n the ground that they were needed for the
protection of the freedmen, and the defeat of possible schemes for
a new insurrection. It was not long, therefore, before a system of
measures was adopted, which resulted in the establishment at the South
of temporary governments, subject to military control, the offices of
which were filled chiefly by men alien to the States and indifferent
to their interests. The misrule and corruption which followed are
matters of public history. It is no part of my purpose to speak of
them. I wish merely to refer to the state of feeling existing upon the
close of the civil war as introductory to what I have to say of the
unfriendly disposition manifested at the North towards the Supreme
Court and some of its members, myself in particular.

Acts of the military officers, and legislation of some of the States
and of Congress, during and immediately succeeding the war, were soon
brought to the consideration of the Court. Its action thereon was
watched by members of the Republican party with manifest uneasiness
and distrust. Its decision in the Dred Scott case had greatly impaired
their confidence in its wisdom and freedom from political influences.
Many of them looked upon that decision as precipitating the war upon
the country, by the sanction it gave to efforts made to introduce
slavery into the Territories; and they did not hesitate to express
their belief that the sympathies of a majority of the Court were with
the Confederates. Intimations to that effect were thrown out in
some of the journals of the day, at first in guarded language, and
afterwards more directly, until finally it came to be generally
believed that it was the purpose of the Court, if an opportunity
offered, to declare invalid most of the legislation relating to the
Southern States which had been enacted during the war and immediately
afterwards. Nothing could have been more unjust and unfounded. Many
things, indeed, were done during the war, and more after its
close, which could not be sustained by any just construction of the
limitations of the Constitution. It was to be expected that many
things would be done in the heat of the contest which could not bear
the examination of calmer times. Mr. Chief Justice Chase expressed
this fact in felicitous language when speaking of his own change of
views as to the validity of the provision of law making government
notes a legal tender, he said: "It is not surprising that amid the