CONFISCATION—AN EXPLANATION—NOT AN APOLOGY.
All Governments, including the Southern Confederacy, have written in their statute books that whoever engages in rebellion or takes up arms against their authority shall forfeit not only his property but his life.
I am glad now that my Government did not enforce these harsh penalties against any of the Confederates.
In 1864 the United States District Judge for New Mexico, himself a Southern man, held that his Court had the power to libel and confiscate the real estate of such citizens of El Paso County, Texas, as were then in arms against the United States. He based this claim upon an Act of Congress approved March 3d, 1863, which provided that “The jurisdiction of the United States Court for New Mexico is hereby extended over the citizens of El Paso County only in cases not instituted by indictment.”
I, being Collector of Customs, had caused this act to be passed to enable me to condemn and sell goods smuggled into El Paso County (there being then no United States Courts in Texas). I am frank to say that I did not then even dream of the confiscation of any one’s real estate.
The United States Attorney and Marshal for New Mexico came to El Paso and libeled the property of certain leading Confederates and proceeded against it in the United States Court at Mesilla, New Mexico, and certain of these lands and lots were declared forfeited and were sold at El Paso by the United States Marshal, and I purchased a portion of this property, as did others. I paid the Marshal eighteen hundred dollars good and lawful money therefor, and received and recorded his deeds.
I protected the property of some of my Confederate neighbors, Dowell’s and Stephenson’s and others.
Along with what I purchased was a six-eighths’ interest in the El Paso town tract belonging to the Gillett brothers, who were then absent with the Confederate army; but some years later, when they returned to El Paso and we patched up a peace, I proposed to them that if they would join their title with mine I would pay their debts, amounting to a few thousand dollars, which debts were a lien on the property, and we would hold it share and share alike.
This they declined to do, and in the end they lost it all. So did I, for years later the Supreme Court of the United States decided, not that the property was not subject to forfeiture, as all such property certainly was, but simply that the Act of Congress referred to did not confer the jurisdiction claimed by the Court at Mesilla.
Without a murmur I reconveyed all the property to the original owners and lost the eighteen hundred I had paid the Marshal.
Then the Gillett’s creditors sold them out. I had held possession of the town tract and paid taxes on it for five years.
It has been said that I purchased the property of Simon Hart at the confiscation sale. That is not true. I purchased that property at Sheriff’s sale on a judgment for false imprisonment, which I obtained against Hart in a Texas court, which judgment was twice affirmed by the Supreme Court of Texas.
In 1871 I was the owner of a portion of Franklin Heights, of the city of El Paso, then known as Hart Survey, No. 9.
Being in Washington City I met my friend, Gen. Robert B. Mitchell, and gave him a power of attorney to sell the property. He sold to different purchasers, to the amount of $14,000, and we divided the proceeds share and share alike.
The property was then considered valueless by those who knew less than we did, but it is now worth forty-fold what we received for it. Among the purchasers were George W. Gray of Washington City and one Peck of Kansas, and others.
The recording of the deeds in El Paso County aroused the jealousy and hatred of my El Paso enemies, and, heedless of what harm they might do to others so long as there was a prospect of injuring me, they wrote the purchasers that I had no title to Survey No. 9, that the property was worthless, and that I was a swindler.
It is strange that the purchasers took these statements at par, and instead of investigating or communicating with me they sued me in Washington City for the purchase money, charging fraud, and got service on me there. I demurred them out of court, and came home, and being angry with the purchasers I paid no further attention to them or their troubles.
None of them, ever asserted their rights to the property, WHICH THEY COULD HAVE DONE SUCCESSFULLY IF IN TIME.
These strange facts being of record in El Paso County have caused a lot of talk, and many a lawyer has believed he had made an important discovery and has had visions of profitable litigation. I have been interviewed about this transaction one hundred times, more or less.
