So far as this instance is an example to us, it is only an incentive to a kindly policy, which, after prudent inquiry, and full knowledge of the extent of these claims, shall make such reasonable allowance as humanity and patriotism may require. There must be an inquiry not only into this individual case, but into all possible cases that may spring into being, so that, when we act, it may be on the whole subject.
From the beginning of our national life Congress has been called to deal with claims for losses by war. Though new in form, the present case belongs to a long list, whose beginning is hidden in Revolutionary history. The folio volume of State Papers, now before me, entitled “Claims,” attests the number and variety. Even amid the struggles of the war, as early as 1779, the Rev. Dr. Witherspoon was allowed $19,040 for repairs of the college at Princeton damaged by the troops.[28] There was afterward a similar allowance to the academy at Wilmington, in Delaware, and also to the college in Rhode Island. These latter were recommended by Mr. Hamilton, while Secretary of the Treasury, as “affecting the interests of literature.”[29] On this account they were treated as exceptional. It will also be observed that they concerned claimants within our own jurisdiction. But on a claim for compensation for a house burnt at Charlestown for the purpose of dislodging the enemy, by order of the American commander at that point during the Siege of Boston, a Committee of Congress in 1797 reported, that, “as Government has not adopted a general rule to compensate individuals who have suffered in a similar manner, the Committee are of opinion that the prayer of this petition cannot be granted.”[30] At a later day, however, after successive favorable reports, the claim was finally in 1833 allowed, and compensation made to the extent of the estimated value of the property destroyed.[31]
In 1815 a claimant received compensation for a house at the end of the Potomac bridge, which was blown up to prevent certain public stores from falling into the hands of the enemy;[32] and other claimants at Baltimore received compensation for rope-walks burnt in the defence of the city.[33] The report of a committee in another case says that the course of Congress “seems to inculcate that indemnity is due to all those whose losses have arisen from the acts of our own Government, or those acting under its authority, while losses produced by the conduct of the enemy are to be classed among the unavoidable calamities of war.”[34] This is the most complete statement of the rule which I find.
After the Battle of New Orleans the question of the application of this rule was presented repeatedly, and with various results. In one case, a claim for “a quantity of fencing” used as fuel by troops of General Jackson was paid by Congress; so also was a claim for damages to a plantation “upon which public works for the defence of the country were erected.”[35] On the other hand, a claim for “an elegant and well-furnished house” which afforded shelter to the British army and was therefore fired on with hot shot, also a claim for damage to a house and plantation where a battery was erected by our troops, and on both of which claims the Committee, simultaneously with the two former, reported favorably, were disallowed by Congress.[36] In a subsequent case both the report and action seem to have proceeded on a different principle from that previously enunciated. At the landing of the enemy near New Orleans, the levee was cut in order to annoy him. As a consequence, the plantation of the claimant was inundated, and suffered damages estimated at $19,250. But the claim was rejected, on the ground that “the injury was done in the necessary operations of war.”[37] Certainly this ground may be adopted in the present case, while it must not be forgotten that in all the foregoing cases the claimants were citizens within our own jurisdiction, whose property had been used against a foreign enemy.
The multiplicity of claims arising in the War of 1812 prompted an Act of Congress in 1816 for “the payment for property lost, captured, or destroyed by the enemy.” In this Act it was, among other things, provided,—
“That any person, who, in the time aforesaid [the late war], has sustained damage by the destruction of his or her house or building by the enemy, while the same was occupied as a military deposit, under the authority of an officer or agent of the United States, shall be allowed and paid the amount of such damage, provided it shall appear that such occupation was the cause of its destruction.”[38]
Two years later it was found, that, in order to obtain the benefits of this Act, people, especially on the frontier of the State of New York, had not hesitated at “fraud, forgery, and perhaps perjury.”[39] Thereupon, the law, which by its terms was limited to two years, and which it had been proposed to extend, was permitted to expire; and it is accordingly now marked in our Statutes, “Obsolete.” But it is not without its lesson. It shows what may be expected, should any precedent be adopted by Congress to quicken the claimants now dormant in the South. “It is the duty of a good Government to attend to the morals of the people as an affair of primary concern.”[40] So said the Committee in 1818, recommending the non-extension of the Act. But this warning is as applicable now as then.