The Reconstruction Justice of Salmon P. Chase: In Re Turner and Texas v. White - Softcover

Hyman, Harold M.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0700608354 ISBN 13: 9780700608355

Publisher: University Press of Kansas, 1997

Synopsis

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.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

"This is constitutional history as it should be written, but seldom is. Combining an excellent sketch of Chase's life with the social, intellectual, and moral climate of the times, Hyman provides a brilliant analysis of two landmark decisions. He also presents a stimulating, original, and provocative treatment of the Chase Court that sheds new light on our understanding of the thirteenth and fourteenth amendments."--John Niven, editor of The Salmon P. Chase Papers

About the Author:

Harold M. Hyman, William P. Hobby Professor of History at Rice University, is one of the deans of American legal history. He is the author of A More Perfect Union: Constitutional Impacts of the Civil War and Reconstruction; Equal Justice under Law: Constitutional History, 1835-1875; and numerous other books.

About this edition

• Publisher: University Press of Kansas
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0700608354
• ISBN 13: 9780700608355
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 200