f synopsis of them is given in the report of the case in 4th
Wallace. The decision of the Court was in favor of the liberty of the
citizen. Its opinion was announced by Mr. Justice Davis, and it will
stand as a perpetual monument to his honor. It laid down in clear and
unmistakable terms the doctrine that military commissions organized
during the war, in a State not invaded nor engaged in rebellion, in
which the federal courts were open and in the undisturbed exercise of
their judicial functions, had no jurisdiction to try a citizen who was
not a resident of a State in rebellion, nor a prisoner of war, nor a
person in the military or naval service; and that Congress could not
invest them with any such power; and that in States where the
courts were thus open and undisturbed the guaranty of trial by jury
contained in the Constitution was intended for a state of war as well
as a state of peace, and is equally binding upon rulers and people at
all times and under all circumstances.

This decision was concurred in by Justices Nelson, Grier, Clifford,
and myself, then constituting, with Justice Davis, a majority of the
Court. At this day it seems strange that its soundness should have
been doubted by any one, yet it was received by a large class--perhaps
a majority of the Northern people--with disfavor, and was denounced
in unmeasured terms by many influential journals. It was cited as
conclusive evidence of the hostility of the Court to the acts of the
government for the suppression of the rebellion. The following,
taken from the _Daily Chronicle_ of January 14th, 1867, a journal of
Washington, edited by Mr. Forney, then Secretary of the Senate, is a
fair sample of the language applied to the decision:

"The opinion of the Supreme Court on one of the most momentous
questions ever submitted to a judicial tribunal, has not
startled the country more by its far-reaching and calamitous
results, than it has amazed jurists and statesmen by the
poverty of its learning and the feebleness of its logic. It
has surprised all, too, by its total want of sympathy with the
spirit in which the war for the Union was prosecuted, and,
necessarily, with those great issues growing out of it, which
concern not only the life of the Republic, but the very
progress of the race, and which, having been decided on the
battle-field, are now sought to be reversed by the very theory
of construction which l