Joseph P. Bradley

“ It is unnecessary to decide whether the mortgage was one of real or of personal estate, or whether it was a legal or only an equitable mortgage. As no attempt has been made to cut off the equity of redemption, in any other manner than by legal proceedings, the question is reduced to the simple one, whether those legal proceedings are valid and effectual for the purpose. ”

“ The court is asked by the appellant, under the circumstances of the case, which the appellant asserts to have been unconscionable on Nelson's part, to consider the instrument as a conditional conveyance of the stock, and not a mortgage. But the court has no power over the transaction to make it other than, or different from, what the parties themselves made it. If it is a mortgage, it is the duty of the court to declare it a mortgage; and if it is a mortgage it has, perforce, all the incidents and privileges of a mortgage; and that it is a mortgage there is no room for question. ”

“ The defendants in the proceedings (the appellees here) were within the Confederate lines at the time, and it was unlawful for them to cross those lines. Two of them had been expelled the Union lines by military authority, and were not permitted to return. The other, Benjamin May, had never left the Confederate lines. A notice directed to them and published in a newspaper was a mere idle form. They could not lawfully see nor obey it. As to them, the proceedings were wholly void and inoperative.
This leaves the equity of redemption in the mortgaged property unextinguished ”