considerable extent through the punishment of acts ordinarily
treasonable in nature under a different label within a formula provided
by Chief Justice Marshall himself in the Bollman case. The passage
reads: "Crimes so atrocious as those which have for their object the
subversion by violence of those laws and those institutions which have
been ordained in order to secure the peace and happiness of society, are
not to escape punishment, because they have not ripened into treason.
The wisdom of the legislature is competent to provide for the case; and
the framers of our Constitution * * * must have conceived it more safe
that punishment in such cases should be ordained by general laws, formed
upon deliberation, under the influence of no resentments, and without
knowing on whom they were to operate, than that it should be inflicted
under the influence of those passions which the occasion seldom fails to
excite, and which a flexible definition of the crime, or a construction
which would render it flexible, might bring into operation."[744]

Clause 2. The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of
Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or
Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.

CORRUPTION OF BLOOD AND FORFEITURE

The Confiscation Act of 1862[745] "to Suppress Insurrection; to Punish
Treason and Rebellion; to Seize and Confiscate the Property of Rebels
raised issues under article III, section 3, clause 2." Because of the
constitutional doubts of the President the act was accompanied by an
explanatory joint resolution which stipulated that only a life estate
terminating with the death of the offender could be sold and that at his
death his children could take the fee simple by descent as his heirs
without deriving any title from the United States. In applying this act,
passed in pursuance of the war power and not the power to punish
treason,[746] the Court in one case[747] quoted with approval the
English distinction between a disability absolute and perpetual and one
personal or temporary. Corruption of blood as a result of attainder of
treason was cited as an example of the former and was defined as the
disability of any of the posterity of the attainted person "to claim any
inheritance in fee simple, either as heir to him, or to any ancestor
above him."[748]

Notes

[1] Miller, On the Constitution, 314 (New York, 1891).

[2] 219 U.S. 346 (1911)

[3]