The demise of the Confederacy left a legacy of legal arrangements
that raised fundamental and vexing questions regarding the legal
rights and status of former slaves and the status of former
Confederate states. As Harold Hyman shows, few individuals had
greater impact on resolving these difficult questions than Salmon
P. Chase, chief justice of the United States Supreme Court from
1865 to 1873.
Hyman argues that in two cases--"In Re Turner" (1867) and "Texas
v. White" (1869)--Chase combined his abolitionist philosophy with
an activist jurisprudence to help dismantle once and for all the
deposed machineries of slavery and the Confederacy. In these cases,
Chase sought to consolidate the gains of the Civil War era, while
demonstrating that the war had both preserved the precious core
characteristics of the federal union of states and fundamentally
improved the nature of both private and public law.
"In Re Turner" was a private law case decided at the federal
circuit level. It involved a black woman's claim that she, a recent
slave, was being held in involuntary servitude. Elizabeth Turner's
mother had apprenticed Elizabeth to their former master, who had
not abided by his contractual obligations to provide Elizabeth with
training and compensation, substantively keeping her in slavery.
Chase's decision, which relied upon due process and equal
protection implications in the thirteenth amendment and 1866 Civil
Rights Act, confirmed the rights of emancipated slaves to bargain
and contract with employers on a parity with white workers.
"Texas v. White" was a public law case decided in the Supreme
Court. It revolved around the issue of whether the holders of U.S.
bonds seized and sold by the Confederate state of Texas could
demand payment after the war from that state's newly reconstructed
government. In effect, Chase and his associate justices were asked
to determine the legality of actions committed by all former
Confederate states and, thus, to define what constituted a state.
Chase's opinion reaffirmed the Union's permanence, and that of the
constituent states in the federal union, and the states' duty to
respect the legal rights and obligations of all citizens because
states were people as well as acreages and institutions.
Hyman's exemplary analysis of these cases reveals how their
political, legal, and constitutional aspects were so inextricably
interwoven. They secured for Chase a rostrum for both moral and
legal reform from which he asserted his strong views on the
fundamental rights of individuals and states in an era of
sporadically increasing federal power. Hyman's study provides a
much-needed reevaluation of those cases both in the context of
Chase's life and in terms of their mark on history.
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