claim to freedom by
reason of his residence in Illinois was a Missouri question, which
Missouri law had decided against him. That the Constitution of the
United States recognizes slaves as property, and pledges the Federal
Government to protect it; and that the Missouri Compromise act and
like prohibitory laws are unconstitutional. That the Circuit Court of
the United States had no jurisdiction in the case and could give no
judgment in it, and must be directed to dismiss the suit.

This remarkable decision challenged the attention of the whole people
to a degree never before excited by any act of their courts of law.
Multiplied editions were at once printed,[6] scattered broadcast over
the land, read with the greatest avidity, and earnestly criticised.

The public sentiment regarding it immediately divided, generally on
existing party lines--the South and the Democrats accepting and
commending, the North and the Republicans spurning and condemning it.
The great anti-slavery public was not slow in making a practical
application of its dogmas: that a sweeping and revolutionary
exposition of the Constitution had been attempted when confessedly
the case and question had no right to be in court; that an evident
partisan dictum of national judges had been built on an avowed
partisan decision of State judges; that both the legislative and
judicial authority of the nation had been trifled with; that the
settler's "sovereignty" in Kansas consisted only of a Southern
planter's right to bring his slaves there; and that if under the
"property" theory the Constitution carries slavery to the Territories,
it would by the same inevitable logic carry it into free-States.

But much more offensive to the Northern mind than his conclusions of
law were the language and historical assertions by which Chief-Justice
Taney strove to justify them.

[Sidenote] 19 Howard, p. 407.

In the opinion of the court [said he] the legislation and
histories of the times, and the language used in the Declaration
of Independence, show, that neither the class of persons who had
been imported as slaves, nor their descendants, whether they had
become free or not, were then acknowledged as a part of the
people, nor intended to be included in the general words used in
that memorable instrument. It is difficult at this day to realize
the state of public opinion in relation to that unfortunate race
which prevailed in the