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(Copy.)
Bureau of Military Justice, 
17 August, 1871.

Respectfully returned to the Secretary of War. It is understood that the buildings herein referred to, and, with their contents, proposed to be sold, were erected by the so called rebel government upon land of the United States, to wit, on the premises of the Arsenal of Augusta Georgia. It is a familiar principle of the law of real estate, that buildings erected by one person, upon land of another person, without the consent of the other, become the property of the latter as the owner of the land. The buildings in question thus became, upon their erection, the property of the United States, and a part of the public land upon which they were built. The rebel government could of course acquire no title in the land whatever. 

The buildings referred to, therefore, are not of the class of "captured" or "abandoned" property, but property of which the title has always been in the United States. 

Accordingly, they cannot legally be sold by the commmissioner of the