Horace Gray

“ If the so-called Confederate States should achieve independence, the money of the United States would be the money of a foreign country. If the national authority should be re-established over the insurgent districts, the slaves, for part of the price of which the payment was to be made, would be free, in fact and in law, and be wholly lost to the purchaser. In view of either alternative, the parties cannot reasonably be held to have contemplated payment in any other currency than that of the Confederate States. ”

“ It tended to prove that, at the time and place of the making of the agreement and of the bonds, the only currency in circulation or bankable was Confederate currency, the value of that currency in relation to gold was as one to nineteen or twenty, slaves were not being sold at all for gold, and these slaves were not worth more than the stipulated price computed in Confederate currency, and would never, even before the war, have been worth more than a fifth of that price in gold. ”

“ The competency of the evidence as to the popular expectation of an increase in the value of Confederate currency, and as to the price at which another person would or could have sold other slaves, is much more doubtful, and need not be considered, inasmuch as it was not specifically contested at the argument, probably because its exclusion could not vary the result, so long as the evidence which we hold to be competent is admitted. ”