a from
Mexico, and played a prominent part in securing California for freedom.
The Southern Democrats again secured a Northern instrument in James
Buchanan of Pennsylvania, an elderly and very respectable man, who was
understood to be well versed in diplomatic and official life. He was a
more memorable personage than Pierce. A great chorus of friendly
witnesses to his character has united in ascribing all his actions to
weakness.

Buchanan was elected; but for a brand-new party the Republicans had put
up a very good fight, and they were in the highest of spirits when,
shortly after Buchanan's Inauguration in 1857, a staggering blow fell
upon them from an unexpected quarter. This was nothing less than a
pronouncement by the Chief Justice and a majority of Justices in the
Supreme Court of the United States, that the exclusion of slavery from
any portion of the Territories, and therefore, of course, the whole aim
and object of the Republicans, was, as Calhoun had contended eight or
ten years before, unconstitutional.

Dred Scott was a Missouri slave whose misfortunes it is needless to
compassionate, since, after giving his name to one of the most famous
law cases in history, he was emancipated with his family by a new
master into whose hands he had passed. Some time before the Missouri
Compromise was repealed he had been taken by his master into Minnesota,
as a result of which he claimed that he became, by virtue of the
Missouri Compromise, a free man. His right to sue his master in a
Federal Court rested on the allegation that he was now a citizen of
Missouri, while his master was a citizen of another State. There was
thus a preliminary question to be decided, Was he really a citizen,
before the question, Was he a freeman, could arise at all. If the
Supreme Court followed its established practice, and if it decided
against his citizenship, it would not consider the question which
interested the public, that of his freedom.

Chief Justice Roger Taney may be seen from the refined features of his
portrait and the clear-cut literary style of his famous judgment to
have been a remarkable man. He was now eighty-three, but in unimpaired
intellectual vigour. In a judgment, with which five of his colleagues
entirely concurred and from which only two dissented, he decided that
Dred Scott was not a citizen, and went on, contrary to practice, to
pronounce, in what was probably to be considered as a mere _obiter
dictum_,