Replies

Woodpusher quoting SCOTUS the Protector (?):
"The forts and property of the United States had, prior to that day, been forcibly seized by armed forces. Hostilities had commenced; and, in the light of subsequent events, it must be considered that a state of war then existed."

I cited Matthews v. McStea 91 U.S. 7, 9 (1875), from which I quoted.

Mr. Justice Strong delivered the opinion of the court.
The single question which this record presents for our consideration is, whether a partnership, where one member of the firm resided in New York and the others in Louisiana, was dissolved by the war of the rebellion prior to April 23, 1861.
That the civil war had an existence commencing before that date must be accepted as an established fact. This was fully determined in The Prize Cases, 2 Black, 635; and it is no longer open to denial. The President’s proclamation of April 19, 1861, declaring that he had deemed it advisable to set on foot a blockade of the ports within the States of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, was a recognition of a war waged, and conclusive evidence that a state of war existed between the people inhabiting those States and the United States.

Matthews v. McStea 91 U.S. 7, 11 (1875)

No declaration of war was ever made. The President recognized its existence by proclaiming a blockade on the 19th of April; and it then became his duty as well as his right to direct how it should be carried on. In the exercise of this right, he was at liberty to allow or license intercourse; and his proclamations, if they did not license it expressly, did, in our opinion, license it by very cogent implications. It is impossible to read them without a conviction that no interdiction of commercial intercourse, except through the ports of the designated States, was intended. The first was that of April 15, 1861. The forts and property of the United States had, prior to that day, been forcibly seized by armed forces. Hostilities had commenced; and, in the light of subsequent events, it must be considered that a state of war then existed. Yet the proclamation, while calling for the militia of the several States, and stating what would probably be the first service assigned to them, expressly declared, that, “in every event, the utmost care would be observed, consistently with the repossession of the forts, places, and property which had been seized from the Union, to avoid any devastation, destruction of or interference with property, or any disturbance of peaceful citizens in any part of the country.” Manifestly, this declaration was not a mere military order. It did not contemplate the treatment of the inhabitants of the States in which the unlawful combinations mentioned in the proclamation existed as public enemies. It announced a different mode of treatment, — the treatment due [*91 U.S. 12] to friends. It is to be observed that the proclamation of April 15, 1861, was not a distinct recognition of an existing state of war. The President had power to recognize it, The Prize Cases, supra; but he did not prior to his second proclamation, that of April 19, in which he announced the blockade.

Continuing in McStea shows that the Court found that the proclamation permitted commercial intercourse to continue.

Matthews v. McStea 91 U.S. 7, 12 (1875)

Even then, the war was only inferentially recognized; and the measures proposed were avowed to be “ with a view to . . . the protection of the public peace and the lives and property of quiet and orderly citizens pursuing their lawful occupations, until Congress shall have assembled.” The reference here was plainly to citizens of the insurrectionary States; and the purpose avowed appears to be inconsistent with their being regarded as public enemies, and consequently debarred from intercourse with the inhabitants of States not in insurrection. The only interference with the business relations of citizens in all parts of the country, contemplated by the proclamation, seems to have been such as the blockade might cause. And that it was understood to be an assent by the Executive to continued business intercourse may be inferred from the subsequent action of the government (of which we may take judicial notice) in continuing the mail service in Louisiana and the other insurrectionary States long after the blockade was declared. If it was not such an assent or permission, it was well fitted to deceive the public. But in a civil more than in a foreign war, or a war declared, it is important that unequivocal notice should be given of the illegality of traffic or commercial intercourse; for, in a civil war, only the government can know when the insurrection has assumed the character of war.
If, however, the proclamations, considered by themselves, leave it doubtful whether they were intended to be permissive of commercial intercourse with the inhabitants of the insurrectionary States, so far as such intercourse did not interfere with the blockade, the subsequent act of Congress passed on the thirteenth day of July, 1861, ought to put doubt at rest.
The act was manifestly passed in view of the state of the country then existing, and in view of the proclamation the President had issued. It enacts, that in a case therein described, a case that then existed, “it may and shall be lawful for the President, by proclamation, to declare that the inhabitants of such State, or any section or part thereof where such insurrection exists, are in a state of insurrection against the United States; and thereupon all commercial intercourse by and between the same and the citizens thereof, and the citizens of the rest of the United States, shall cease and be unlawful so long as such condition of hostility shall continue.” Under authority of this act, the President did issue such a proclamation on the 16th of August, 1861; and it stated that all commercial intercourse between the States designated as in insurrection and the inhab- [91 U.S. 13] itants thereof, with certain exceptions, and the citizens of other States and other parts of the United States, was unlawful. Both the act and the proclamation exhibit a clear implication, that before the first was enacted, and the second was issued, commercial intercourse was not unlawful; that it had been permitted. What need of declaring it should cease, if it had ceased, or had been unlawful before? The enactment that it should not be permitted after a day then in the future must be considered an implied affirmation that up to that day it was lawful; and certainly Congress had the power to relax any of the ordinary rules of war. We think, therefore, the Court of Appeals was right in holding that the partnership of Brander, Chambliss, & Co., had not been dissolved by the war when the acceptance upon which the plaintiff in error is sued was made. The judgment is affirmed.

After citing and quoting McStea, I commented,

Obviously, the Supreme Court explicitly and emphatically found that the proclamation of April 15, 1861 was not a distinct recognition of a state of war, rather it announced a different mode of treatment, the treatment due to friends. The court found that the President could have recognized such a state of war but chose not to, and did not do so, until April 19, 1861.
The precise dates, and the precise events, of the start and end of the civil war was addressed by the United States Supreme Court in the case of The Protector, 79 U.S. 700 (1870).

You responded "Woodpusher quoting SCOTUS the Protector (?): and continued with the following:

"The forts and property of the United States had, prior to that day, been forcibly seized by armed forces. Hostilities had commenced; and, in the light of subsequent events, it must be considered that a state of war then existed."

79 U.S. 700 (1871)

Statement of the case.
The Protector.
1. The beginning and termination of the late rebellion in reference to acts of limitation, is to be determined by some public act of the political department.
2. The war did not begin or close at the same time in all the States.
3. Its commencement in certain States will be referred to the first proclamation, of blockade embracing them and made on the 19th April, 1861; and as to other States to the second proclamation of blockade embracing them. and made on the 27th April, 1861.
4. Its termination as to certain States will be referred to the proclamation of the 2d April, 1866, declaring that the war had closed in those States, and as to Texas to the proclamation of the 20th August, 1866, declaring it had closed in that State also.
5. Alabama was one of the States named in the first proclamation of block ade, and the first proclamation as to the termination of the war.
6. Accordingly an appeal from a decree by the Circuit Court of Alabama of the 5th April, 1861, which was filed in the clerk’s office on the 17th May, 1871, was dismissed; it being held on the principles above stated, that more than five years had elapsed between the date of the decree and the filing of the appeal, allowing the suspension of the time produced by the war. Appeal from the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of Louisiana.
This was a motion by Mr. P. Phillips to dismiss an appeal from a decree of the Circuit Court of the United States in the Southern District of Alabama. A motion to dismiss an appeal from the same decree, for the reason that it was not brought within one year from the passage of the act of March 2d, 1867, had been made and denied at the December' Term, 1869. f The appeal was subsequently dismissed on another ground. The ground of this present motion [79 U.S. 701] was that more than five years, excluding the time of the rebellion, elapsed after the rendering of the decree, before the appeal was brought.
By the act of 1789, it is provided that writs of error shall not be brought but within five years from the rendering or passing the judgment or decree complained of. By the act of 1803, appeals from decrees were allowed, subject to the same rules, regulations, and restrictions as writs of error. As a writ of error is not brought until it is filed in the court where the judgment was rendered, so an appeal, as this court considers, is not brought until it is rendered or filed in the same way.
The decree in this ease was rendered on the 5th of April, 1861, and the present appeal was allowed on the 6th of May, 1871, and filed in the clerk’s office of the proper court, or brought, on the 17th of May, 1871.
In Hanger v. Abbott it was held that the statute of limitations did not run, during the rebellion, against citizens of States adhering to the national government having demands against citizens of the insurgent States. And the question of course was whether, making allowance for the suspension of time produced by the rebellion, the appeal was or was not in season.
Mr. Phillips contended that it was not; Mr. F. S. Blount, contra, urging that it was.
The CHIEF JUSTICE delivered the opinion of the court.
The question, in the present case is, when did the rebellion begin and end? In other words, what space of time must be considered as excepted from the operation of the statute of limitations by the war of the rebellion?
Acts of hostility by the insurgents occurred at periods so various, and of such different degrees of importance, and in parts of the country so remote from each other, both at the commencement and the close of the late civil war, that it [79 U.S. 702] would be difficult, if not impossible, to say on what precise day it began or terminated. It is necessary, therefore, to refer to some public act of the political departments of the government to fix the dates; and, for obvious reasons, those of the executive department, which may be, and, in fact, was, at the commencement of hostilities, obliged to act during the recess of Congress, must be taken.
The proclamation of intended blockade by the President may therefore be assumed as marking the first of these dates, and the proclamation that the war had closed, as marking the second. But the war did not begin or close at the same time in all the States. There were two proclamations of intended blockade: the first of the 19th of April, 1861, embracing the States of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas; the second, of the 27th of April, 1861, embracing the States of Virginia and North Carolina; and there were two proclamations declaring that the war bad closed; one issued on the 2d of April, 1866, embracing the States of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Mississippi, Tennessee, Alabama, Louisiana, and Arkansas, and the other issued on the 20th of August, 1866, embracing the State of Texas.
In the absence of more certain criteria, of equally general application, we must take the dates of these proclamations as ascertaining the commencement and the close of the war in the States mentioned in them. Applying this rule to the case before us, we find that the war began in Alabama on the 19tli of April, 1861, and ended on the 2d of April, 1866. More than five years, therefore, had elapsed from the close of the war till the 17th of May, 1871, when this appeal was brought. The motion to dismiss, therefore, must be
Granted.

The nation is not recognized in a state of war until there is a public proclamation to that effect. The said public proclamation occurred on April 19, 1861. The proclamation of April 15, 1861 did not do it. It did not announce a blockade. It spoke to individuals, combinations of persons, and in the words of the Court, "It announced a different mode of treatment, — the treatment due to friends."

A proclamation ordering combinations of people to disperse cannot create a state of war between the United States and combinations of individuals. A state of war cannot exist unless another power be recognized to be at war with. On the 19th, Lincoln announced a blockade of states, and thereby recognized the Confederacy as a belligerent power. The troops of a lawful belligerent power, when taken, become prisoners of war. In The Protector, the Court established the precise date of the start of the war.