regular and conformable to law, the Chief Justice said: "The judgment of the Supreme Court of Wisconsin must therefore be reversed in each of the cases now before the Court."

This judgment was pronounced on the seventh of March, 1859. The State of Wisconsin had been watching for the judgment with a fanatical anxiety; and, on the nineteenth of the same month, the Legislature of the State passed the following joint resolutions:

WHEREAS: The Supreme Court of the United States has assumed appellate jurisdiction in the matter of the petition of Sherman M. Booth for a writ of habeas corpus presented and prosecuted to a final judgment in the Supreme Court of this State, and has, without process, or any of the forms recognized by law, assumed the power to reverse that judgment in a matter involving the personal liberty of the citizen, asserted by and adjusted to him by the regular course of judicial proceedings upon the great writ of liberty secured to the people of each State by the Constitution of the United States:

And whereas: Such assumption of power and authority by the Supreme Court of the United States, to become the final arbiter of the liberty of the citizen, and to override and nullify the judgments of the State Courts declaration thereof, is in direct conflict with that provision of the Constitution of the United States which secures to the people the benefits of the writ of habeas corpus :

Therefore, Resolved (the Senate concurring), That we regard the action of the Supreme Court of the United States, in assuming jurisdiction in the case before mentioned, as an act of arbitrary power unauthorized by the Constitution, and virtually superseding the benefit of the writ of habeas corpus, and prostrating the rights and liberties of the people at the foot of unlimited power.

Resolved, That this assumption of jurisdiction by the Federal judiciary in the said case, and without process, is an act of undelegated power, and, therefore, without authority, void, and of no force.

Resolved, That the Government formed by the Constitution of the United States was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; but that, as in all other cases of compact among parties having no common judge, each has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress.

Resolved, That the principle and construction contended for by the party which now rules in the councils of the nation, that the general Government is the exclusive judge of the extent of the powers delegated to it, stop nothing short of despotism; since the discretion of those who administer the Government, and not the Constitution, would be the measure of their powers; that the several States which formed that instrument, being sovereign and independent, have the unquestionable right to judge of its infractions; and that a positive defiance of those sovereignties of all unauthorized acts done under color of that instrument is the rightful remedy.

Approved March 19, 1859.

This conduct of the State of Wisconsin, in first, by her Supreme Court releasing a criminal imprisoned by a Court of the United States, and then ordering its Clerk to disregard a writ of error from the Supreme Court of the United States; and, secondly, by her Legislature declaring a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States "void and of no force," "and that a positive defiance" of all acts of the Federal Government which it may deem unauthorized "is the rightful remedy," is without parallel for audacity in the history of our Government up to that time. From the time (about forty years ago) that the emissaries of the abolition societies of Great Britain began to inculcate their doctrines in New England, the antislavery sentiment had increased in intensity, until it had become an epidemic fanaticism of both countries. In England, it had infected, more or less, all classes of minds. Max Müller, the Oriental scholar, and Professor at Oxford, could not lecture in London on "the Science of Language," without venting his fanatical spleen against negro slavery in America. And even Earl Russell, in Parliament, seemed to have found relief from a moral oppression at other people's transgressions by pronouncing slavery a sin. In fact, for thirty years, there had been an active co-operation between the radicals of both England and America to overthrow the institution of slavery in the United States. This co-operation of radicals in different

countries is now, through the International Society; threatening to destroy the proper order of society all over Europe and America.

South Carolina, before she threatened nullification, and even while doing so, was willing and anxious that a question involving the constitutionality of a revenue laid primarily for protection, like that by the Act of 1828, should be put into judicial form, and submitted to the Supreme Court of the United States. South Carolina had faith in that tribunal, though presided over at the time by Chief-Justice Marshall, who differed so entirely in political views from that State. But such men as William H. Seward now taught the people that the Judges of the Supreme Court were utterly corrupt; and that the Chief Justice was a monster, who could, and did, administer the official oath to the President of the United States while whispering in his ear a corrupt political bargain with him.

A

CHAPTER VI.

JUDICIAL LIFE.

A. D. 1860-1864.

NEW era now begins in the political history of

the United States. The conservative, statesmanly civilization of the Southern States, which had, by its Federal rule, conducted the country through a period of so much honor among nations and so much happiness at home, becomes entirely excluded from all influence in the working of the Federal Government. The civilization of New England, with its radical spirit, is inaugurated, to direct and control the policy of the Government and the destiny of the people.

We must now recount how this great change was brought about, and show what part Chief- Justice Taney acted in the drama of this transition from one civilization to another as the controlling power in the Government of the country.

When that great statesman, Thomas Jefferson, heard, in his retirement at Monticello, that the Missouri compromise was passed, dividing political parties by a geographical line, making them sectional instead of national, he said it was like the sound of a firebell in the night, and made him fear that the revolu

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