The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1879-01-30
Once q State Always o State.

The Washington correspondent of the
Tribune furnishes the substance of the
most important and interesting decision
made by the Supreme Court OF the Uni
ted States since the war came to close.
The case on which this decision was
made was of a somewhat peculiar charac-
ter. 1t seems that the Bank of Tennes-
see was organized in 1888, with provis
ion in its charter that the State should
receive all its issues of circulating notes
for the payment of taxes. A constitution
al amendment adopted in 1865 made the
issues of the bank during the insurrec-
tionasy period void, and forbade their
receipt for taxes. There was no evidence
in the record that the notes offered in
payment of taxes by the plaintiff were is
sued in aid of the rebellion, or for any
consideration forbidden by the constitu-
tion or laws of the United States, and the
court held that no such presumption
could arise from anything of which it
could take judicial notice. Upon this
state of facts the opinion of the majority
of the Supreme Court was very clear and
decisive, that the State of Tennessee
maintained its existence, individuality,
and political entity during the whole of
the rebellion, and the court holds that
there has never been but one political
society in existence as an organized
State of Tennessee from the day of its
admission in the Union, in 1896, to the
present time.
The majority opinion says. "The po-
litical society which, in 1896, became a
State of the Union, by the name of the
State of Tennessee, says the court, is the
same which is now represented as one Of
these States in the Congress of the
United States. Not only is it the same
body polite now, but it has always been
the same. There has been perpetual
succession and perpetual identity. There
always has been from that time State
of Tennessee, and the same State of Ten
nessee. It's executive, it legislative, its
judicial departments have continued
without interruption, and in regular or
der. 1t has changed, modified and re-
constructed its organic law, or State con-
stitution, more than once. 1t bas done
this before the rebellion and since the
rebellion, and it was always done by the
collective authority and in the name of
the same body of people constituting the
political society known Us the State of
Tennessee. This political body has not
only been all this time State, and the
same State, but it has always been one of
the United States, State of the Union.
Under the constitution of the Uuited
States, by virtue of which Tennessee was
born into the family of States, she had
no lawful power to depart from that Un-
ION. The effort which she made to do so,
if it had been successful, would have
been so in spite of the constitution, and
by reason of that force which in many
| other instances establishes for itself a
status which must be recognized as fact
without reference to any question ofright,
and which in this case would have been
to the extent of its success destruction.
Failing to do this, the State remained q
State of the Union. She never escaped
the obligations of that constitution,
though for awhile she may have evaded
their enforcement"