on, the plaintiff cannot sue as a citizen of Missouri in the
courts of the United States. But, that the record shows a prima facie
case of jurisdiction, requiring the court to decide all the questions
properly arising in it; and as the decision of the pleas in bar shows
that the plaintiff is a slave, and therefore not entitled to sue in a
court of the United States, the form of the judgment is of little
importance; for, whether the judgment be affirmed or dismissed for
want of jurisdiction, it is justified by the decision of the court,
and is the same in effect between the parties to the suit.

* * * * *

Mr. Justice DANIEL.

It may with truth be affirmed, that since the establishment of the
several communities now constituting the States of this Confederacy,
there never has been submitted to any tribunal within its limits
questions surpassing in importance those now claiming the
consideration of this court. Indeed it is difficult to imagine, in
connection with the systems of polity peculiar to the United States, a
conjuncture of graver import than that must be, within which it is
aimed to comprise, and to control, not only the faculties and
practical operation appropriate to the American Confederacy as such,
but also the rights and powers of its separate and independent
members, with reference alike to their internal and domestic authority
and interests, and the relations they sustain to their confederates.

To my mind it is evident, that nothing less than the ambitious and
far-reaching pretension to compass these objects of vital concern, is
either directly essayed or necessarily implied in the positions
attempted in the argument for the plaintiff in error.

How far these positions have any foundation in the nature of the
rights and relations of separate, equal, and independent Governments,
or in the provisions of our own Federal compact, or the laws enacted
under and in pursuance of the authority of that compact, will be
presently investigated.

In order correctly to comprehend the tendency and force of those
positions, it is proper here succinctly to advert to the facts upon
which the questions of law propounded in the argument have arisen.

This was an action of trespass _vi et armis_, instituted in the
Circuit Court of the United States for the district of Missouri, in
the name of the plaintiff in error, _a negro_ held as a slave, for the
recovery of freedom for himself, his