tated, is your language. Perhaps you will say the Supreme
Court has decided the disputed constitutional question in your favour.
Not quite so. But waiving the lawyer's distinction between dictum and
decision, the court has decided the question for you in a sort of way.
The court has substantially said, it is your constitutional right to
take slaves into the Federal Territories, and to hold them there as
property. When I say the decision was made in a sort of way, I mean it
was made in a divided court, by a bare majority of the judges, and they
not quite agreeing with one another in the reasons for making it; that
it is so made as that its avowed supporters disagree with one another
about its meaning, and that it was mainly based upon a mistaken
statement of fact--the statement in the opinion that "the right of
property in a slave is distinctly and expressly affirmed in the
Constitution."

An inspection of the Constitution will show that the right of property
in a slave is not "distinctly and expressly affirmed" in it. Bear in
mind, the judges do not pledge their judicial opinion that such right is
impliedly affirmed in the Constitution; but they pledge their veracity
that it is "distinctly and expressly" affirmed there--"distinctly," that
is, not mingled with anything else; "expressly," that is, in words
meaning just that, without the aid of any inference, and susceptible of
no other meaning.

If they had only pledged their judicial opinion that such right is
affirmed in the instrument by implication, it would be open to others to
show that neither the word "slave" nor "slavery" is to be found in the
Constitution, nor the word "property," even, in any connection with
language alluding to the things slave or slavery; and that wherever in
that instrument the slave is alluded to, he is called a "person"; and
wherever his master's legal right in relation to him is alluded to, it
is spoken of as "service or labour which may be due"--as a debt payable
in service or labour. Also it would be open to show, by contemporaneous
history, that this mode of alluding to slaves and slavery, instead of
speaking of them, was employed on purpose to exclude from the
Constitution the idea that there could be property in man.

To show all this is easy and certain.

When this obvious mistake of the judges shall be brought to their
notice, is it not reasonable to expect that they will withdraw the
mistaken statement, and reconsider the conc