2. Ramsey obtained his pardon from the President of the United States, and whatever may have been his sympathies with the rebellion, he has a legal right to allege the fact of the existence at the time of a public war, and that being within the lines of the rebel authorities, he had no possible opportunity to defend the suit against him, nor to obtain any information of the existence of such a proceeding.
This court has recognized the war of the rebellion to have been a public war, and the fact that Ramsey before the Federal army took possession of the country around Knoxville had resided there and voluntarily left it and gone to another State, although it might have some weight in determining his status in a proceeding by the government against him, cannot avail Ludlow in a suit of this kind.
The law has been settled with respect to parties situated as these parties were during the war. In Dean v. Nelson, the court say that 'the defendants were within the Confederate lines, and that it was unlawful for them to cross those lines.' Two of the defendants there had indeed been expelled from the Union lines, and could not return, so that an attempt may be made to distinguish that case from this, but as the report in that case states, 'the other had never left the Confederate lines.' As to him, Dean v. Nelson cannot be distinguished from this case; and even as to the other two, why had they been expelled? only in retaliation on rebels. They were as faulty as the one who remained all the time in the rebel lines. Yet of all three the court say in Dean v. Nelson:
'A notice directed to them, and published in a newspaper, was a mere idle form. They could not lawfully see nor obey it. As to them the proceedings were wholly void and inoperative.'
3. Prior to the sale under the attachment Mrs. White intervened in the proceedings for confiscation, and by virtue of the provisions of the act of Congress had the privilege of asserting any right that she had. Now when the proceedings in the District Court were quashed, Ramsey, who had been pardoned, and all whose guilt had been wiped away, became possessed of his property. The State court had no power to vacate the order thus restoring his estate to him, and in giving it to Ludlow in virtue of the sale under the attachment, it acted in contempt of the Federal judiciary.
Messrs. Maynard and Nelson, contra, for the appellant.
Mr. Justice BRADLEY delivered the opinion of the court.