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Excerpt from Opinion of Hon. Edward Bates, Attorney General of the United States: On the Validity of the Acceptances Given by John B. Floyd, Secretary of War, to Russell, Majors,& Waddell, Now Held by Peirce Bacon Sib: When I had the honor to receive your letter of April 21, 1862, referring to me the consideration of the claim of Messrs. Peirce Bacon, as holders of certain drafts drawn by Russell, Majors Waddell, upon the Secretary of War, and accepted by John B. Floyd, the then Secretary, I doubted for some time whether I could venture to give any official answer touching the merits of the claim, because your letter does not contain, and was not accompanied by, any case made, or statement of facts, which I might fairly take to be the true and only facts upon which the merits of the claim ought to be determined. My office has no legal faculty to investigate and adjudge facts - no power to compel the presence of persons and papers, nor even to administer an oath. It cannot, therefore, be expected of me to deal with the facts of the case beyond the means of knowledge which you have furnished ine, that is, the report of the special committee of Congress and the letters of Peirce Bacon aecom panying this reference. You also furnish, for my assistance in the matter of law, the printed arguments of four learned counsel, (messrs. Goodrich Cushing, of Boston, Mr. Black, of Washington city, and Mr. Broadhead, of St. Louis, ) in support of the claim of Peirce Bacon against the United States, for the amount of acceptances of Secretary Floyd, which they now hold. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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