Meanwhile both courts had been sitting and disposing of cases. New appeals from the inferior courts had been entered in the one which the appellant's counsel thought most likely to stand as the rightful authority. The judges of the inferior courts were in despair when the mandates of the Court of Appeals came down, and they were called upon to determine whether to obey them. Some held that the new court was a _de facto court_, and to be respected accordingly. The ultimate decision fell to the old court, which, after the repealing Act of 1826, held that there could be no such thing as a _de facto_ Court of Appeals so long as civil government was maintained and the _de jure_ court was in the exercise of its functions.[Footnote: Hildreth's Heirs _v._ M'Intire's Devisee, 1, J. J. Marshall's Kentucky Reports, 206.] The same spirit of jealousy still occasionally manifests itself in a less outspoken but more effective fashion. If a question of political importance is likely to come before a court, it may be within the power of the legislature to prevent it by a change in its statutory jurisdiction. In this way the Supreme Court of the United States was kept from passing on the validity of the Reconstruction Acts enacted by Congress at the close of the Civil War, in a case which was actually pending. Under these Acts a Mississippi newspaper editor was arrested in 1867 by military order on account of an article which he had published reflecting on the policy of the government, and held for trial before a military commission. He appealed to the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of Mississippi for discharge on a writ of _habeas corpus_. Judgment went against him, and he appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States. The court, on August 1, held that it had jurisdiction to review the decision and to decide whether he could be tried before such a commission.[Footnote: _Ex parte_ McCardle, 6 Wallace's Reports, 318, 327.] The cause was then heard on its merits and all the questions involved discussed at length, four days being devoted to it. Congress apprehended a decision that the Reconstruction Acts were unconstitutional, and before one was arrived at, during the same month, passed an act repealing the right of appeal in such cases from the Circuit Court. The purpose of this was obvious, but it was none the less effective, and the court, without deciding the case, dismissed it for want of jurisdiction.[Footnote: _Ex parte_ McCardle, 7 Wallace's Reports, 506.]