The writ was accordingly issued, but on the return of the officer showing
the authority under which the petitioner was held, he was ordered to be
remanded. From that judgment he appealed to the Supreme Court. Of
course, if the Reconstruction Acts were invalid, the petitioner could
not be held, and he was entitled to his discharge. The case excited
great interest throughout the country. Judge Sharkey and Robert J.
Walker, of Mississippi, David Dudley Field and Charles O'Connor, of
New York, and Jeremiah S. Black, of Pennsylvania, appeared for the
appellant; and Matthew H. Carpenter, of Wisconsin, Lyman Trumbull, of
Illinois, and Henry Stanbery, the Attorney-General, appeared for the
other side. The hearing of it occupied four days, and seldom has it
been my fortune during my judicial life, now (1877) of nearly
twenty years, to listen to arguments equal in learning, ability, and
eloquence. The whole subject was exhausted. As the arguments were
widely published in the public journals, and read throughout the
country, they produced a profound effect. The impression was general
that the Reconstruction Acts could not be sustained; that they were
revolutionary and destructive of a republican form of government in
the States, which the Constitution required the Federal government to
guarantee. I speak now merely of the general impression.
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