tumult of the late civil war, and under the influence of apprehensions
for the safety of the Republic almost universal, different views,
never before entertained by American statesmen or jurists, were
adopted by many. The time was not favorable to considerate reflection
upon the constitutional limits of legislative or executive authority.
If power was assumed from patriotic motives, the assumption found
ready justification in patriotic hearts. Many who doubted yielded
their doubts; many who did not doubt were silent. Those who were
strongly averse to making government notes a legal tender felt
themselves constrained to acquiesce in the views of the advocates
of the measure. Not a few who then insisted upon its necessity, or
acquiesced in that view, have, since the return of peace, and under
the influence of the calmer time, reconsidered this conclusion, and
now concur in those which we have just announced."

Similar language might be used with reference to other things done
during the war and afterwards, besides making government notes a
legal tender. The Court and all its members appreciated the great
difficulties and responsibilities of the government, both in the
conduct of the war, and in effecting an early restoration of the
States afterwards, and no disposition was manifested at any time to
place unnecessary obstacles in its way. But when its measures and
legislation were brought to the test of judicial judgment there
was but one course to pursue, and that was to apply the law and
the Constitution as strictly as though no war had ever existed. The
Constitution was not one thing in war, and another in peace. It always
spoke the same language, and was intended as a rule for all times
and occasions. It recognized, indeed, the possibility of war, and, of
course, that the rules of war had to be applied in its conduct in the
field of military operations. The Court never presumed to interfere
there, but outside of that field, and with respect to persons not in
the military service within States which adhered to the Union, and
after the war in all the States, the Court could not hesitate to say
that the Constitution, with all its limitations upon the exercise of
executive and legislative authority, was, what it declares on its face
to be, the supreme law of the land, by which all legislation, State
and federal, must be measured.

The first case growing out of the acts of military officers during
the war, which attract