Salmon P. Chase

“ Without pausing to inquire whether, in any case, the title of a citizen to his land can be divested by forfeiture and vested absolutely in the United States, without any inquisition of record or some public transaction equivalent to office found, it is certainly proper to assume that an act of sovereignty so highly penal is not to be inferred from language capable of any milder construction. ”

“ Now, on the 14th of May, the date of this capture, New Orleans was, indeed, in the possession of the United States, but the claim of the de facto power, which had been dispossessed, was still actively asserted. Every part of the case,-the language of the chief municipal officer of New Orleans, who declared that he would surrender nothing; that the people would not transfer their allegiance 'from the government of their choice to one which they have deliberately repudiated;' the 'applauded' insult to the flag of the Union; in short, the whole history,-shows defiance and malignity. ”

“ To correct a particular evil, to guard a particular individual or a particular State against the acts of the President, there is no way, according to the gentlemen, but to depose that President by a proceeding like this, and, for the correction of this lesser evil, to produce that enormous evil which affects not merely the State of Mississippi, but every other State of the Union and every individual. ”

“ It is difficult to say to what express power the authority to make notes a legal tender in payment of pre-existing debts may not be upheld as incidental, upon the principles of this argument. Is there any power which does not involve the use of money? And is there any doubt that Congress may issue and use bills of credit as money in the execution of any power? The power to establish post-offices and post-roads, for example, involves the collection and disbursement of a great revenue. Is not the power to make notes a legal tender as clearly incidental to this power as to the war power? ”

“ What, then, is the effect of the repealing act upon the case before us? We cannot doubt as to this. Without jurisdiction the court cannot proceed at all in any cause. Jurisdiction is power to declare the law, and when it ceases to exist, the only function remaining to the court is that of announcing the fact and dismissing the cause. ”

“ It is well understood that in the case of a contract for the future delivery of a commodity of a stipulated quantity and quality, each party takes the risk of a rise or fall in its market value. So, in the case of a contract for the payment of a specified sum, in money, at a future day, each party takes a risk; the debtor, of an appreciation of the currency, the creditor, of its depreciation. It is immaterial whether the change in the value of the currency is caused by the operation of uncontrollable monetary laws, or by the direct exercise of the sovereign power of the government. ”

“ But who is to judge where and when the power of the enemy has been so broken as that, with safety to the whole cause, the people and property once subject to hostile control may be released from the law of war, and restored to their rights under the Government? ”

“ We do not understand the majority of the court as asserting that shares of capital invested in national securities could be taxed without authority from Congress. We certainly cannot yield our assent to any such proposition. To do so would, in our judgment, deprive the decisions just cited of all practical value and effect, and make the exemption from State taxation of national securities held by banks as investments of capital wholly unreal and illusory. ”

“ If the court should entertain this case, and direct its subpoena to issue to the President, what will come if, as is inevitable, he will not obey it? No man in the nation entertains a higher respect for this court than he does, but as the custodian of his office, as the person there representing the nation, it is not for Andrew Johnson to speak; it is for the President. He has no particular personal dignity of his own to take care of, but he is bound to take care of the dignity, the rights, and the prerogatives that belong to him as President. ”

“ On the contrary, the fact that the privilege of redemption after sale is limited to the owner or the loyal person having a lien or other interest, appearing in proper person and taking a prescribed oath, appears to us to afford an irresistible inference that the right of payment before sale is not so limited. It is a right which, under the act, belongs to the owner, and no oath is required in order to its exercise. It is a right to be exercised under the act as a law for raising revenue. ”

“ Congress cannot tax exports, and it must impose direct taxes by the rule of apportionment, and indirect taxes by the rule of uniformity. Thus limited, and thus only, it reaches every subject, and may be exercised at discretion. But, it reaches only existing subjects. Congress cannot authorize a trade or business within a State in order to tax it.
If, therefore, the licenses under consideration must be regarded as giving authority to carry on the branches of business which they license, it might be difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile the granting of them with the Constitution. ”

“ What, then, is the true sense of the prohibition to erect, establish, institute, or put in operation any banking company, or to issue any bills or notes with intent or purpose to do so? What is meant by putting in operation or establishing a banking company? We think that this language has a much wider import than mere commencement of business. To establish a company for any business means complete and permanent provision for carrying on that business, and putting a company in operation may well include its continued as well as its first or original operation. ”

“ No one questions that the power to tax all property, business, and persons, within their respective limits, is original in the States and has never been surrendered. It cannot be so used, indeed, as to defeat or hinder the operations of the National government; but it will be safe to conclude, in general, in reference to persons and State corporations employed in government service, that when Congress has not interposed to protect their property from State taxation, such taxation is not obnoxious to that objection. ”

“ How, then, was the Bermuda employed? In what trade, and under what control and direction?
The theory of the counsel for Haigh is that she was a neutral ship, carrying a neutral cargo, in good faith, from one neutral port to another neutral port; and they insist that the description of cargo, if neutral, and in a neutral ship, and on a neutral voyage, cannot be inquired into in the courts of a belligerent.
We agree to this. Neutral trade is entitled to protection in all courts. Neutrals, in their own country, may sell to belligerents whatever belligerents choose to buy. ”

“ When we are dealing with the slave-dealer, we are dealing not only with the most depraved and most cruel of human beings, but one who is the most crafty also; 'one who would circumvent God.' What the learned justice meant was this: that a degree of circumstantial evidence which would be insufficient, in allegations of most crime, to convict, is enough here to put parties to the proof that their business was a lawful one. ”

“ But the decisive answer to this is that the admission of a legislative power to determine finally what powers have the described relation as means to the execution of other powers plainly granted, and, then, to exercise absolutely and without liability to question, in cases involving private rights, the powers thus determined to have that relation, would completely change the nature of American government. It would convert the government, which the people ordained as a government of limited powers, into a government of unlimited powers. ”

“ There is nothing like it in the history of any conquered city whatever. Among our own cities, most, like Savannah, have submitted with grace. In the city was the whole of the late city corporation, hundreds of so-called 'citizens,' foreign adventurers, many of them, who had risked all that they had or hoped for in the success of their own rebellion,-all ready to consign the city to the traitor Lovell and his army. That army, on the day of this capture, was still in array at the gates of the city, and was there asserting its right to exclude the United States from that soil. ”

“ Now, the capture and possession of the port of the enemy by the blockading force, or by the forces of the belligerent, in the course of the prosecution of the war, puts an end to the blockade and all the penal consequences growing out of this measure to neutral commerce. The altered condition of things, and state of the war between the two parties in respect to the besieged port or town, makes the continuance of the blockade inconsistent with the code of international law on the subject; as no right exists on the part of the belligerent as against the neutral powers to blockade his own ports. ”

“ It is not upon any peculiar immunity that the individual has who happens to be President; upon any idea that he cannot do wrong; upon any idea that there is any particular sanctity belonging to him as an individual, as is the case with one who has royal blood in his veins; but it is on account of the office that he holds that I say the President of the United States is above the process of any court or the jurisdiction of any court to bring him to account as President. ”

“ Whatever room for argument there may be as to the competency of State legislation to extinguish material products, as sources of internal revenue to the United States, by proscription of their legal use while their actual use continues, it can never be tolerated that personal vice and guilt constitute a fund for Federal taxation, which ousts the States of police and penal regulation of the personal conduct of their inhabitants. ”

“ It is the intention of the Constitution that each of the great co-ordinate departments of the government-the Legislative, the Executive, and the Judicial-shall be, in its sphere, independent of the others. ”

“ In the course of this examination he said:
'Whether direct taxes, in the sense of the Constitution, comprehend any other tax than a capitation tax, and tax on land, is a questionable point. If Congress, for instance, should tax, in the aggregate or mass, things that generally pervade all the States in the Union, then, perhaps, the rule of apportionment would be the most proper, especially if an assessment was to intervene. ”

“ A debt is the amount due in 'dollars' merely; the treasury note meets the debt because it is a dollar, not because it is the equal of a coin dollar; because it is one of the class that the contract calls for, and thus comes up to the contract, not because it is the equal of the best of its class. On a debt of one hundred gold dollars, and one hundred lawful dollars, the same amount is not now due; the same number of dollars is due, but not of the same kind. Just as a dozen large eggs and a dozen small ones are equally good to meet an agreement to deliver eggs simply. ”

“ We must say, therefore, that trade, between London and Matamoras, even with intent to supply, from Matamoras, goods to Texas, violated no blockade, and cannot be declared unlawful.
Trade with a neutral port in immediate proximity to the territory of one belligerent, is certainly very inconvenient to the other. Such trade, with unrestricted inland commerce between such a port and the enemy's territory, impairs undoubtedly and very seriously impairs the value of a blockade of the enemy's coast. ”

“ But the majority of the court does not feel at liberty to disregard the plain import of the terms of the judgment rendered by the Supreme Court of the Territory. It does not purport to be an order or judgment affirming an order overruling a motion for new trial, but a judgment affirming the judgment or decree of the District Court, and the only judgment or decree, which we find in the record, is the judgment for the defendants in the action of ejectment.
If this view be correct, the judgment of the Supreme Court is one to review which a writ of error may be prosecuted. ”

“ Nor can it be denied that every suitor who brings an action in a court of the United States must aver in his pleadings a state of facts which, under the National Constitution and laws, gives to the court jurisdiction of his suit. ”

“ The party alleging a guilty intention is compelled, it must be remembered, to extract evidence of it from acts and preparations designed to conceal it, and to rely on such facts of suspicious aspect as accident, carelessness, or the natural incongruity between truth and falsehood, may develop. We are here inquiring into a purpose. Where the guilty purpose is hidden under the guise of a lawful enterprise, with such skill and adroitness as the slave-traders are well known to have exhibited, those suspicious facts are apt to be few and insignificant. ”

“ It is evident from this statement that the denial of jurisdiction to this court, as well as to the Court of Claims, is founded solely on the application of a rule of decision, in causes pending, prescribed by Congress. The court has jurisdiction of the cause to a given point; but when it ascertains that a certain state of things exists, its jurisdiction is to cease and it is required to dismiss the cause for want of jurisdiction. ”