Page:History of the Supreme court of the United States (IA historyofsupreme00myeriala).pdf/444



During the range of years covered by the latter part of the preceding chapter, the course of the Supreme Court of the United States was signalized by two other distinct lines of action, as standing out conspicuously in its mass of decisions:

1. The validation of private claims to millions of acres of the most yaluable lands in California. Of the 8,150,143 acres of these lands obtained by individuals under the form of private land claims, a great part was presented by decisions of the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Taney.

2. The issuance of the edict, in the Dred Scott case, that all laws interfering with the slavery of negroes were unconstitutional and void, and that the negro was devoid of any civil rights which the white man was bound to respect.

With each of these events we shall deal in consecutive, although not strictly chronological, order. .Before doing so, however, it is necessary to describe a certain change in the personnel of the Supreme Court, and the important transition it signified.

Justice Levi Woodbury had died in 1851. His successor, appointed by President Fillmore, in 1851, was Benjamin R. Curtis, of Boston. At the time of his appointment Curtis was only forty-two years old. Compared to the ages of nearly all of the other Justices when commissioned to the