Texas v. White

During the Civil War, the Confederate government of Texas sold U.S. bonds that the state had received before the war to pay for supplies. After the war, the Reconstruction government of Texas sued in the Supreme Court to get the bonds back from the buyers, including George White, arguing the sale was illegal. The buyers replied that Texas had left the Union and so could not sue in a federal court as a state.

Decided on April 12, 1869, by a vote of 5 to 3, the Court ruled for Texas. Chief Justice Salmon Chase wrote that the Constitution created an indestructible Union, composed of indestructible states. When Texas joined the Union, he said, it entered an indissoluble relation, and its ordinance of secession was absolutely null. Texas had never legally left, though its rights as a state had been suspended during the rebellion, and the Confederate sale of the bonds was void.

The ruling settled in law what the war had settled in fact: there is no constitutional right to secede. The Court allowed that change might come through revolution or the consent of the states. Talk of secession still surfaces, including proposals for a Texas independence referendum, but legal scholars agree it would require a constitutional amendment or the consent of the other states. The case is also cited on questions of Reconstruction and state authority.