Texas v. White et al. was a landmark Supreme Court case that established the legal precedent that the Union was indestructible. The case was brought before the Supreme Court by the state of Texas, which argued that the state had the right to secede from the Union during the Civil War. The Supreme Court disagreed, ruling that the Union was an indestructible entity and that the state of Texas had no right to secede. The Court also ruled that the Constitution was a binding contract between the states and the federal government, and that the federal government had the right to enforce its laws and regulations on the states. This ruling was a major victory for the Union and helped to ensure that the United States would remain a unified nation. The ruling also established the legal precedent that the Union was indestructible, and that the states could not secede from the Union.

In Texas v. White et al., the Supreme Court ruled that a bond issued by the state of Texas was not valid, and therefore could not be enforced. The majority opinion held that when Texas seceded from the Union in 1861, it had no authority to issue bonds or other obligations under its own laws; instead, any such obligations were void because they violated federal law. Justice Stephen Field dissented from this decision on two grounds: firstly, he argued that Congress had never expressly forbidden states from issuing their own securities during secession; secondly, he argued that even if Congress had done so implicitly through legislation passed after secession occurred (such as the Reconstruction Acts), those acts did not apply retroactively to pre-secession contracts like those at issue here. He concluded by noting that while there may have been some legal basis for invalidating these particular bonds due to their lack of consideration or fraudulently obtained signatures, none of these issues were addressed in either party's arguments before the court and thus should remain unresolved until another case presented them more clearly.