Decisions of the  Federal Circuit Court in Baltimore
during the Civil War, (Fourth Circuit, Maryland District):
cases involving Judges Giles and Taney.

The following cases are found certified by the clerk, Thomas Spicer, in the British National Archives, PRO/FO5/910/ff. 70-100:
 

1) The United States vs The Schooner F. W. Johnson, certified copy July 23, 1863, Decided by Judge Giles. Reported 25 F. Cas. 1232 (September Term 1861).  See: The Baltimore Sun, Sept. 23, 1861, as cited in Carl B. Swisher, Volume V The Taney Period 1836-64, The Oliver Wendell Holmes Devise History of the Supreme Court of the United States, New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1974, p. 880, n. 10. Swisher reverses the initials of the ship’s name.

2) The United States vs Schooner Arcola (Libel in a prize case), certified copy  July 17, 1863, decided by Judge Giles. Reported in F. Cas. 849 (October Term 1861)

3) Carpenter, Claimant of one box of Dry Goods vs. the United States (In the Circuit Court of The United States on Appeal), July 3, 1863, decided by Judge Taney. See: The Baltimore Sun, June 20, 1863, not officially reported, as cited in Carl B. Swisher, Volume V The Taney Period 1836-64, The Oliver Wendell Holmes Devise History of the Supreme Court of the United States, New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1974, p. 956, n. 119.
 
 

James Schneider in 50 Md. L. Rev. 40, p. 53:

 William Fell Giles was only the eighth district judge to serve in Maryland during the first ninety years of this court. ⁶⁰ It was not until 1927 that the membership of the court was enlarged to two [*52] judges, and not until 1961 that the third and fourth district judgeships were created. ⁶¹ Judge Giles served from 1853 until his death in 1879, a year before the advent of the Federal Reporter system. ⁶² But fifty-eight of Judge Gile's decisions are collected in the thirty volumes of Federal Cases, which predate the Reporter. Of these, fifteen decisions dealt with bankruptcy and insolvency, ⁶³ thirteen with admiralty, ⁶⁴ and ten with patent and trademark infringement. ⁶⁵ At the time cases involving human rights were rare.

 And yet it was a case brought by a former slave to secure his rights as a free man and a citizen that nearly destroyed the prestige of the federal courts and helped incite the Civil War. The Dred Scott 66 decision in 1857 tarnished the reputation of Chief Justice Taney and inflamed the North. It held that a black person could not be [*53] a citizen of the United States and could not sue in a federal court, ⁶⁷ and proclaimed in dicta that under the Constitution, Congress was powerless to prohibit slavery in the territories. ⁶⁸ The essence of Dred Scott was that slavery could not be stopped by peaceful, legal means.

 By 1860, the nation was poised on the brink of sectional conflict. The census that year counted the American population at 31.5 million, nearly 4 million of whom were black slaves. ⁶⁹ In November, Abraham Lincoln was elected president. The following month South Carolina became the first state to secede from the Union. In discharging a federal grand jury that year, Judge Giles expressed his deepest fears for the future of the country.

 The next term of this Court will be in March 1861 and it may be that ere that period rolls around, this great and noble Government under which, as a people, we have advanced to our present high position amid the nations of the earth . . . shall have been broken up, and you may be the last Grand Jury of these present United States which may ever assemble in this district. ⁷⁰
 
 

Last Page
 

1861-1863, 4th Federal Circuit Court cases decided by Judges Taney and Giles

Jump to page