oiled the niche for
the Dred Scott decision. Why was the court decision held up? Why even a
Senator's individual opinion withheld, till after the Presidential
election? Plainly enough now, the speaking out then would have damaged
the perfectly free argument upon which the election was to be carried.
Why the outgoing President's felicitation on the indorsement? Why the
delay of a reargument? Why the incoming President's advance exhortation
in favor of the decision? These things look like the cautious patting
and petting of a spirited horse preparatory to mounting him, when it is
dreaded that he may give the rider a fall. And why the hasty
after-indorsement of the decision by the President and others?

We cannot absolutely know that all these exact adaptations are the
result of preconcert. But when we see a lot of framed timbers, different
portions of which we know have been gotten out at different times and
places and by different workmen--Stephen, Franklin, Roger, and James,
for instance--and when we see these timbers joined together, and see
they exactly make the frame of a house or a mill, all the tenons and
mortises exactly fitting, and all the lengths and proportions of the
different pieces exactly adapted to their respective places, and not a
piece too many or too few--not omitting even scaffolding--or, if a
single piece be lacking, we see the place in the frame exactly fitted
and prepared yet to bring such piece in--in such a case we find it
impossible not to believe that Stephen and Franklin and Roger and James
all understood one another from the beginning, and all worked upon a
common plan or draft drawn up before the first blow was struck.

It should not be overlooked that by the Nebraska Bill the people of a
_State_ as well as Territory were to be left "perfectly free," "subject
only to the Constitution." Why mention a State? They were legislating
for Territories, and not for or about States. Certainly the people of a
State are and ought to be subject to the Constitution of the United
States; but why is mention of this lugged into this merely Territorial
law? Why are the people of a Territory and the people of a State therein
lumped together, and their relation to the Constitution therein treated
as being precisely the same? While the opinion of the court, by Chief
Justice Taney, in the Dred Scott case, and the separate opinions of all
the concurring judges expressly declare that the Constitution of the
Unite