. . . 'They were the only measure of value which the people had, and their use was a matter of almost absolute necessity. In the light of these facts, it seems hardly less than absurd to say that these dollars must be regarded as identical in kind and value with the dollars which constitute the money of the United States. We cannot shut our eyes to the fact that they were essentially different in both respects.'
The ordinance of the convention of North Carolina of October, 1865, establishes, as a presumption of law, that contracts to pay 'dollars' made during the war, are presumed to be payable in Confederate currency, subject to evidence of a different intent. And the valuation by statute of North Carolina of value of Confederate currency for month of May, 1862, shows that the demand of the complainants is unreasonable.
The learned counsel then went into argument based on a special history, which he gave of the bonds, to show that if payable in full, in lawful money of the United States, they were void as usurious.
[In view of the decision hereinafter made, p. 560, on the point thus set up, the Reporter has not in his statement given any special history of the bonds; and now does not give any argument on the point as made.]
Mr. H. W. Guion, contra, who contended among other things-if the facts of the case did not repel all presumptions that the bonds were payable in Confederate notes, and if these bonds were within the meaning of the statutes of North Carolina-that those statutes impaired the obligation of contracts, and so were unconstitutional; that the parties had made in 1862 a contract, using in it the well-known word of 'dollars;' that it was for the courts to interpret the meaning of the word in accordance with the settled rules of law and evidence; that these acts passed in 1866 changed this state of things, and assumed that the parties meant not what the words, judicially interpreted, declared, but what the legislature determined to be the presumable and presumed meaning; that the acts put the whole burden of proof upon him who previously was not called on to make any proof; that they thus changed both the meaning which the law gave to words, the tribunal which should settle that meaning and the rules of evidence to ascertain it; that the acts were retrospective; operating on existing contracts, and as a practical result converting valuable securities into worthless paper.
Mr. Justice FIELD, after stating the case, delivered the opinion of the court, as follows:
The question presented, and the sole question under the pleadings, is whether the bonds issued in May, 1862, of the Atlantic, Tennessee and Ohio Railroad Company, a corporation created by the State of North Carolina, were solvable in Confederate notes or in the legal currency of the United States. The company, in its answer, expresses a readiness to pay in legal currency the equivalent of the bonds, if their values be estimated upon the assumption that the bonds were payable in Confederate notes.
In support of the position taken by the company, and the trustees representing the company, reliance is placed upon the decision of this court in Thorington v. Smith, and the ordinance of North Carolina of October, 1865, relating to contracts made during the war, and the Scaling Act of the State passed in 1866.
The treasury notes of the Confederate government were issued early in the war, and, though never made a legal tender, they soon, to a large extent, took the place of coin in the insurgent States. Within a short period they became the principal currency in which business in its multiplied forms was there transacted. The simplest purchase of food in the market, as well as the largest dealings of merchants, were generally made in this currency. Contracts thus made, not designed to aid the insurrectionary government, could not, therefore, without manifest injustice to the parties, be treated as invalid between them. Hence, in Thorington v. Smith, this court enforced a contract payable in these notes, treating them as a currency imposed upon the community by a government of irresistible force. As said in a later case, referring to this decision, 'It would have been a cruel and oppressive judgment, if all the transactions of the many millions of people composing the inhabitants of the insurrectionary States, for the several years of the war, had been held tainted with illegality because of the use of this forced currency, when those transactions were not made with reference to the insurrectionary government.'