Debts of the Southern States

New York Chamber of Commerce

New York Chamber of Commerce and Industry Records collection

Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University

eng

Box: 230 Folder: 10

RBML_NYCCC_100131042

1861-11-13

ex

nnc-rb

eng

rd

Debts of the Southern States

Chamber of Commerce, New York, Nov. 13, 1861

To his Excellency Abraham Lincoln,
President of the U. States,

The Memorial of the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York respectfully represents that the subject now held under consideration by your Excellency, touching the power and jurisdiction of the Provost Judge of Alexandria in certain actions of debt brought before him, involves questions of the deepest import to the mercantile interests of the country. Citizens of states now in rebellion owe to citizens of loyal states a commercial debt estimated at little less than $200.000.000. At present there are no means of collecting any portion of these debts, nor can there be until the authority of the United States government is reestablished in the rebellious states. In fact these states have made the payment of any such debt a criminal offence of the highest grade, and they have also provided by law for their confiscation and appropriation to the uses of the rebel government.
Under these circumstances the unfortunate creditors are constrained to look to their government for relief. They are aware that government can grant this relief only in the degree in which its authority is reestablished; but to that extent (new page) they feel that they have a right to claim, on the grounds of justice and sound policy, its friendly and earnest interposition. The restoration of United States authority will follow the march of the federal army, and must thus be accomplished by degrees. It has already commenced. The district of Alexandria, in the State of Virginia, is now within the lines of the federal army. No civil authority exists there, but a Military Governor has been appointed and a Provost Court established. Your memorialists respectfully submit that, under such circumstances, it is an imperative necessity that these military authorities should exercise all the functions of local government. A state of war does not destroy the social relations of men; and unless there exists in its immediate presence some kind of authority to protect the rights of person and property and to enforce the obligations of contract, it would leave no traces of property behind it to satisfy the claims of creditors or others.
It is therefore of the highest importance that loyal citizens should have means of enforcing their claims against debtors in reconquered districts during the transition stat when the military is the only existing power. If their legal rights be postponed until the reestablishment of civil tribunals it is not (new page) likely that any property will be found to satisfy their claims. The chances are that most of it will have been appropriated to disloyal purposes.
Again, the honest and loyal debtor in the reconquered district, who should desire to prosecute his business and pay his debts, would find himself greatly embarrassed by the crushing competition of disloyalists and others intending to put their creditors at defiance. This very difficulty, it is said has already been felt at Alexandria.
The political effect of this temporary immunity, if it were granted to rebel debtors, could not fail to prove most injurious to the federal cause; for it could scarcely be expected that rebels would become loyal when loyalty would deprive them of a plausible ground for refusing to satisfy the just demands of their creditors. The immunity, in short, would be equivalent to paying a premium for treason.
For the reasons stated your memorialists deem it essential to justice and to the early suppression of this wicked rebellion, as well as due to the mercantile interest of the country which has sustained the government with such patriotic zeal and liberality, that the action of the Provost (new page) Court at Alexandria should be sustained by the Administration; and that it should also be the invariable practice to establish such courts with plenary power in civil causes in every district that falls into the military possession of the U. States government. It is said that the practice of this government in California for some two years after that territory came into its possession afforded a precedent for the adoption of this policy. But whether this be so or not, there can be no doubt but justice and expediency (new page) alike demand its adoption in the present exigency. The rules and usages of war and governed by the necessities that exist in its actual presence subject only to such restraints as justice, mercy and other principles of Christianity impose. It will infringe none of these to compel the disloyal debtor to appropriate his property to the payment of debts justly due to loyal creditors.
Your memorialists, therefore, respectfully urge your Excellency to sanction the action of the Alexandria Court, and to establish similar tribunals wherever the federal army establishes its authority in a rebellious city or district.