In the 1896 case of Whitney v. United States, the U.S Supreme Court upheld a lower court's decision that Henry A. Whitney was not entitled to compensation from the federal government for property he claimed was unlawfully seized during the Civil War. The property in question included cotton bales taken by Union forces from land owned by his wife in Mississippi. The Court ruled that because Mrs. Whitney had given her consent to Confederate authorities to use her land and resources for war purposes, she effectively became an enemy of the state under international law principles applied during wartime, thus forfeiting any right to claim damages or compensation after hostilities ended.

The Whitney v. United States case does not have a recorded dissenting opinion in the Supreme Court records, nor is there any mention of such in historical legal documents or literature. The case was decided per curiam (by the court as a whole) and no individual justice's opinions were noted separately from the unanimous decision. Therefore, it is impossible to provide a summary of a dissenting opinion for this particular case.