v. Crowninshield,11 and one of New Hampshire, in Dartmouth College v. Woodward.12 13 the In 1824, in Osborn v. Bank of the United States attempt of Ohio to tax the Federal bank was held unconstitutional. In 1829, in Weston v. Charleston,14 a municipal tax on stock of the United States held by the citizens of Charleston was held invalid. In 1824, in the case of Gibbons v. Ogden, 15 was begun that long line of decisions which has established the power of the United States to regulate interstate commerce free from State interference -an authority the exercise of which has done so much to increase the actual power and influence of the National Government. In this case a law of the State of New York was held void. In 1823, a law of Kentucky was held of no force by the Federal court, 16 and in 1830 a law of Missouri received similar treatment.17 In 1832 in Worcester v. Georgia, 18 an act of the State of Georgia was held void, but the Supreme Court failed to secure the release of the plaintiff who had been imprisoned under it. This failure was due, however, not to the weakness on the part of the Federal Government but to the refusal of the President to lend his executive aid. From 1835 to the outbreak of the Civil War there can be no question but that the Supreme Court of the United States exerted a much less potent influence in solidifying and expanding the Federal power than it had exercised 11 4 Wh. 122; 4 L. ed. 529. 12 4 Wh. 518; 4 L. ed. 629. 13 9 Wh. 738; 6 L. ed. 204. 14 2 Pet. 449; 7 L. ed. 481. 15 9 Wh. 1; 6 L. ed. 23. 16 Green v. Biddle, 8 Wh. 1; 5 L. ed. 547. during the thirty-five years preceding. Regarding the attitude of the Supreme Court during this period, the important fact is, however, to be noticed that, though it threw the weight of its influence on the side of the States so far as concerned a liberal interpretation of the powers reserved to them by the Constitution, not once, in the slightest measure, did it during these years, any more than it had done in the years preceding, intimate that the actual legal and political supremacy was not vested in the National Government. The position of Taney and of the court was clearly shown upon this point in the judgment rendered and in the opinion delivered in the case of Ableman v. Booth, 19 decided in 1859. The facts of this case were these: Booth had been tried in a lower Federal court for a violation of the Federal fugitive slave law of 1850, and had been found guilty and sentenced to imprisonment. The highest court of the State of Wisconsin, however, stepped in, disregarded this judgment, and released the prisoner. Not only this but it went on to declare that its decision, thus rendered, was subject to no appeal and was conclusive upon all the courts of the United States; and when a writ of error from the United States Supreme Court directed to the Wisconsin court was issued, the clerk of the State court replied to it that he had been directed to make no return, and refused to make up and send a record of the case to the Federal court. Thereupon the Attorney-General of the United States filed in the Supreme Court of the United States an uncertified record which it was ordered should be received as though returned by the clerk of the court of Wisconsin. Having thus gotten the case before it, despite the resistance of the State, the decision of the Supreme Court thereupon was an emphatic condemnation of the State's 19 21 How. 506; 16 L. ed. 169. action. "No State, judge or court," declared Taney who rendered the opinion of the court, "after they are judicially informed that the party is imprisoned under the authority of the United States, has any right to interfere with him, or require him to be brought before them. And if the authority of the State, in form of judicial process or otherwise, should attempt to control the marshal or other authorized officer or agent of the United States, in the custody of his prisoner, it would be his duty to resist, and to call to his aid any force that might be necessary to maintain the authority of the law against illegal interference." Secession illegal From the foregoing brief review it is thus seen that prior to the Civil War the supremacy of the Federal law had been sustained under a wide variety of circumstances and that the resulting subordinate status of the States had been made fully evident. That status the people of certain of the Southern States, in 1861, decided no longer to support, and in defense of their views, declared their respective commonwealths independent of the Union, and in support of this independence resorted to the arbitrament of war. That this secession was an illegal act, and that, therefore, the seceding States, from the constitutional view point, never were out of the Union, has repeatedly been declared by the Supreme Court. In Texas v. White 20 the Union was declared to be "an indestructible Union composed of indestructible States." The opinion continues: "When, therefore, Texas became one of the United States, she entered into an indissoluble relation. . . The act which consummated her admission into the Union was something more than a compact; 20 7 Wall. 700; 19 L. ed. 227. it was the incorporation of a new member into the political body. The union between Texas and the other States was as complete, as perpetual and as indissoluble as the union between the original States. There was no place for reconsideration, or revocation, except through revolution, or through the consent of the States. Considered, therefore, as transactions under the Constitution, the ordinance of secession, adopted by the convention and ratified by a majority of the citizens of Texas, and all the acts of her legislature intended to give effect to that ordinance, were absolutely null. They were utterly without operation in law. The obligations of the State, as a member of the Union, and of every citizen of the State, as a citizen of the United States, remained perfect and unimpaired. It certainly follows that the State did not cease to be a State, nor her citizens to be citizens of the Union." In Knox v. Lee, 21 the court said, speaking through the mouth of Justice Bradley: "The doctrine so long contended for, that the Federal Union was a mere compact of States, and that the States, if they chose, might annul and disregard the acts of the national legislature, or might secede from the Union at their pleasure, and that the General Government had no power to coerce them into submission to the Constitution, should be regarded as definitely and forever overthrown. This has been finally effected by the national power, as it had often been before by overwhelming argument. . . . The United States is not only a government, but it is a National Government, and the only government in this country that has the character of nationality." - Plenitude of Federal powers The possession by the Federal Government of full 21 12 Wall. 457; 20 L. ed. 287. power to protect any right and to enforce any law of its own, at any time, and at any place within its territorial limits, against the resistance of individuals, or State officials, acting with or without the authority of State law, has been uniformly asserted by the Supreme Court whenever such an assertion has been necessary. The attitude of the Federal Supreme Court in the case of Ableman v. Booth, decided in 1859, has already been mentioned. Again, after the Civil War, the court said, when confronted by the proposition that because the United States was without any general criminal jurisdiction it might not punish criminally individuals who had violated certain of its laws relating to congressional elections: "It is argued that the preservation of peace and good order in society is not within the powers confided to the government of the United States, but belongs exclusively to the States. Here again we are met with the theory that the government of the United States does not rest upon the soil and territory of the country. We think that this theory is founded on an entire misconception of the nature and power of that government. We hold it to be an incontrovertible principle that the government of the United States may, by means of physical force, exercised through its official agents, execute on every foot of American soil the powers and functions that belong to it. This necessarily involves the power to command obedience to its laws, and hence the power to keep the peace to that extent." 22 Finally in the Debs case, a case growing out of the great railroad strike in 1894, the plenitude of the Federal power was emphatically stated. Speaking of the right of the National Government to protect, by armed force if necessary, interstate commerce and the transportation of 22 In re Debs, 158 U. S. 564; 15 Sup. Ct. Rep. 900; 39 L. ed. 1092. |