This case (1869) was after Lincoln’s optional war.
You do know that is how the Supreme Court works. First there has to be a violation, that is then adjudicated, and that decision is then appealed to the SCOTUS. Until unilateral secession was attempted, the SCOTUS had nothing to rule on. It was only after it was tried that the Court could even take up the issue.
Now, if the hotheads in the South had tried to secede and immediately taken it to the Courts to decide, instead of attacking Federal property, perhaps the war might have been avoided. Who knows, with Taney on the Court (may his soul burn in Hell), they may have succeeded.
But, they didn't. Instead of trying to go through the civil procedure, they chose revolt. It was they who chose the option of war. They lost.
My reference to 1869 was a shorthand way of providing the Radical Republican context to “Texas v. White.” After Lincoln's optional war which cost 600,000 dead, Lincoln's imprisonment of northern civilians without trial, suppression of the free press, and experimentation of total warfare against civilians, there was simply no way the U.S. Supreme Court could rule in T v. W that Lincoln's war was wrong and that the South did, indeed, have the right to secede.
Had the Supreme Court ruled secession legal, court members would have been impeached. The Radical Republicans just a year earlier impeached President Johnson for far less. One of the stated reasons Johnson was impeached was because he gave three speeches with the “intent to show disrespect for the Congress.”
Yes, Supreme Court members would have been impeached and convicted. They knew it . . . they read the newspapers you might say. Everyone knew the Radical Republicans were . . . well, radical. Those were kangaroo court and kangaroo congress times.
What is your dislike for Taney?