of the Government as a correct position in law, that a master who
takes his slave to reside in a State or Territory where slavery is
prohibited, thereby emancipates his slave." These decisions, which
come down to the year 1837, seemed to have so fully settled the
question, that since that time there has been no case bringing it
before the court for any reconsideration, until the present. In the
case of Winny _v._ Whitesides, the question was made in the argument,
"whether one nation would execute the penal laws of another," and the
court replied in this language, (Huberus, quoted in 4 Dallas,) which
says, "personal rights or disabilities obtained or communicated by the
laws of any particular place are of a nature which accompany the
person wherever he goes;" and the Chief Justice observed, in the case
of Rachel _v._ Walker, the act of Congress called the Missouri
compromise was held as operative as the ordinance of 1787.

When Dred Scott, his wife and children, were removed from Fort
Snelling to Missouri, in 1838, they were free, as the law was then
settled, and continued for fourteen years afterwards, up to 1852, when
the above decision was made. Prior to this, for nearly thirty years,
as Chief Justice Gamble declares, the residence of a master with his
slave in the State of Illinois, or in the Territory north of Missouri,
where slavery was prohibited by the act called the Missouri
compromise, would manumit the slave as effectually as if he had
executed a deed of emancipation; and that an officer of the army who
takes his slave into that State or Territory, and holds him there as a
slave, liberates him the same as any other citizen--and down to the
above time it was settled by numerous and uniform decisions; and that
on the return of the slave to Missouri, his former condition of
slavery did not attach. Such was the settled law of Missouri until the
decision of Scott and Emerson.

In the case of Sylvia _v._ Kirby, (17 Misso. Rep., 434,) the court
followed the above decision, observing it was similar in all respects
to the case of Scott and Emerson.

This court follows the established construction of the statutes of a
State by its Supreme Court. Such a construction is considered as a
part of the statute, and we follow it to avoid two rules of property
in the same State. But we do not follow the decisions of the Supreme
Court of a State beyond a statutory construction as a rule of decision
for this court. State decisi