Hukill v. United States

Citations

• 18 Ct. Cl. 180
• 1883 U.S. Ct. Cl. LEXIS 86
• 1800 WL 1194

Syllabus

<p>The claimants were mail contractors in the insurrectionary States prior to the rebellion, and the hooks of the United States Post-Office Department show a balance due each of them. The Confederate Congress passed an act directing the Postmaster-General to pay to mail contractors who were loyal citizens of the Confederacy whatever balances were found due them from the United States for carrying the mails in those States.</p> <p>H. carried the mails in Arkansas. He resided there more than two years thereafter, when he enlisted in the United States military service and served till the close of the war in a company of Iowa volunteers.</p> <p>W. carried the mails in Arkansas. To prove that he had not been paid by the Confederate States, he relies wholly upon two witnesses, whose statements are vague, uncertain, and contradictory.</p> <p>W.7s administrator. His intestate carried the mails in North Carolina. Upon the organization of the Confederate post-office department he contracted to continue the same service for the Confederacy. Five witnesses are examined for claimant, one of whom testified that “he [the claimant] was as good a rebel as any of us,” and none brought out any fact calculated to show that claimant had not been paid under the law of the Confederacy.</p> <p>F. carried the mail in Texas. The depositions of two witnesses are put in evidence, and on inspection it is found that the twenty-nine answers to interrogatories in the oxre correspond in language exactly with the twenty-nine answers in the other. The claimant also had a contract with the Confederate post-office department for continuing the service under the Confederacy.</p> <p>Held :</p> <p>I.As was Reid in Suldll’s Case (16 0. Cls. K., 562), the presumption is that payment was made by the Confederate authorities to all mail contractors to whom the United States owed balances for carrying the mails in the disloyal States, and who came within the class described in the Confederate act of Congress fo