ct was entered
into the owners of any of the property they agreed to sell and deliver;
but it is alleged that Maddox, as one of the parties to the contract and
as assignee of his co-contractors, purchased 4,042 boxes of tobacco,
worth at that time more than $735,000, for the purpose of fulfilling
this contract.

The tobacco was purchased by him within the rebel lines in the State of
Virginia. A part of it, he charges, was forcibly taken by the military
forces of the Government and converted to its use or destroyed while
being transported to its destination, and the remainder of it, having
been detained in storage at Richmond, Va., was afterwards appropriated
to the use of the United States or was destroyed in the fires at
Richmond upon the capture of the city by the United States forces in
1865.

An action predicated upon the contract with Risley was brought by Maddox
in the Court of Claims to recover the value of this property, but it was
held by the court that the contract was void.

On appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States the decision of the
Court of Claims was affirmed, upon the ground, as had been previously
decided by said court, that under the law, the Treasury regulations,
and the Executive orders concerning the purchase of products of
insurrectionary States a purchasing agent of the Government had no
authority to negotiate with anyone in relation to the purchase of such
products unless at the time of the negotiation the party either owned
or controlled them; that neither the law nor the regulations for its
execution protected a speculation wherein the products to be sold were
to be procured by the contractor within the rebel lines after the
contract was made; that private citizens were prohibited from trading at
all in the insurrectionary districts, and that the object of the law and
the regulations to carry it into effect was to encourage the insurgents
themselves to bring their products to agents of the Government.

With this adverse decision all chance of recovery upon legal grounds
of before the courts was dissipated. But recourse to Congress still
remained. As appears from a memorandum furnished in support of this
bill, the alleged equities of the case were presented to the
Forty-second, the Forty-third, the Forty-fourth, the Forty-fifth, the
Forty-sixth, the Forty-eighth, and the Forty-ninth Congresses. Two
adverse and more than two favorable committee reports have been made
upon the clai