White v. Hart
| Decision Date | 01 December 1871 |
| Citation | 13 Wall. 646,20 L.Ed. 685,80 U.S. 646 |
| Parties | WHITE v. HART |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
ERROR to the Supreme Court of the State of Georgia.
Mr. P. Phillips and Mr. Edwin N. Broyles argued the case fully and ably for the plaintiff in error.
No counsel appeared on the other side; the reliance of that party having apparently been on the argument contained in the opinion given by Brown, C. J., in behalf of the Supreme Court of Georgia.
Mr. Justice SWAYNE stated the case, and delivered the opinion of the court.
The suit was instituted by the plaintiff in error on the 10th of January, 1866, in the Superior Court of Chattooga County. He declared upon a promissory note made to him by the defendants in error for twelve hundred and thirty dollars, dated February 9th, 1859, and payable on the 1st of March, A.D. 1860. The defendant pleaded in abatement that 'the consideration of the note was a slave,' and that 'by the present Constitution of Georgia, made and adopted since the last pleadings in this case, the court is prohibited to take and exercise jurisdiction or render judgment therein.' To this plea the plaintiff demurred. The court overruled the demurrer and gave judgment for the defendants. The plaintiff excepted and removed the case to the Supreme Court of the State, where the judgment was affirmed, and the plaintiff thereupon prosecuted this writ of error. The Constitution of Georgia of 1868, which is still in force, contains1 the following clause:
'Provided, that no court or officer shall have, nor shall the General Assembly give, jurisdiction to try, or give judgment on, or enforce any debt the consideration of which was a slave or the hire thereof.'
From the close of the rebellion until Georgia was restored to her normal relations and functions in the Union, she was governed under the laws of the United States known as the Reconstruction Acts. Under these laws her present constitution was framed, adopted, and submitted to Congress. Among the terms of her rehabilitation prescribed by the acts referred to it was made a fundamental condition that certain designated parts of the constitution so submitted should 'be null and void, and that the General Assembly of the State' should, 'by a solemn act, declare the assent of the State' to the required modification.2 The constitution was modified accordingly. When submitted it contained the proviso here under consideration. No objection was made to the proviso, and it has since remained a part of the instrument. With her constitution thus modified, Congress enacted 'that the State of Georgia, having complied with the Reconstruction Acts, and the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments to the Constitution of the United States having been ratified in good faith by a legal legislature of said State, it is hereby declared that the State of Georgia is entitled to representation in the Congress of the United States.'3 Her representatives and senators were thereupon admitted to seats in Congress. This act removed the last of the disabilities and penalties which were visited upon her for her share of the guilt of the rebellion. The condonation by the National government thus became complete.
The judgment we are called upon to review is ought to be maintained upon the following grounds:
(1.) That when the constitution of 1868 was adopted Georgia was not a State of the Union; that she had sundered her connection as such, and was a conquered territory wholly at the mercy of the conqueror; and that hence the inhibition of the States by the Constitution of the United States to pass any law impairing the obligation of contracts had no application to her.
(2.) That her constitution does not affect the contract, but only denies jurisdiction to her courts to enforce it.
(3.) That her constitution was adopted under the dictation and coercion of Congress, and is the act of Congress, rather than of the State; and that, though a State cannot pass a law impairing the validity of contracts, Congress can, and that, for this reason also, the inhibition in the Constitution of the United States has no effect in this case.
The third of these propositions is clearly unsound, and requires only a few remarks. Congress authorized the State to frame a new constitution, and she elected to proceed within the scope of the authority conferred. The result was submitted to Congress as a voluntary and valid offering, and was so received and so recognized in the subsequent action of that body. The State is estopped to assail it upon such an assumption. Upon the same groungs she might deny the validity of her ratification of the constitutional amendments. The action of Congress upon the subject cannot be inquired into. The case is clearly one in which the judicial is bound to follow the action of the political department of the government, and is concluded by it.4 We may add, that if Congress had expressly dictated and expressly approved the proviso in question, such dictation and approval would be without effect. Congress has no power to supersede the National Constitution.
The subject presented by the first proposition has been considered under some of its aspects several times by this court. We need do little more upon this occasion than to reaffirm the views heretofore expressed, and add such further remarks as are called for by the exigencies of the case before us.
The National Constitution was, as its preamble recites, ordained and established by the people of the United States. It created not a confederacy of States, but a government of individuals. It assumed that the government and the Union which it created, and the States which were incorporated into the Union, would be indestructible and perpetual; and as far as human means could accomplish such a work, it intended to make them so. The government of the Nation and the government of the States are each alike absolute and independent of each other in their respective spheres of action; but the former is as much a part of the government of the people of each State, and as much entitled to their allegiance and obedience as their own local State governments—'the Constitution of the United States and the laws made in pursuance thereof,' being in all cases where they apply, the supreme law of the land. For all the purposes of the National government, the people of the United States are an integral, and not a composite mass, and their unity and identity, in this view of the subject, are not affected by their segregation by State lines for the purposes of State government and local administration. Considered in this connection, the States are organisms for the performance of their appropriate functions in the vital system of the larger polity, of which, in this aspect of the subject, they form a part, and which would perish if they were all stricken from existence or ceased to perform their allotted work. The doctrine of secession is a doctrine of treason, and practical secession is practical treason, seeking to give itself triumph by revolutionary violence. The late rebellion was without any element of right or sanction of law. The duration and magnitude of the war did not change its character. In some respects it was not unlike the insurrection of a county or other municipal subdivision of territory against the State to which it belongs. In such cases the State has inherently the right to use all the means necessary to put down the resistance to its authority, and restore peace, order, and obedience to law. If need be, it has the right also to call on the government of the Union for the requisite aid to that end. Whatever precautionary or penal measures the State may take when the insurrection is suppressed, the proposition would be a strange one to maintain, that while it lasted the county was not a part of the State, and hence was absolved from the duties, liabilities, and restrictions which would have been incumbent upon it if it had remained in its normal condition and relations. The power exercised in putting down the late rebellion is given expressly by the Constitution to Congress. That body made the laws and the President executed them. The granted power carried with it not only the right to use the requisite means, but it reached further and carried with it also authority to guard against the renewal of the conflict, and to remedy the evils arising from it in so far as that could be effected by appropriate legislation.5 At no time were the rebellious States out of the pale of...
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