The daily phoenix. [volume] (Columbia, S.C.) 1865-1878, 1866-01-10

! were issued Dy the frGSiIenE and
from NIL the Departments turning
over to the Bureau all confscated
! and abandoned lands, and, according
to the report, good deal of land
actually divided out among the freed
| men in South Carolina, Georgia and
Florida; while Circular No. II, July
%, 1865, tu make the work thorough,
declared, ''the pardon of the Presi-
dent will not be understood to extend
to the surrender Of abandoned or
confscated property, which by law
has been set apart for refugees or
freedmen"
Here was a system perfect for its
purposes but just'as it was organ
lied tho war ended. In the spring of
1865, Gen. Lee and Gen, Johnston
surrendered their SCARED and famous
veterans, thinned by the carnage of
the four bloodiest years of the worlds
military history, broke, never again
to be rallied, and the Confederate
Government was even "so-called'' no
longer.
AS soon as this fact was beyond
doubt-as soon as peace, with its
possible settlements of all questions
raised by the war, was plain-as soon,
as the hot and angry blood of the
nation had time to cool-it became
evident
l. That to apply the Act of March,
1865, passed and approved in the
midst of war, and when its object
was, by the appropriation of these
lands, to weaken and distress an
enemy, to state of things entirely
different, was manifest injustice.
The Act itself provided for the dis
tribution of lands within 'tinsurrec-
tionary States" and it was scarcely
possible to call that an insurrectionary
State over which the President, at the
request of the people, had appointed
a Provisional Governor, where Con-
vention was ordered, where elections
were held undisturbed, where taxes
were colleeted, where custom houses
were established, where mails were
carried, and where officers of the
United States Government might
travel from seaport to mountain
without escort and without arms. It
was felt that the whole war policy,
and the whole war legislation of the
United States, ought to cease with
the war. Putting aside all technical
argument as to the terms of surren-
der, the real, manly, honoet sense of
the nation felt that when General
Lee and General Johnston laid down
their arms, it was declaration that
this war was ended, this contest over,
that it was then the recognized duty
of the United States Government to
see how, consistently with the rights
of the Union and the interests of the
whole country, they could restore the
old relations, revive old feeling, and
in letter and spirit reconstruct the
old Union. And that it would be
neither justice, nor good faith to
vanquished enemy, TO disregard the
temper, the convictions, the honest
desire for final and honorable accom-
mediation with which the surrender
was made, and in which it was
accepted.
After four years of war, in which
we had learned to respect, as we
Fnever did before, the resources, the
courage, the capacity of each other,
the general desire, the almost uni
versal feeling, was that peace, in all
the fullness of a common nationality,
common interest and common
duties, should be restored. There
could be no hope of such result
through the angry and vindictive
legislation of the last four years,
meant and contrived to be instru-
ments of war as much as iron clad
monitors or improved artillery.
2. Next, it was clear that the very
question OF what constituted "aban-
doned" property, must, in times Of
peace, be referable to legal tribunal.
The Constitution provides that no
person shall be deprived of property
without due process of lava phrase
of emphatic significance to people
educated in and habituated to the
principles of the common law, and
where, under present enactments,
such property is confscable," due
process of law is required before it
becomes "confscated." No law of
the United States makes the absence
of the owner from his estates crime.
When, therefore, "the voluntary
abandonment of land was made to
justify its seizure and appropriation,
not only new crime was created,
unknown to the law, but the property
was, in fact, by the seizure, icon
fiscated :" without due process of law.
Again, the definition of abandoned
property by the Act of 1864 was,
property real or personal, shall be
regarded as abandoned when the law