over taxes upon dividends and interest paid by the Memphis & Charleston Railroad Company between the first day of July, 1862, and the first day of December, 1865. The items which go to make up the amount of the judgment brought here for review are thus stated in the verdict of the jury.
'(1) On dividend declared March 17, 1863, a tax of $1,625.45, being 3 per centum on $57,515.60, the value in legal currency, when paid, of $143,789, the whole amount of said dividend then paid in confederate money. (2) On interest coupons of said defendant falling due November 1, 1862, May 1, 1863, November 1, 1863, and May 1, 1864, a tax of $819.17, being 3 per cent. on $27,326.55, the value, when paid, in legal currency of $88,935, the portion of such coupons paid in confederate money; and the further tax of $2,274.45 on the remaining maining portion of said coupons falling due as aforesaid, being 3 per cent. on $75,815.83, such remaining portion of said coupons. (3) On interest coupons of said defendant falling due November 1, 1864, May 1, 1865, and November 1, 1865, a tax of $6,793.50, the same being 5 per centum on $135,870, the amount of said last-named coupons.' The questions presented by the bill of exceptions may be separated into three classes, as follows:
(1) Those which relate to dividends and interest paid in confederate money and during the late civil war; (2) those which relate to the payments of interest after the close of the war; and, (3) those which relate to an alleged compromise between the United States and the railroad company under date of September 24, 1870.
These will be considered in their order.
1. As to payments in confederate money. Upon this branch of the case the facts are these:
At the beginning of the war the Memphis & Charleston Railroad Company was the owner of an equipped line of railroad extending from Memphis, in the state of Tennessee, through the states of Tennessee, Mississippi, and Alabama, to Stevenson, in the last-named state. It was divided into two divisions,-one known as the Eastern Division, extending from Stevenson westward to Bear Creek, on the line between Mississippi and Alabama, having its principal office at Huntsville, Alabama; and the other, known as the Western Division, extending from Bear Creek to Memphis, and having its principal office at Memphis. On the eleventh of April, 1862, the military forces of the United States took possession of the Eastern Division of the road, with all its rolling stock and equipment, and kept it until the close of the war. The Western Division was run by the officers of the company, under the control of the military superintendent of the confederate authorities, until the sixth of June, 1862, when it was taken possession of by the United States. Three days before the capture of Memphis by the military forces of the United States, the officers and rolling stock of the Western Division were moved south within the confederate lines, by command of the confederate military authorities, and were kept there until the end of the war. During this period the rolling stock was hired by the officers of the company to other railroad companies, and in this way a large amount in confederate treasury notes came into the hands of the officers of the company within the confederate lines. On the seventeenth of March, 1863, a resolution was passed within the confederate lines declaring a dividend of 4 per cent. on the capital stock, payable in confederate treasury notes on the fifteenth of April. Under this resolution payments were made to the amount stated in the verdict. The confederate money used to pay the coupons, as stated in the verdict, was all obtained from the hire of the rolling stock within the confederate lines.
Upon this state of facts the court instructed the jury, in substance, that the United States were entitled to such a verdict as was rendered, and the question presented here is, in effect, whether that instruction was right.