It was only by somewhat
slow degrees, as the value of the threatened property grew to be vast,
that the Court was deflected from this conservative course into
effective legislation. The first prayers for relief came from the
Southern states, who were still groaning under reconstruction
governments; but as the Southern whites were then rather poor, their
complaints were neglected. The first very famous cause of this category
is known as the Slaughter House Cases. In 1869 the Carpet Bag government
of Louisiana conceived the plan of confiscating most of the property of
the butchers who slaughtered for New Orleans, within a district about as
large as the State of Rhode Island. The Fourteenth Amendment forbade
states to deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due
process of law, and the butchers of New Orleans prayed for protection,
alleging that the manner in which their property had been taken was
utterly lawless. But the Supreme Court declined to interfere, explaining
that the Fourteenth Amendment had been contrived to protect the
emancipated slaves, and not to make the federal judiciary "a perpetual
censor upon all legislation of the states, on the civil rights of their
own citizens, with authority to nullify such as it did not approve.
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