and eminent lawyers, proud of the Court and its history and anxious to add to its prestige.  It is regrettable that the merits of some of them have been so obscured and their memory so clouded by a well-meaning but unfortunate excursion into the field of political passions.  In the Dred Scott case[3] they thought to quiet agitation and contribute to the peace of their country by passing judgment upon certain angrily mooted questions of a political character.  The effort was a failure and brought upon their heads, and upon Chief Justice Taney in particular, an avalanche of misrepresentation and obloquy.

[Footnote 1:  7 Howard, 283 (1849).]

[Footnote 2:  Not always for the worse:  vide the Charles River Bridge case, 11 Peters, 420, imposing salutary restrictions on the doctrine of the Dartmouth College case.]

[Footnote 3:  Dred Scott v.  Sandford, 19 Howard, 393 (1857).]

The suppression of the Great Rebellion brought an enormous increase in the national power and in the popular will to national power.  State rights did not loom large in the popular or the legislative mind in reconstruction days.  Taney was dead.  The Supreme Court had been practically reconstituted by appointments made by President Lincoln and his immediate successors and it seems to have been anticipated that the new Court would take the view of national powers prevailing in Congress and the country at large.  In this the popular expectation was doomed to disappointment.  The Court displayed an unexpected solicitude for the rights of the states and firmness against federal encroachment.  Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, who had been President Lincoln’s war Secretary of the Treasury, went so far as to pronounce unconstitutional some of his own official acts performed under the stress of war.

In the great case of State of Texas v.  White[1] the rights of Texas as a sovereign state were asserted, though Texas had joined in the Rebellion and was not represented in the national legislature.

[Footnote 1:  7 Wall., 700 (1869).]

In The Collector v.  Day[1] it was held that Congress had no power to tax the salary of a state official.

[Footnote 1:  11 Wall., 113 (1871).]

In the Slaughter House cases[1] an act of the Legislature of Louisiana, granting to a corporation created by it exclusive rights to maintain slaughter houses for the City of New Orleans and other territory, was upheld, as a valid exercise of state police power, against claims that the legislation violated rights secured under the newly adopted amendments to the Federal Constitution (Amendments XIII, XIV, XV).  The opinion of the Court delivered by a Northern judge (Miller of Iowa) stands as one of the bulwarks of state authority.

[Footnote 1:  16 Wall., 36 (1873).]