conclusive evidence of the hostility of the Court to the acts of the
government for the suppression of the rebellion. The following,
taken from the _Daily Chronicle_ of January 14th, 1867, a journal of
Washington, edited by Mr. Forney, then Secretary of the Senate, is a
fair sample of the language applied to the decision:

"The opinion of the Supreme Court on one of the most momentous
questions ever submitted to a judicial tribunal, has not
startled the country more by its far-reaching and calamitous
results, than it has amazed jurists and statesmen by the
poverty of its learning and the feebleness of its logic. It
has surprised all, too, by its total want of sympathy with the
spirit in which the war for the Union was prosecuted, and,
necessarily, with those great issues growing out of it, which
concern not only the life of the Republic, but the very
progress of the race, and which, having been decided on the
battle-field, are now sought to be reversed by the very theory
of construction which led to rebellion."

At the same term with the Milligan case the test-oath case from
Missouri was brought before the Court and argued. In January, 1865, a
convention had assembled in that State to amend its constitution. Its
members had been elected in November previous. In April, 1865, the
constitution, as revised and amended, was adopted by the convention,
and in June following by the people. Elected, as the members were,
in the midst of the war, it exhibited throughout traces of the
animosities which the war had engendered. By its provisions the most
stringent and searching oath as to past conduct known in history was
required, not only of officers under it, but of parties holding trusts
and pursuing avocations in no way connected with the administration of