s objective was held void
by Justice William Johnson, himself a South Carolinian, in a case
arising in the Carolina circuit and involving a colored British
sailor.[946] The basis of the ruling, which created tremendous uproar in
Charleston,[947] was the commerce clause and certain treaties of the
United States. There followed two rulings of Attorneys General, the
earlier by Attorney General Wirt, denouncing such legislation as
unconstitutional;[948] the latter by Attorney General Berrien,
sustaining it;[949] and in City of New York _v._ Miln[950] the Court,
speaking by Justice Barbour of Virginia, asserted, six years after Nat
Turner's rebellion, the power of the States to exclude undesirables in
sweeping terms, which in the Passenger Cases,[951] decided in 1840, a
narrowly divided Court considerably qualified. Shortly after the Civil
War the Court overturned a Nevada statute which sought to halt the
further loss of population by a special tax on railroads on every
passenger carried out of the State.[952] This time only two Justices
invoked the commerce clause; the majority, speaking by Justice Miller
held the measure to be an unconstitutional interference with a right of
national citizenship--a holding today translatable, in the terminology
of the Fourteenth Amendment, as an abridgment of a privilege or immunity
of citizens of the United States.

Against this background the Court in 1941, in Edwards _v._
California,[953] held void a statute which penalized the bringing into
that State, or the assisting to bring into it, any nonresident knowing
him to be "an indigent person." Five Justices, speaking by Justice
Byrnes, held the act to be even as to "persons who are presently
destitute of property and without resources to obtain the necessities of
life, and who have no relatives or friends able and willing to support
them,"[954] an unconstitutional interference with interstate commerce.
"The State asserts," Justice Byrnes recites, "that the huge influx of
migrants into California in recent years has resulted in problems of
health, morals, and especially finance, the proportions of which are
staggering. It is not for us to say that this is not true. We have
repeatedly and recently affirmed, and we now reaffirm, that we do not
conceive it our function to pass upon 'the wisdom, need, or
appropriateness' of the legislative efforts of the States to solve such
difficulties. * * * But this does not mean that there are no boundar