Wilson v. United States was a landmark Supreme Court ruling in 1892 on whether or not a citizen of the United States had the right to sue the federal government. The case had its origins in the mistreatment of veterans in the wake of the Alaskan War, in particular many of those who fought in the Pacific Northwest, but eventually challenged the idea of sovereign immunity as a whole. John Wilson, a Floridian who spent six months returning home by horse after only receiving a hundred dollars from the US Army, concurrently sued the US Army, War Department and former Secretary of War Donald Laws in 1889 for mistreating him after he had involuntarily served in the Army after being drafted. The federal government argued that it could not be sued as it had federal immunity; Wilson's lawyers argued