The bonds issued by the State of Mississippi to the Planters’ Bank were based upon a law of the State, and affirmed, by name, in a specific provision of the State Constitution of 1832.  The State, through its agent, received the money, and loaned it to the citizens of the State, and the validity of these obligations is conceded by Mr. Slidell and Mr. Davis.

These bonds were for $2,000,000, bearing an interest of six per cent. per annum, and were sold at a premium of 13-1/2 per cent For those bonds, besides the premium, the State received $2,000,000 of stock of the Planters’ Bank, upon which, up to 1838, the State realized ten per cent. dividends, being $200,000 per annum.  In January, 1841, the Legislature of Mississippi unanimously adopted resolutions affirming the validity of these bonds, and the duty of the State to pay them.  (Sen.  Jour. 314.)

In his message to the Legislature of 1843, Governor Tucker says: 

‘On the 1st of January, 1838, the State held stock in the Planters’ Bank for $2,000,000, which stock had, prior to that time, yielded to the State a dividend of $200,000 per annum.  I found also the first instalment of the bonds issued on account of the Planters’ Bank, $125,000, due and unpaid, as well as the interest for several years on said bonds.’ (Sen.  Jour. 25.)

The Planters’ Bank (as well as the State), by the express terms of the law, was bound for the principal and interest of these bonds.  Now, in 1839, Mississippi passed an act (Acts, ch. 42), ’to transfer the stock now held by the State in the Planters’ Bank, and invest the same in stock of the Mississippi Railroad Company.’  By the first section of this act, the Governor was directed to subscribe for $2,000,000 of stock in the railroad company for the State, and to pay for it by transferring to the company the Planters’ Bank stock, which had been secured to the State by the sale of the Planters’ Bank bonds.  The 10th section released the Planters’ Bank from the obligation to provide for the payment of these bonds or interest.  Some enlightened members, including Judge Gholson, afterward of the Federal Court, protested against this act as unconstitutional, by impairing the obligation of contracts, and as a fraud on the bondholders.

They say in this protest: 

’The money which paid for the stock proposed to be transferred from the Planters’ Bank to the Mississippi Railroad Company, was, under the provisions of the charter, obtained by loans on the part of the State, for the payment of which the stock, in addition to the faith of the Government, was pledged to the holders of the bonds of the State.  By the terms of the contract between the commissioners on the part of the State and the purchasers of the bonds, the interest on the loans is required to be paid semiannually out of the semiannual dividends accruing upon the said stock; and the surplus of such dividends, after paying the said interest, is to be converted