The suppression of the Great Rebellion brought an enormous increase in the national power and in the popular will to national power. State rights did not loom large in the popular or the legislative mind in reconstruction days. Taney was dead. The Supreme Court had been practically reconstituted by appointments made by President Lincoln and his immediate successors and it seems to have been anticipated that the new Court would take the view of national powers prevailing in Congress and the country at large. In this the popular expectation was doomed to disappointment. The Court displayed an unexpected solicitude for the rights of the states and firmness against federal encroachment. Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, who had been President Lincoln's war Secretary of the Treasury, went so far as to pronounce unconstitutional some of his own official acts performed under the stress of war. In the great case of _State of Texas v. White_[1] the rights of Texas as a sovereign state were asserted, though Texas had joined in the Rebellion and was not represented in the national legislature. [Footnote 1: 7 Wall., 700 (1869).] In _The Collector v. Day_[1] it was held that Congress had no power to tax the salary of a state official. [Footnote 1: 11 Wall., 113 (1871).] In the Slaughter House cases[1] an act of the Legislature of Louisiana, granting to a corporation created by it exclusive rights to maintain slaughter houses for the City of New Orleans and other territory, was upheld, as a valid exercise of state police power, against claims that the legislation violated rights secured under the newly adopted amendments to the Federal Constitution (Amendments XIII, XIV, XV). The opinion of the Court delivered by a Northern judge (Miller of Iowa) stands as one of the bulwarks of state authority. [Footnote 1: 16 Wall., 36 (1873).] In a series of later cases various reconstruction acts of Congress involving encroachments upon state rights were either held unconstitutional or radically limited in their effect. For example, the decision in _United States v. Cruikshank_[1] greatly limited the effect of the so-called Federal Enforcement Act. The decision in _United States v. Harris_[2] declared unconstitutional portions of an act of Congress designed for the suppression of activities of the Ku-Klux variety. In the so-called Civil Rights cases[3] certain provisions of the federal Civil Rights Act, passed in furtherance of the purposes of the new constitutional amendments and designed to secure to persons of color equal enjoyment of the privileges of inns, public conveyances, theatres, etc., were held unconstitutional as an encroachment on the rights of the states. [Footnote 1: 92 U.S., 542 (1875).] [Footnote 2: 106 U.S., 629.] [Footnote 3: 109 U.S., 3.]