e called "precedents" and
"authorities." We believe as much as Judge Douglas (perhaps more)
in obedience to and respect for the judicial department of
government. We think its decisions on constitutional questions,
when fully settled, should control, not only the particular cases
decided, but the general policy of the country, subject to be
disturbed only by amendments of the Constitution as provided in
that instrument itself. More than this would be revolution. But we
think the Dred Scott decision is erroneous. We know the court that
made it has often overruled its own decisions, and we shall do
what we can to have it overrule this. We offer no resistance to
it. Judicial decisions are of greater or less authority as
precedents according to circumstances. That this should be so,
accords both with common sense and the customary understanding of
the legal profession. If this important decision had been made by
the unanimous concurrence of the judges, and without any apparent
partisan bias, and in accordance with legal public expectation,
and with the steady practice of the departments throughout our
history, and had been in no part based on assumed historical facts
which are not really true; or, if wanting in some of these, it had
been before the court more than once, and had there been affirmed
and reaffirmed through a course of years, it then might be,
perhaps would be, factious, nay, even revolutionary, not to
acquiesce in it as a precedent. But when, as is true, we find it
wanting in all these claims to the public confidence, it is not
resistance, it is not factions, it is not even disrespectful, to
treat it as not having yet quite established a settled doctrine
for the country.

Rising above all questions of technical construction to the broad and
universal aspects of the issue, Mr. Lincoln continued:

The Chief-Justice does not directly assert, but plainly assumes as
a fact, that the public estimate of the black man is more
favorable now than it was in the days of the Revolution. This
assumption is a mistake. In some trifling particulars the
condition of that race has been ameliorated; but as a whole, in
this country, the change between then and now is decidedly the
other way; and their ultimate destiny has never appeared so
hopeless as in the last three or four years. In two