Five Supreme Court decisions, from 1863 to 1873, show how the Court handled the Civil War and its aftermath: whether the war was a war, whether the Court could stop Reconstruction, whether Congress could take away a pending appeal, whether a State could leave the Union, and what the Fourteenth Amendment protected.
A war without a declaration
Prize Cases (1863), decided March 10, 1863. Union ships captured merchant vessels, among them the brig Amy Warwick, owned in Richmond, and the schooner Crenshaw, taken at the mouth of the James River on May 17, 1861 with a cargo of Richmond tobacco. The owners argued that the blockade President Lincoln proclaimed was unlawful because Congress had not declared war. Justice Grier, for the Court, held that the President could meet the rebellion with force without waiting for Congress, and that "He must determine what degree of force the crisis demands." The proclamation of blockade, the Court said, "is itself official and conclusive evidence to the Court that a state of war existed." Justice Nelson dissented, writing that "By the Constitution, Congress alone has the power to declare a national or foreign war." Chief Justice Taney and Justices Catron and Clifford joined his dissent.
Suing the President
Mississippi v. Johnson (1867), decided April 15, 1867. Mississippi asked leave to file a bill to enjoin President Andrew Johnson and General E. O. C. Ord from carrying out the Reconstruction Acts, which divided the former Confederate States into military districts. Chief Justice Chase, for the Court, refused. "We are fully satisfied that this court has no jurisdiction of a bill to enjoin the President in the performance of his official duties; and that no such bill ought to be received by us." The Court said the duties the Reconstruction Acts gave the President were "in no just sense ministerial. It is purely executive and political."
Congress and a pending appeal
Ex parte McCardle (1869), decided April 12, 1869. McCardle, the editor of a Mississippi newspaper, was held by military authority for trial before a military commission over articles said to be incendiary and libellous. He sought a writ of habeas corpus and appealed to the Supreme Court under an act of February 1867. After the case was argued, Congress repealed that appeal provision in March 1868. Chief Justice Chase, for the Court, dismissed the appeal. The Constitution gives the Court appellate jurisdiction "with such exceptions and under such regulations as Congress shall make," and "Without jurisdiction the court cannot proceed at all in any cause."
Can a State leave?
Texas v. White (1869), decided April 12, 1869. In 1850 the United States offered Texas $10 million in bonds to settle claims tied to her boundary. During the rebellion, Texas's insurgent government transferred some of the bonds, and after the war Texas filed an original suit in the Supreme Court to recover them. The first question was whether Texas was a State that could sue. Chief Justice Chase, for the Court, held that it was. Admission to the Union "was something more than a compact; it was the incorporation of a new member into the political body." The ordinance of secession and the acts that carried it out were without effect, so "the State did not cease to be a State, nor her citizens to be citizens of the Union." The Court wrote that "The Constitution, in all its provisions, looks to an indestructible Union, composed of indestructible States."
What the Fourteenth Amendment protects
Slaughter-House Cases (1873), decided April 14, 1873. A Louisiana act of March 8, 1869 gave the Crescent City Live-Stock Landing and Slaughter-House Company "the sole and exclusive privilege" of the livestock landing and slaughterhouse business in New Orleans and two neighboring parishes for twenty-five years. Butchers excluded from the business challenged the act under the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments. Justice Miller, for the Court, upheld it. He wrote that the Civil War amendments share "one pervading purpose": "the freedom of the slave race, the security and firm establishment of that freedom, and the protection of the newly-made freeman and citizen from the oppressions of those who had formerly exercised unlimited dominion over him." On the Fourteenth Amendment's privileges or immunities clause, he wrote that it "protects from the hostile legislation of the States the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States as distinguished from the privileges and immunities of citizens of the States." The butchers' claims fell on the state side of that line. Justices Field, Bradley and Swayne dissented.
What the five decisions show
The Court backed the President in the Prize Cases and declined to order him around in Mississippi v. Johnson. McCardle let Congress's repeal end an appeal that was already argued. Texas v. White held that secession did not remove a State from the Union. Slaughter-House read the Fourteenth Amendment's privileges or immunities clause narrowly. This post covers five decisions, and it does not cover the Court's other wartime and Reconstruction cases.
Sources
- Prize Cases (1863), 67 U.S. 635: Library of Congress, U.S. Reports
- Mississippi v. Johnson (1867), 71 U.S. 475: Library of Congress, U.S. Reports
- Ex parte McCardle (1869), 74 U.S. 506: Library of Congress, U.S. Reports
- Texas v. White (1869), 74 U.S. 700: Library of Congress, U.S. Reports
- Slaughter-House Cases (1873), 83 U.S. 36: Library of Congress, U.S. Reports
Updated November 2026.
This post was rewritten with AI (Claude) and reviewed by an editor before publication.
