IN error to the Supreme Court of Mississippi.
This case involved the question of the validity of certain notes, commonly known as 'cotton money,' issued and put in circulation by the State of Mississippi as currency during the late rebellion, and also the obligation of the State to receive the same in payment of taxes after the rebellion, and after the reorganization of the State government.
The case was thus:
Mississippi, through a convention convened by the action of the legislature, passed, on the 9th of January, 1861, an ordinance of secession, by which it was ordained 'that all the laws and ordinances by which the State became a member of the Federal Union were repealed, and that all obligations on the part of the said State, or the people thereof, were withdrawn, and that the State now resumed all the rights, functions, and powers which by any of the said laws and ordinances were coveyed to the government of the said United States, and was absolved from all the obligations, restraints, and duties incurred to the said Union, and should be henceforth a free, sovereign, and independent State.'
And in March of the same year, persons from different rebel States having met at Montgomery, Alabama, and made what they called a constitution for the permanent Federal government of the Confederate States of America, an additional ordinance was passed by the convention in Mississippi, ordaining that said constitution was adopted and ratified by the State of Mississippi, acting in its sovereign and its independent character; and that the State acceded to and became a member of the Confederacy provided for by the same.
Immediately after this the constitution of the State was so amended as to abrogate all provisions adapting it to the Constitution of the United States, and so changing it as to conform it to the connection between the State and the Southern Confederacy.
This was followed by measures taxing all the resources of the States in various forms to provide the means to sustain the Confederacy in its separation from the United States.
In the spring of 1861, the insurrection having broken out into war throughout the Southern States, military and naval measures became necessary to suppress it, and the government of the United States instituted a blockade of all the Southern ports, so that no staple of the States in rebellion could find a market.
On the 19th December, 1861, under such circumstances and in the condition of affairs just described, the insurrectionary government of the State passed an act entitled 'An act authorizing the issue of treasury notes as advances upon cotton.'
The act provided for the issue of $5,000,000, in notes of the donomination of $1, $2, $3, $5, $10, $20, and $100, to be paid out of the State treasury as advances to the people of the State on the crop of cotton grown in the State in the year 1861, at the rate of 5 cents per pound. The notes were to be in the following form:
Receivable in payment of all dues to the State and counties, except the military tax.
On demand, after proclamation to present, the State of Mississippi will pay to the bearer the sum of _ dollar(s) out of proceeds of cotton pledged for the redemption of this note, at the Treasurer's office, in Jackson, Mississippi.
Issued ___ day of _, 186_.
,
Auditor of Public Accounts.
,
Treasurer.