se of its original jurisdiction, against Stanton,
Secretary of War, Grant, General of the Army, and Pope, Major-General,
assigned to the command of the Third Military District, consisting
of the States of Georgia, Florida, and Alabama; to restrain those
officers from carrying into effect the provisions of those acts. The
bill set forth the existence of the State of Georgia as one of the
States of the Union; the civil war in which she, with other States
forming the Confederate States, had been engaged with the government
of the United States; the surrender of the Confederate armies in 1865,
and her submission afterwards to the Constitution and laws of the
Union; the withdrawal of the military government from Georgia by the
President as Commander-in-Chief of the Army of the United States;
the re-organization of the civil government of the State under
his direction and with his sanction; and that the government thus
re-organized was in the full possession and enjoyment of all the
rights and privileges, executive, legislative, and judicial, belonging
to a State in the Union under the Constitution, with the exception of
a representation in the Senate and House of Representatives. The
bill alleged that the acts were designed to overthrow and annul the
existing government of the State, and to erect another and a different
government in its place, unauthorized by the Constitution and in
defiance of its guarantees; that the defendants, acting under orders
of the President, were about to set in motion a portion of the army
to take military possession of the State, subvert her government, and
subject her people to military rule. The presentation of this bill
and the argument on the motion of the Attorney-General to dismiss it
produced a good deal of hostile comment against the Judges, which did
not end when the motion was granted. It was held that the bill
called for judgment upon a political question, which the Court had no
jurisdiction to entertain.[2]

Soon afterwards the validity of the Reconstruction Acts was again
presented in the celebrated McArdle case, and in such a form that the
decision of the question could not well be avoided. In November, 1867,
McArdle had been arrested and held in custody by a military commission
organized in Mississippi under the Reconstruction Acts, for trial upon
charges of (1) disturbance of the public peace; (2) inciting to
insurrection, disorder, and violence; (3) libel; and (4) impeding
reco