that Dred Scott was not free, because the Missouri Compromise
had all along been unconstitutional and void. Justices McLean and
Curtis, especially the latter, answered Taney's arguments in cogent
judgments, which it seems generally to be thought were right. Many
lawyers thought so then, and so did the prudent Fillmore. This is one
of the rare cases where a layman may have an opinion on a point of law,
for the argument of Taney was entirely historical and rested upon the
opinion as to negroes and slavery which he ascribed to the makers of
the Constitution and the authors of the Declaration of Independence.
On the question of Scott's citizenship he laid down that these men had
hardly counted Africans as human at all, and used words such as "men,"
"persons," "citizens" in a sense which necessarily excluded the negro.
We have seen already that he was wrong--the Southern politician who
called the words of the Declaration of Independence "a self-evident
lie" was a sounder historian than Taney; but an amazing fact is to be
added: the Constitution, whose authors, according to Taney, could not
conceive of a negro as a citizen, was actually the act of a number of
States in several of which negroes were exercising the full rights of
citizens at the time. It would be easy to bring almost equally plain
considerations to bear against the more elaborate argument of Taney
that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional, but it is enough to
say this much: the first four Presidents--that is, all the Presidents
who were in public life when the Constitution was made--had all acted
unhesitatingly upon the belief that Congress had the power to allow or
forbid slavery in the Territories. The fifth, John Quincy Adams, when
he set his hand to Acts involving this principle, had consulted before
doing so the whole of his Cabinet on this constitutional point and had
signed such legislation with the full concurrence of them all. Even
Polk had acted later upon the same view. The Dred Scott judgment would
thus appear to show the penetrating power at that time of an altogether
fantastic opinion.

The hope, which Taney is known to have entertained, that his judgment
would compose excited public opinion, was by no means fulfilled. It
raised fierce excitement. What practical effect would hereafter be
given to the opinion of six out of the nine judges in that Court might
depend on many things. But to the Republicans, who appealed much to
antiq