² Prize money for such captures was, however, abolished by act of Congress in 1899, shortly after the Spanish-American war.

As to the severity of land warfare towards private property, extreme cases have taken place in our history, such as the freeing of private slave property as a war measure in the Civil War and also the devastation of the Shenandoah Valley by Sheridan, while on the part of the South there was the confiscation of private debts owed to Northern creditors during the same war.