The
bill alleged that the acts were designed to overthrow and annul the
existing government of the State, and to erect another and a different
government in its place, unauthorized by the Constitution and in
defiance of its guarantees; that the defendants, acting under orders
of the President, were about to set in motion a portion of the army
to take military possession of the State, subvert her government, and
subject her people to military rule. The presentation of this bill
and the argument on the motion of the Attorney-General to dismiss it
produced a good deal of hostile comment against the Judges, which did
not end when the motion was granted. It was held that the bill
called for judgment upon a political question, which the Court had no
jurisdiction to entertain.[2]
Soon afterwards the validity of the Reconstruction Acts was again
presented in the celebrated McArdle case, and in such a form that the
decision of the question could not well be avoided. In November, 1867,
McArdle had been arrested and held in custody by a military commission
organized in Mississippi under the Reconstruction Acts, for trial upon
charges of (1) disturbance of the public peace; (2) inciting to
insurrection, disorder, and violence; (3) libel; and (4) impeding
reconstruction. He thereupon applied to the Circuit Court of the United
States for the District of Mississippi for a writ of habeas corpus, in
order that he might be discharged from his alleged illegal imprisonment.
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