red that therefore Congress
could not interfere with it in the Territories. Before he was judge, he
admitted the right of sojourn. There was but one step more,--the sacred
right of slave property in Free States. It was involved in what he had
already said, and was not so great an anomaly as he had already
sanctioned; for if the Constitution guarantees this property in every
State,--if the States do not reserve the power to interfere with
it,--if, in case of escape, Congress has the power to reclaim it,--why
is not the owner to be guaranteed it in the States as well as in the
Territories?

In looking across this long judicial Sahara of twenty-seven years, there
is but one oasis. In the Amistad case, the Court did declare that Cinque
and the rest, who had been kidnapped, had the right to regain their
natural liberty, even at the cost of the lives of those who held them in
bondage; and for once the Court, speaking by Story, did appeal to the
laws of nature and of nations, and decide the case "_upon the eternal
principles of justice_." But all else is, in the light of this question
of Slavery, by which this age will be remembered and judged, a dreary,
barren waste of shifting, blinding, stifling sand.

History will tell whether America is to be judged by the words spoken by
him who so long held the highest seat in her courts. We do not think she
has fallen to such a depth. He did not speak for her; but he did for
himself.

By this record will the world judge Chief Justice Taney. His great
familiarity with the special practice; his knowledge of the peculiar
jurisdiction of his tribunals; his acquaintance with the doctrines and
decisions of the common law, with equity and admiralty; his opinions on
corporate and municipal powers and rights, on land claims, State
boundaries, the Gaines case, the Girard will, on corporations; his
decisions on patent-rights and on copyrights; his opinions extending
admiralty jurisdiction to inner waters, on liability of public officers,
and rights of State or national taxation, on the liquor and passenger
laws, on State insolvent laws, on commercial questions, on belligerent
rights, and on the organization of States,--after doing service for the
day in the mechanical branch of his craft, will soon be all forgotten.
But the slavocrats' revolution of the last two generations, and the
Secession war, and the triumph of Liberty, will be the theme of the
world; and he, of all who precipitated them,