first in guarded language, and afterwards more directly, until finally it came to be generally believed that it was the purpose of the Court, if an opportunity offered, to declare invalid most of the legislation relating to the Southern States which had been enacted during the war and immediately afterwards.  Nothing could have been more unjust and unfounded.  Many things, indeed, were done during the war, and more after its close, which could not be sustained by any just construction of the limitations of the Constitution.  It was to be expected that many things would be done in the heat of the contest which could not bear the examination of calmer times.  Mr. Chief Justice Chase expressed this fact in felicitous language when speaking of his own change of views as to the validity of the provision of law making government notes a legal tender, he said:  “It is not surprising that amid the tumult of the late civil war, and under the influence of apprehensions for the safety of the Republic almost universal, different views, never before entertained by American statesmen or jurists, were adopted by many.  The time was not favorable to considerate reflection upon the constitutional limits of legislative or executive authority.  If power was assumed from patriotic motives, the assumption found ready justification in patriotic hearts.  Many who doubted yielded their doubts; many who did not doubt were silent.  Those who were strongly averse to making government notes a legal tender felt themselves constrained to acquiesce in the views of the advocates of the measure.  Not a few who then insisted upon its necessity, or acquiesced in that view, have, since the return of peace, and under the influence of the calmer time, reconsidered this conclusion, and now concur in those which we have just announced.”

Similar language might be used with reference to other things done during the war and afterwards, besides making government notes a legal tender.  The Court and all its members appreciated the great difficulties and responsibilities of the government, both in the conduct of the war, and in effecting an early restoration of the States afterwards, and no disposition was manifested at any time to place unnecessary obstacles in its way.  But when its measures and legislation were brought to the test of judicial judgment there was but one course to pursue, and that was to apply the law and the Constitution as strictly as though no war had ever existed.  The Constitution was not one thing in war, and another in peace.  It always spoke the same language, and was intended as a rule for all times and occasions.  It recognized, indeed, the possibility of war, and, of course, that the rules of war had to be applied in its conduct in the field of military operations.  The Court never presumed to interfere there, but outside of that field, and with respect to persons not in the military service within States which adhered to the Union, and after the war in all the States, the Court could not hesitate to say that the Constitution, with all its limitations upon the exercise of executive and legislative authority, was, what it declares on its face to be, the supreme law of the land, by which all legislation, State and federal, must be measured.