Beyond all doubt the finding of the appellate court of the State of Mississippi is correct, and the court here also unanimously concur in the conclusion reached by that court, that the treasury notes authorized to be issued by the act under consideration, inasmuch as they were issued 'against the public policy and in violation of the Constitution of the United States, are, therefore, illegal and void.'
Three principal propositions are submitted by the appellant to controvert that conclusion, which will be separately considered:
(1.) That the terms of the act authorizing the issue of the treasury notes do not warrant the conclusion reached by the State appellate court, that it was passed in aid of the rebellion.
(2.) That the subsequent decisions of the same court have overruled the decisions of that court in that case.
(3.) That certain decisions of this court are inconsistent with the conclusion that the act in question, when properly construed, affords any evidence that it was designed to accomplish any such purpose.
I. Subsequent to the passage of the secession ordinance every branch of the State government-executive, legislative, and judicial-claimed that the State ceased by that act to be one of the States of the Federal Union, and denied in the most solemn forms of proceeding that the people of the State owed any further allegiance to the Federal Constitution or obedience to the laws of the United States. Instead of that the whole people of the State joined with one accord in adopting a new constitution differing widely from the Federal Constitution, and by which, as they claimed, they severed and dissolved all connection with the Federal Union and established a new confederation between the people of that State and the other seceding States.
Such measures and pretensions led immediately to conflict of jurisdiction and presently to open hostilities, which showed that every prospect of compromise was at an end. Military preparations became necessary on both sides, and the several seceding States found it impossible to avoid increased and onerous taxation, and no one of the number felt the pressure in that regard more heavily than the State where these parties reside.
Different expedients were adopted to replenish the empty treasury of the State, of which none perhaps afforded greater promise than the measure embodied in the act providing for the issue of treasury notes, as it had the effect to call forth the product of the great staple of the State from its secret depositories, and to render it available as the basis of an extended paper circulation. Legislative authority to issue such notes was accordingly granted, but the requirement was that the notes, when executed in the prescribed form, should be deposited in the treasury of the State, to be paid out by the auditor as advances to such of the people of the State as should comply with the before-mentioned terms and conditions prescribed in the act authorizing their issue.
Other provisions of the act also afford very strong confirmatory proof that the act was passed in aid of the rebellion, as, for example, the section which provides that whenever the then present blockade of the ports of the Confederate States should be removed (which was to be determined by the proclamation of the governor declaring the fact) the governor should in the same form require all persons to whom advances had been made, to deliver the cotton specified in their respective receipts within ninety days from the date of the proclamation. Nothing could be received by the governor in lieu of the cotton 'but gold and silver or the treasury notes issued under the act,' and the express requirement is that all the funds so received by the governor in payment of the advances shall be deposited with the treasurer, and be placed in the treasury of the State.