HEPBURN vs. GRISWOLD, 1869: the great case in which the Supreme Court of the United States decided that the government had no power to make its own notes legal tender; reversed through a change in the constitution of the court in Knox v. Lee and Juilliard v. Greenman. Mrs. Hepburn of Kentucky had given Henry Griswold a note for 11,250 *dollars,* payable 20 Feb. 1862; it was not paid when due, and five days subsequently the • government passed the act authorizing $150,000,000 in notes (see GREENBACKS), receivable for public and private debts. In 1864 Griswold brought suit in the thancery court of Louisville for prin cipal and interest; $12,270 in greenbacks was tendered in settlement, but refused, on the claim that the act did not extend to debts contracted before its passage. The court decided for Mrs. Hepburn; Griswold carried the case to the Kentucky Court of Appeals, which reversed the decision; Mrs. Hepburn carried it to the Supreme Court, which on account of the far reaching importance of the case, and at the request of the attorney-general, laid it over till 1868, when it was reargued, and finally decided in the December term 1869. Chief Justice Chase, for five justices against three, decided that the act extended to all debts, contracted as well before as after its passage, and that the question therefore must be whether the gov ernment had the power to make anything but coin a legal tender; that it could not do so, under the Constitution, because at the time of its adoption no money but gold and silver was recognized; that as paper money never rose above coin and almost always fell below it, each particle of depreciation was so much ab stracted from the value understood by the par ties to the contract, and was therefore an un lawful deprivation of private property; that the power of Congress to use ((necessary means* to carry out its power of making war did not convey this right, because this was no more a special means of carrying out war powers than any other powers, and would enable it to issue bills of credit and make them legal tender just as much in the post office business or the patent business as the war. The minority admitted
that it was so impairing the obligation of con tracts, but asserted that Congress was given the power to do so; and this is now law. See