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mouth; studied law under William Wirt; was admitted to the 
bar and practiced law at Cincinnati; became a leader of the 
anti-slavery men ; entered the United States Senate, where he 
fought the Kansas-N ebraska Bill; became governor of Ohio; 
re-entered the United States Senate in 1861, but resigned to 
become secretary of the treasury under Lincoln ; and was chief 
justice of the United States from 1864 to 1873. As a financier 
he ranks with Robert Morris and Alexander Hamilton. He 
was the author of the Legal Tender Acts, and as chief justice 
declared his own acts unconstitutional. His opinions were 
mostly on questions of international law and prize cases, but 
he rendered one important constitutional decision, Texas v. 
White, 61 in which he established the proposition that our 
government is an indestructible union of indestructible states 
by holding that the seceding states had never legally been out 
of the Union. He presided with fairness over the impeach- 
ment trial of President Johnson. He filled the position of 
chief justice well, but he could not drop his political intrigues, 
and still sought the presidency. 
Waite (1816-1888). 62 The seventh chief justice was Morri- 
son R. Waite. He was appointed by U. S. Grant, presided 
from 1874 to 1888, and after Marshall was one of our greatest 
chief justices. He was born in Lynn, Conn., and was a 
descendant of Thomas Waite, who signed his name to the 
death warrant of Charles I. He graduated from Yale; studied 
law in his father’s office; practiced law in Maumee City and 
Toledo, Ohio; became a leader of the Ohio bar, tho his ex- 
perience as a trial lawyer was somewhat narrow; and was 
one of the counsel of the United States before the Geneva 
Arbitration Tribunal. While he was chief justice, the 
Supreme Court passed on the “War Amendments”, and es- 
tablished the principles of constitutional law upon the regula- 
tion of the railways, interstate commerce, public callings, 
polygamy, presidential removal from office, Legal Tender Acts, 
liquor traffic, repudiation of state debts, Chicago anarchists, 
and Chinese exclusion. Waite was a man of great intellectual 
and moral endowments, impartial in Reconstruction days, and 
a model of deportment. No disorder or levity was ever at- 
tempted in his presence. He believed in restricting the ex- 
tension of the powers of the federal government. While per- 
61 7 Wall. 700 . 
62 15 Green Bag 223 ; 22 Am. L. Rev. 301 . 
