consideration
of the various decisions upon constitutional questions made during the
twenty-eight years of Taney's Chief Justiceship. They were marked by
great diversity of views among the members of the Court. In some of
them, notably the famous Passenger cases,[1] the Court fell into a state
reminiscent of the confusion of tongues that arose at the building of
the Tower of Babel. The scope of certain of Marshall's decisions was
limited.[2] Upon the whole, however, the structure of constitutional law
which Marshall had reared was not torn down or greatly impaired. The
national supremacy was upheld. Taney and his associates were for the
most part patriotic men and eminent lawyers, proud of the Court and its
history and anxious to add to its prestige. It is regrettable that the
merits of some of them have been so obscured and their memory so clouded
by a well-meaning but unfortunate excursion into the field of political
passions. In the Dred Scott case[3] they thought to quiet agitation and
contribute to the peace of their country by passing judgment upon
certain angrily mooted questions of a political character. The effort
was a failure and brought upon their heads, and upon Chief Justice Taney
in particular, an avalanche of misrepresentation and obloquy.

[Footnote 1: 7 Howard, 283 (1849).]

[Footnote 2: Not always for the worse: vide the Charles River Bridge
case, 11 Peters, 420, imposing salutary restrictions on the doctrine of
the Dartmouth College case.]

[Footnote 3: _Dred Scott v. Sandford_, 19 Howard, 393 (1857).]

The suppression of the Great Rebellion brought an enormous increase in
the national power and in the popular will to national power. State
rights did not loom large in the popular or the legislative mind in
reconstruction days. Taney was dead. The Supreme Court had been
practically reconstituted by appointments made by President Lincoln and
his immediate successors and it seems to have been anticipated that the
new Court would take the view of national powers prevailing in Congress
and the country at large. In this the popular expectation was doomed to
disappointment. The Court displayed an unexpected solicitude for the
rights of the states and firmness against federal encroachment. Chief
Justice Salmon P. Chase, who had been President Lincoln's war Secretary
of the Treasury, went so far as to pronounce unconstitutional some of
his own official acts performed under the stress of war.

In the gre