to carry out
the constitutional equality of the States in the Territories, is obliged
to treat slaves found there precisely like any other property. If one
citizen wishes to hold slaves, all the rest opposing, the general
Government must support him. It is obvious how antagonistic this thought
was to that of Douglas, since, according to the latter, a majority of
the inhabitants in a Territory could elect to exclude slavery as well as
to establish it.

The new southern or Calhoun theory assumed startling significance for
the Nation when, in 1857, it was proclaimed in the Dred Scott decision
of the United States Supreme Court as part of the innermost life of our
Constitution. Dred Scott was a slave of an army officer, who had taken
him from Missouri first into Illinois, a free State, then into
Wisconsin, covered by the Missouri Compromise, then back into Missouri.
Here the slave learned that by decisions of the Missouri courts his life
outside of Missouri constituted him free, and in 1848, having been
whipped by his master, he prosecuted him for assault. The decision was
in his favor, but was reversed when appeal was taken to the Missouri
Supreme Court. Dred Scott was now sold to one Sandford, of New York. Him
also he prosecuted for assault, but as he and Sandford belonged to
different States this suit went to the United States Circuit Court.
Sandford pleaded that this lacked jurisdiction, as the plaintiff was not
a citizen of Missouri but a slave.

It was this last issue which made the case immortal. The Circuit Court
having decided in the defendant's favor, the plaintiff took an appeal to
the Supreme Court. Here the verdict was against the citizenship of the
negro, and therefore against the jurisdiction of the court below. The
upper court did not stop with this simple dictum, hard and dubious as it
was, but proceeded to lay down as law an astounding course of
pro-slavery reasoning. In this it confined the ordinance of 1787 to the
old northwestern territory, declared the Missouri Compromise and all
other legislation against slavery in Territories unconstitutional, and
the slave character portable not only into all the Territories but into
all the States as well, slavery having everywhere all presupposition in
its favor and freedom being on the defensive. The denial of Scott's
citizenship was based solely upon his African descent, the inevitable
implication being that no man of African blood could be an American
citize