Viewing page 65 of 241

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

bill of attainder could have reached his widow and his child; if no act of confiscation could or did pretend to destroy the heritable and dowable quality of his estate, it is confidently submitted to the humanity, justice and good policy of the Government as well as to the legal knowledge of its advisers, that no act passed in the mere name of "seizing abandoned lands applies to this case, and that no Executive Bureau, acting for any purpose can apply such a law to innocent widows and deprive them of dower, or to orphans and deprive them of heirship, and make such an act, by mere change of name, operate more stringently and with more potent and lasting effect than veritable acts of Confiscation and attainder. Attainder could not be passed, at all, and Confiscation would require "due process of law before Courts of civli jurisdiction" and could operate for the life-time only of any person convicted on trial. Your Memorialist, a widow, and her orphan child, now but four years of age, throw themselves upon the proper authorities of their country to protect the innocent and the helpless ones from any such evasion of constitutional principles, and any such oppressive violation of rights which now, more than at any time, call for safe-guards and assistance. The father and husband in this case was killed before the civil war ended, and nearly all his property has been taken by Government, or been exposed to total destruction and waste by the acts of its officers. Can it be a question at this day of