employment of a military or naval force against the State of South Carolina, her constitutional authorities or citizens, or any act abolishing or closing the ingress or egress of vessels to or from the said ports . . . as inconsistent with the longer continuance of South Carolina in the Union; and that the people of South Carolina will henceforth hold themselves absolved from all further obligation to maintain or preserve their political connection with the people of the other States; and will forthwith proceed to organize a separate government, and do all other acts and things which sovereign and independent States may of right do."

In pursuance of this ordinance the legislature of South Carolina passed laws which, it was said at the time, "legislated the Federal Government out of the State of South Carolina."

Meanwhile South Carolina had sent her proclamation of nullification to the legislatures of the other States. Without exception, where an answer to it was returned, it was in condemnation of the principles enunciated. This was no less true of the Southern than of the Northern States. Virginia, though asserting her continued adherence to the doctrines of the Resolutions of 1798, declared that they did not sanction those put forward by South Carolina. North Carolina declared the doctrines of her sister State “revolutionary in character," and "subversive of the Constitution of the United States." Alabama characterized them as "unsound in theory and dangerous in practice-unconstitutional and essentially revolutionary;" and Mississippi stigmatized them as "con

trary to the letter and spirit of the Constitution and in direct conflict with the welfare, safety, and independence of every State in the Union," and declared that she would "indignantly frown upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the ties which link together the various parts."

As is well known, the emphatic utterances and energetic actions of President Jackson compelled South Carolina to withdraw from the position she had assumed. Thus once again the Federal Government vindicated its supremacy.

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 during the thirty-five years preceding. During the two terms of office of Jackson, five vacancies occurred in the Supreme Court, among them that of the Chief-Justiceship to which Taney was appointed in 1835. The effect of the new appointments upon the views of the Court was shown almost immediately. In the case of Briscoe v. Bank of Kentucky (11 Pet., 257), which had been argued just before the death of Marshall, the issue by the bank of bills of credit had been held unconstitutional. A rehearing being granted, however, and the case coming on for argument under Taney, the action of the bank was sustained and the previous decision reversed. This decision marked the beginning of a new era in the history of constitutional interpretation. Up to this time the court had upon all possible occasions upheld

In

the General Government in the exercise of its powers, and had held the States strictly to the obligations imposed upon them by the Constitution; now, however, it began, if anything, to lean the other way. In Briscoe's case, departing from its former practice, by an extremely loose interpretation of a constitutional limitation that had been laid upon the States, it rendered practically nugatory one of the provisions of the Constitution. Other decisions, similarly favorable to States' Rights, followed. In the case of City of New York v. Miln (11 Pet., 102), a state law was sustained which might easily have been held an interference with the federal control of interstate commerce. the Charles River Bridge Co. v. Warren Bridge Co. (11 Pet., 420), a doubtful State law was again upheld. In 1847 in a series of warmly contested cases known as the License Cases (5 How., 504) interpretations of the Commerce Clause favorable to the States were given. In Kentucky v. Dennison (24 How., 66), it was held that though the federal Constitution made it a duty of a State to surrender to another State a fugitive from justice from that State, there was no constitutional means by which the Federal Government could compel the performance of that duty. In all these cases the States were favored at the expense of the authority of the General Government. In 1845 Justice Story wrote to a friend: "I have been long convinced that the doctrines and opinions of the old court were daily losing ground, and especially those on great constitutional questions. New men and new opinions have succeeded. The doctrines of the Constitution, so vital to the country, which in former

times received the support of the whole court, no longer maintain their ascendency. I am the last member now living of the old court, and I cannot consent to remain where I can no longer hope to see those doctrines recognized and enforced.' Again, writing to Justice McLean, he said: "There will not, I fear, ever, in our day, be any case in which a law of a State, or of Congress, will be declared unconstitutional; for the old constitutional doctrines are fast fading away, and a change has come over the public mind from which I augur little good."

In 1841, in Prigg v. Pennsylvania (16 Pet., 539), a state law attempting the regulation of the return of fugitive slaves was held unconstitutional and void on the ground that this subject was wholly withdrawn from the control of the States. Taney, however, though concurring with the majority in holding unconstitutional the particular law in question, took pains to assert that there was no constitutional incompetence on the part of the State to pass laws the intention and actual effect of which were to assist the Federal Government in the capturing and returning of fleeing negroes.

Regarding the attitude of the Supreme Court during this period, the important fact is to be noticed that, though it threw the weight of its influence upon 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 upon this point was clearly shown in the judgment rendered, and in the opinion delivered, in the case of Ableman v. Booth (21 How., 506), 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 Wisconsin court. 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 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 to require him to be brought before him. And if the authority of the State, in form of judicial process or