dicere, non dare." Most surely Taney ignored his
State-Rights doctrines when, looking far on for the interests of Slavery
and the convenience of slave hunters, he held the United States
authorized to legislate on the matter; and, disguising the poison under
the phrase, "the Constitution and every clause of it is part of the law
of every State of the land," he put forth the dogma that the rendition
clause merely provided for the rights of citizens, "put them under
protection of the General Government," and made "the rights of the
master the law of each State." He was declaring a rule of government,
not a rule of law, and creating a theory for the defence of property in
man.

In 1850 he went a step farther. A Kentucky slave-owner had been in the
habit of letting some of his slaves go into Ohio to sing as minstrels.
He filed a bill against a steamboat and her captain to recover the value
of those slaves, who, after their return, had been carried across the
river and escaped. It must be remembered that they had not first
escaped, but had been _carried_ to Ohio. But here, again, without
recurring to any of the principles presented and fairly involved in such
an issue, again looking far on to consequences in the interest of
Slavery, again ignoring, not only the first principles of jurisprudence
and the declared ends of the Constitution, but even his own political
State-Rights doctrine, (for if these men had not escaped, why could not
Ohio free them?) he declared a doctrine pregnant with mischief,--that
each State had the absolute right to decide the status of all persons
within its limits. This, too, has gone with war. But his intent is none
the less clear. The theory was obviously stated with a far-reaching view
to remote consequences. And it must be considered in connection with the
fact that, in lieu of the old rule which had been recognized by the
Slave States, that a slave, by being carried to a Free State or
domiciled for a day in a foreign country by whose law he was
enfranchised, was liberated forever,--once free, free forever and
everywhere,--the Slave Power was beginning to assert a new rule for
reenslavement by recapture and on return.

But the Slave Power, having controlled the executive and directed the
legislative branch of the government, again turned to judicial power as
the surest, and best able to work out easily the largest and most
lasting results. The Dred Scott case was begun in 1854, and brought up,
t