in Cohens v. Virginia," decided in 1821, the Supreme Court upheld its authority to review, on writs of error, decisions of State courts adverse to alleged Federal rights, the exercise of this jurisdiction having been provided for by the famous twenty-fifth section of the judiciary act of 1789. Justice Story who spoke for the court, said: "The courts of the United States can, without question, revise the proceedings of the executive and legislative authorities of the States, and if they are found to be contrary to the Constitution may declare them to be of no legal validity. Surely, the exercise of the same right over judicial tribunals is not a higher or more dangerous act of sovereign power." In Cohens v. Virginia, Chief Justice Marshall, speaking for the court, said: "If it could be doubted, whether from its nature it [the National Government] were not supreme in all cases where it is empowered to act, that doubt would be removed by the declaration that 'this Constitution and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof, and all treaties made or which shall be made under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every State shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.' This is the authoritative language of the American people, and, if the gentlemen please, of the American States. . The people made the Constitution and the people can unmake it. But this supreme and irresistible power to make or to unmake 1 resides only in the whole body of the people; not in any subdivision of them. The attempt of any of the parts to exercise it is usurpation, and ought to be repelled by those to whom the people have delegated the power of 96 Wh. 264; 5 L. ed. 257. repelling it. . . . The framers of the Constitution were indeed unable to make any provisions which should protect that instrument against a general combination of the States, or of the people for its destruction; and, conscious of this inability, they have not made the attempt. But they were able to provide against the operation of measures adopted in any one State, whose tendency might be to arrest the execution of the laws; and this it was the part of widsom to attempt. We think they have attempted it." The importance of, the doctrine thus emphatically declared in these two cases it is impossible to exaggerate. This the upholders of States' Rights clearly saw, and Calhoun later wrote: "The effect of this is to make the government of the United States the sole judge, in the last resort, as to the extent of its powers, and to place the States and their separate governments and institutions at its mercy. It would be a waste of time to undertake to show that an assumption that would destroy the relation of co-ordinates between the government of the United States and those of the several States, which would enable the former, at pleasure, to absorb the reserved powers and to destroy the institutions, social and political, which the Constitution was ordained to establish and protect, is wholly inconsistent with the Federal theory of government, though in perfect accordance with the national theory. Indeed, I might go further and assert, that it is, of itself, all sufficient to convert it into a national, consolidated government." 10 During the same year that the case of McCulloch v. Maryland was decided, two other State laws were held void by the Supreme Court: one of New York, in Sturges 10 Discourse on the Constitution and Government of the United States, Works, I, 338. v. Crowninshield,11 and one of New Hampshire, in Dartmouth College v. Woodward.12 In 1824, in Osborn v. Bank of the United States 13 the 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. 17 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. 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. 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 v Ableman v. Booth, 19 decided in 1859. The facts of this V 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. |