Slavery, complicating and confounding the ideas of property, (that is of a thing,) and of personality, (that is of humanity,) exists according to municipal or local law only. The law of nature and nations, has never acknowledged it. The jurists of all countries agree. The Digest of the Roman Law enacts the early dictum of the pagan jurist, that “so far as the law of nature is concerned, all men are equal”; and fugitives escaping from a country, in which they were slaves, villains, or serfs, into another country, have, for centuries past, been held free, and acknowledged free, by judicial decisions of European countries, even though the municipal law of the country, in which the slave had taken refuge, acknowledged slavery within its own dominions. § 23. Therefore, if the United States wage war with a government which admits of slavery, and a fugitive from the opposite belligerent offers himself for protection to the American army, and is free from the suspicion of mischievous intentions, he must be received and protected, be he a fugitive slave or not; and once received and protected by the United States, under the shield of the Law of Nations, he can never be returned into slavery or given up to the enemy. Returning such a person would amount to enslaving a free person, and neither the United States nor any officer under their authority has the right to enslave any human being. No Christian state has claimed, for centuries past the right of enslaving those who are free. § 24. All wanton violence committed against persons in the invaded country, all destruction of property not commanded by the authorized officer, all robbery, all pillage, or sacking, even after taking a place by main force, all rape, wounding, maiming, or killing of such inhabitants, are prohibited under the penalty of death, or such other severe punishment as may seem adequate for the gravity of the offence. A soldier, private or officer, in the act of committing such violence, and disobeying a superior, ordering to abstain from it, may be lawfully killed on the spot by such superior. § 25. There is no prize money on land. All booty belongs to the United States, and not to any individual. § 26. Neither officers nor privates are allowed to make use of their position or power in the hostile country for transactions of private gain, not even for commercial transactions otherwise legitimate. Offences to the contrary committed by commissioned officers will be punished with the loss of the gain, with cashiering, and such additional punishment as the nature of the offence may require, not exceeding years imprisonment.