Page:The Supreme Court in United States History vol 1.djvu/396

 was with such sentiments as those of Quincy and Dana ringing through the halls of Congress and given wide circulation through the country by the news- papers, encouraging conflict between the States and the Nation, that the Court, for the second time in its his- tory, was confronted with the possibility of a direct col- lision with the authorities of a State — the " incorrigibly Democratic" State of Pennsylvania. During the debates on the adoption of the Constitution in 1787-1788, the probability, or rather the certainty, of a clash between the Federal and State sovereignties had been the chief argument of the Anti-Federalists against the new frame of government. Within three years after the adoption of the Constitution, the case of ChishoLm v. Georgia had presented the issue in a grave form. Since then, the Court had been fortunate enough to escape the necessity of a decision involving friction with a State. The Twenty-Fifth Section of the Judiciary Act authorizing appeals on writ of error to State Courts had always been regarded as the probable source of trouble ; and the Court had been extremely careful to avoid taking jurisdiction under this Act, wherever it could be avoided. As an illustration of its caution, it had even hesitated in a case in which it would seem that there ought to have been no doubt whatever — Mathews v. Zane, 4 Cranch, 382, in 1804, — a suit between two citizens of