affected the disposition of foreign powers. . . .
Thus it will be seen that on October 20, by executive order, not transmitted to me,
Seward caused to be established a Provisional Court, which was done in defiance of the
Constitution and laws of Congress, inasmuch as it was
not for military purposes.
He claimed that judgments by it were to be “final and conclusive,” not to be revised by any court.
His biographer says that the
validity of its acts were considered--how could that be done?--in the Supreme Court of the
United States, and were fully sustained, when, in subsequent years, they came before it. It had full and conclusive jurisdiction in all cases of law, civil and criminal, equity and admiralty.
The Supreme Court sustained his decisions because they had no power to reverse.
Perhaps also that court found them to be right.
My acts and decisions in New Orleans were also brought before the Supreme Court, and were all sustained, as we have seen, not because the court could not adjudicate differently, but because they decided that I had judged rightly.
