The Rise and Fall of Anarchy in America / From its Incipient Stage to the First Bomb Thrown in Chicago

by George N. McLean

GENERAL BUTLER’S ARGUMENT.

If this should happen, General Butler said, he hoped that the English authorities would not be able to hold up to him a decision of the United States Supreme Court sustaining the right to try an Englishman by the local law of a State which was nothing but a swamp and a howling wilderness at the time the treaty was ratified.

Returning to the rights of States, General Butler said that he was not prepared to deny that a State might change its organic laws with the consent of all its citizens, but such change would not bind a citizen of another State who had not assented to them.