Morrison Waite

“ The position assumed by the appellants is to our minds wholly untenable. The designated depositaries are intended as places for the deposit of the public moneys of the United States; that is to say, moneys belonging to the United States. No officer of the United States can charge the government with liability for moneys in his hands not public moneys by depositing them to his own credit in a bank designated as a depositary. ”

“ The clerk, having been notified by the Interior Department that the First National Bank of Selma, Alabama, had been designated by the Secretary of the Treasury as a depositary of public money, deposited in July, 1866, to his own credit as clerk in that bank the money received by him from the marshal. ”