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Moore. Int. Arbitrations, IV. 3710, adopted in Bacigalupi r. Chile, United
States and Chilean Claims Commission (1901). 151.

See, also, Wilson's Case. Spanish Claims Commission (1881), Moore, Int.
Arbitrations, IV. 3674–3675.

A belligerent is not required to pay for damages to persons or property of enemies or neutrals which, being in the track of war. may be injured by the military operations.

Mr. Magoon, law officer, division of insular affairs, War Dept., Feb. 6 1901, Magoon's Repts. 338.

“The resort to such measures as were adopted by the forces of the Haytian Government to suppress the local revolt against the Government and the laws may have been, and no doubt was, in the estimation of the Haytian Government, entirely justifiable, and this Government has no disposition to question the correctness of this view as to these precautionary municipal measures; but it follows, nevertheless, that the Government is answerable for the destruction of private property which may have been necessarily sacrificed to the success of such measures. It is because of the recognition by this Government of the necessities that such emergencies give rise to that it limits the demand in the present instance to compensation for actual losses.”

Mr. Blaine, Sec. of State, to Mr. Langston, July 1, 1881. MS. Inst. Hayti,
II. 275.

Mr. Fish's report of May 15, 1871, giving the reports of Mr. Whiting. So-
licitor of the War Department, on claims by aliens for damages in
the civil war, is in Senate Ex. Doc. 2. 42 Cong, special sess.

Mr. Lawrence's report on war claims of aliens is found in House Rept. 262, 43 Cong. 1 sess.

By Article VIII. of the treaty between France and the Hova Government of Madagascar, the latter agreed to pay 10.000.000 francs. to be applied to the settlement of French claims that were liquidated prior to the war between the two countries, and to the payment of all damages sustained by private persons of all nationalities on account of the war. The examination and payment of the claims was to devolve upon the French Government, and all persons having such claims were informed by public notice, on March 18, 1886, to present them, together with the documentary evidence in support thereof. either to the minister of foreign affairs at Paris before May 15, 1886, or to the French minister resident at Tamatave before July 15, 1886.

For. Rel. 1886, 308.

Case of Maza and

2. NOR FOR SEIZING RESOURCES OF THE ENEMY.

$1033.

By notes of December 2 and December 10, 1884, the Spanish minister at Washington presented a claim against the Government of the United States of the Spanish firm of Larrache. Larrache & Co., successors of Maza & Larrache, on account of the alleged seizure and appropriation by the authorities of the United States, at Shreveport, La., in 1865, of 1,369 bales of cotton, valued at $700,000. It was alleged that the cotton was purchased by Maza & Larrache in the usual and legitimate course of their commerce; that it was seized and confiscated by agents of the United States Government in obedience to orders issued by the Treasury Department; and that the proceeds of the sale of the cotton were deposited in that Department.

Mr. Valera, Spanish min., to Mr. Bayard, Sec. of State, Feb. 19, 1886,
For. Rel. 1887, 1003.

Mr. Valera also referred to his notes of Dec. 29, 1884, and Feb. 7 and
March 10, 1885, presenting testimony in support of the claim.

In a note of June 28, 1886, Mr. Bayard pointed out that the claimants averred that the confiscated cotton was a part of 3,000 bales which the agent of Maza & Larrache purchased in Louisiana and Texas from the Confederate government in 1864. The case, as thus presented, appeared, said Mr. Bayard, to be a simple one of a private contract for commercial profit and mutual advantage between the claimants and the Southern Confederacy, which was at the time a recognized belligerent at war with the Government of the United States. The claimants knew that the commodity thus contracted for was at the time made use of by the Confederacy in various ways in carrying on the war. Its use for such purposes was publicly proclaimed by the Confederacy and its sale prohibited, except under regulations established or contracts with the Confederate government. Cotton was thus officially classed among war supplies, and as such was liable to be destroyed when found by Federal troops, or turned to any use which the exigencies of war might dictate. In the year in which the claimants made their purchase the Confederate war department, said Mr. Bayard, officially recognized cotton as one of the chief munitions of war, by advising that large amounts of Confederate bonds should be issued for the separate use of that department in purchasing cotton and steamers with which to obtain military supplies from abroad. Continuing, Mr. Bayard said:

"Cotton, in fact, was to the Confederacy as much munitions of war as powder and ball, for it furnished the chief means of obtaining those indispensibles of warfare. In international law there could be

no question as to the right of the Federal commanders to seize it as contraband of war, whether they found it on rebel territory or intercepted it on the way to the parties who were to furnish in return material aid in the form of the sinews of war-arms or general supplies.

"The facts that the claimants were aliens, living in another country. and acting only through agents in the Confederate States, does not alter the case or entitle them to damages for seizures by the United States. This argument in analogous cases has been frequently used by Spain towards American claimants, alien ownership not being in the Spanish dominions, or in any other part of the civilized world, a ground on which confiscation of contraband of war could be avoided. "The argument of the claimants that hostilities had ceased when the seizure took place is not valid, as the war between the Confederacy and the United States was flagrant at the time the contract was made by the claimants with the Confederate States. The war, under the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States, did not terminate until the 20th of August, 1866.

"This Department, in its instructions to our ministers at those courts which recognized the southern insurgents as belligerents, has maintained that those nations, after such recognition, must be content to have their subjects who were domiciled as merchants in belligerent territory considered as belligerents, and the same argument would embrace all aliens residing in the enemy's country for business purposes, or represented by agents there. It has likewise been held by the Supreme Court of the United States in one case, where the property of a noncombatant was destroyed, that property left by its owner in the country of a belligerent is subject to the chances of war and to confiscation by the other belligerent.

"A similar rule was enforced in the case of the losses of British subjects through the Dutch bombardment of Antwerp in 1830, and was assented to by Great Britain and all the other powers whose citizens suffered loss. The same was the case with the property of American citizens in Naples in 1807, and likewise in the case of losses incurred by foreigners by our bombardment of Greytown in 1853, France and Great Britain acquiescing.

"If claims for losses of goods belonging to neutral owners which happened to be at the time of hostilities in the enemy's territory can not be entertained, how much less valid are they when goods were the subject of a voluntary contract entered into by the owners with the leaders of a revolt, the two contracting parties taking the chances of loss through the failure of the Confederacy, or of the profits to result from its success, which, doubtless, would in the present case have been enormous. The contracting parties were partners in a speculation in contraband of war, which was subject to the vicissitudes of war and

which failed, and the resulting loss can become no basis for a claim which, if admitted, might embarrass Spain, among other nations, as furnishing a precedent in possible future cases where the integrity of her colonial possessions should be at stake.”

Mr. Bayard, Sec. of State, to Mr. Muruaga, Spanish min., June 28, 1886,
For. Rel. 1887, 1006.

The statement above made with regard to the bombardment of Antwerp
is erroneous. An indemnity was obtained by the United States and
other powers, though from Belgium and not from the Dutch.

Replying to the foregoing note, on August 13, 1886, Mr. Muruaga pointed out that, while it was stated when the claim was first presented that Maza & Larrache had purchased the cotton under a contract with the Confederate government, it was subsequently shown by the affidavit of the agent of the claimants, which was sent to the Department of State on March 15, 1885, that the cotton was purchased" from loyal citizens of the United States (that is to say, noncombatants) in the States of Texas and Louisiana." The apparent contradiction, said Mr. Muruaga, was explained by the fact that the Confederate government exercised" strict surveilance "over the transportation of all cotton within its territory, and that no purchase could be made except through its officers or with their approval. He had, he said, not forgotten that the place where the purchase was made was within the jurisdiction of a power then at war with or in rebellion against the United States, and that the latter had forbidden all commercial transactions within that territory. But, said Mr. Muruaga, such a prohibition could not, according to the principles and practice of international law, be maintained against other nations unless by an effective blockade of the coast or by something equivalent thereto on land. It was believed to be a matter of history that the United States Government never seriously attempted to maintain by military stations or patrols its prohibition of trade with the Confederacy along the frontier line extending from Brownsville, near the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwestern limit of Texas. Since no measures were taken actually to prevent merchants from carrying on commerce in that quarter, it was not reasonable to assert that the Spanish house of Maza & Larrache was engaged in illicit trade. Nor was the cotton in question captured while being carried across the Confederate lines during the war; nor was it seized during the period of active military operations. After May 13, 1865, no resistance was offered to the Federal authorities anywhere in the territories of the Union. The capitulation of the Confederate army of the trans-Mississippi department was signed on the 26th of that month, and General Grant's proclamation to the Union Army announcing the termination of the war was published on the 2d of June. After May 26, 1865, northern H. Doc, 551-vol 6-57

Louisiana, where the claimants' cotton was stored, was, said Mr. Muruaga, peacefully occupied by the United States authorities. The cotton was seized by Treasury agents and taken from New Orleans during June, July, August, and November, 1865.

Mr. Muruaga said that he did not dispute the principle that foreigners or their agents domiciled in an enemy country for mercantile purposes were to be considered as belligerents, and that property abandoned by its owner in belligerent territory was subject to the chances of war and to confiscation. Nor did he deny that gorernments were not obliged to indemnify the owners of property destroyed in active warlike operations such as bombardments. battles, and marches. This doctrine was, however, said Mr. Muruaga, subject to numerous exceptions. The Congress of the United States had in a large number of cases compensated its own citizens for property situated within the Confederate lines which had been destroyed by the Union Army or taken for its use, or the proceedof which had been deposited in the Treasury. In this relation he adverted to the captured and abandoned property act of March 12, 1863, and to the act of March 3, 1871, creating the Southern Claims Commission. Moreover, since the close of the war the American Government had concluded conventions with Mexico, England, and France, and the commissioners under these conventions had granted many claims growing out of the operations of the war. As examples of such cases he cited and examined several cases (Mr. Anderson, No. 333; Mr. Gárate, No. 699; Mr. Newton, No. 154, and Mr. Weil, No. 447) before the Mexican Claims Commission. The Anglo-American commission, under the treaty of 1871, also made a number of awards, said Mr. Muruaga, in favor of British subjects, many of whom had resided or been engaged in business within the Confederate lines, on account of property captured by the Union forces within the enemy's lines and subsequently confiscated or appropriated to the use of the United States. Some of these were claims for the value of cotton. The same course was followed by the French and American commission, under the convention of 1880, both in respect of cotton and of other property. Mr. Muruaga also cited the case of Carlisle, 16 Wall. 147, as that of a British subject who, although he was shown to have been engaged in furnishing saltpeter to the Confederate military authorities for the manufacture of gunpowder, was held to have a right to recover the proceeds of his property from the United States Treasury in view of the President's proclamation of amnesty of December 25, 1868. On these grounds Mr. Muruaga asked for a reconsideration of the case.

Mr. Muruaga, Spanish min., to Mr. Bayard, Sec. of State, Aug. 13, 1886,
For. Rel. 1887, 1008.

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