Stephen Johnson Field

“ The first act provides for the punishment of treason, the seizure, condemnation, and sale of property of persons engaged in the rebellion, and the payment of the proceeds into the treasury, to be applied to the support of the army of the United States. It was directed against persons committing certain overt acts of treason, and against their property. Its object was to punish the persons and to confiscate their property, and contemplated in the latter proceedings equally as in the former the intervention of judicial authority. ”

“ The decree of distribution signed by the Chief Justice of the District Court shows the kind disposition of a learned magistrate to carry out the generous intentions of a gallant admiral to distribute among the officers and crew under his command money awarded to him as informer, but which he refused to take in that character, without assuming any authority beyond what the admiral implored him to exercise. ”

“ The claimant is the surviving executor of the will of John C. Jenkins, who died in 1855, leaving four minor children, and possessed of a plantation in the State of Mississippi, on the Mississippi River, above Vicksburg. ”