Page:Journal of the Sixth Legislative Council of the Territory of Michigan.djvu/100

88 to the acts of Congress aforesaid; with that object in view, they may properly be divided into four classes, viz:

1st. Claims for houses burned and destroyed by the enemy, while the same were occupied as a military post or deposite, under the authority of an officer of the United States.

2d. For houses burned and destroyed by the enemy after the capitulation, having been previously occupied by the military, under the authority of the United States.

3d. For houses burned and destroyed by the enemy before and after the capitulation, having never been occupied by the military under the authority of an officer of the United States.

4th. For personal property seized, burnt and destroyed by the enemy, before and after the capitulation or surrender of the Territory, often in gross violation of the articles of the capitulation, and the most solemn pledges of the enemy that "personal property should be respected."

Some of the claims of the first class have been allowed and paid, while the other claims still stand unredeemed.

Proof has been required, that the buildings for which damages are claimed, were at the lime of their destruction, occupied by order of an agent or officer of the United States, &c.

That proof, in cases coming within the purview of the acts aforesaid, has generally been obtained with much difficulty; but in some cases the claimants have failed, for the want of the requisite testimony, the agent or officer who gave the order having since died, or his residence not being known to the claimants. The claims included in the 2d, 3d, and 4th classes, where the order of an officer or agent could not be proved, have been totally rejected.

The inhuman conduct of the enemy at the surrender of Detroit, by the wanton waste and cruel destruction and plunder of private property—the conflagrations at Frenchtown and the river Raisin, before and after the surrender of those places, in part, are recorded in the office of the war department. Could the scenes which transpired at the bloody massacre of Winchester's army—the war dance of the savages around the flaming houses of our citizens, be duly and truly represented to your honorable Bodies, the justice of this appeal would be acknowledged. Many respectable families, owners of good houses, and well supplied, by the fruits of their industry with the necessary comforts of life, some of whom are still living, and are at this day bowed down with penury and want, by the losses they have sustained: some of their nearest and dearest friends killed while bravely fighting the battles of their country; and others of them cruelly murdered by the savages; and now the question is asked of the surviving claimants, if their houses were occupied as a military post or place of deposite by older of an officer of the United States.