‘5 done it, your Union would have been blown to atoms long ago. It wants something more than Conventions; it wants something stronger than resolutions. I do not know how you propose to effect it. How can a State go out? A man may commit treason under the Constitution of the United States, if be levies war against them; he may be hauled up and pun ished; but how, in Heaven’s name, is a State to go out of the Union? I should like to have some one who talks about it show me the modus operands. THE SUPREME COURT. There was one thing I failed to mention in its proper place. I allude to the late nefarious decision of your Supreme Court. They made a new discovery—a discovery that, by vigor of the Constitution of the United States, you can carry Slavery all over the continent wherever your flag may float. I approach that subject with nc pleasure. I wish I could entertain a good opinion of the judges of that court. I wish I could believe they were patriotic. I wish I could believe they held the scales of justice equal between the rich and the poor, the great and the small, unswerved by political considerations, uninfluenced by anything but their duty, which is the most Godlike that man can ever administer; that is justice unmixed, unbiased justice. I wish I could believe that that court were actuated by no other than these great Gidlike principles in the decision they have nr de. It was a most extraordinary decision The mode of coming at it, the decision itself, the time when it was made, are all calculated to inspire the mind with a suspicion that all is not right. I affirm that the Supreme Court, in making this decision, has done what no court of the United States had ever done before; but I do not hold this court, and never did hold it, in that "reverence which some gentlemen pretend to entertain. I remember that it seems to be the mere instrument of political power. It follows it as the incident follows the principal. In the old Federal times, when your alien and sedition law was passed, and it came before that court, they found no difficulty in maintaining that most flagrant violation of the Constitution. Your sedition law was upheld by the judges of that court, and men were imprisoned by its process; and yet to day there is not a man to be found in these United States but what considers that law a most disgraceful law to remain on the statute book. It doe^ not remain there as a law, but it stands there as a memorial of the madness of party, and the easy method in which men will violate the Con- stitu ion of the United States. That wes upheld. All men now consider it as infamous, notwithstanding it had the sanction of that court. Almost the entire speech of the Senator from Louisiana—and I wish he was here—was made for the purpose of sustaining the validity of that decision. I am not going extensively into it, for I have not time, nor does it need a very extensive examination to show that it is a fallacy, a mere sham; that it has not the semblance or color of authority. THE DRED SCOTT DECISION. Dred Scott, the plaintiff, claimed that he was a free man; and according to the course of practice from the earliest organization of the Government, in every district, (for the cases ' establishing it are numerous enough,) he sued for his freedom in the Circuit Court of the United States. The pretended claimant put in a plea to the jurisdiction. He said that Dred Scott was a negro; that his ancestors came from Africa; that they were slat-os, and therefore he was not a citizen of the United States, and he had no right to a hearing in that court. Drod Scott demurred to that plea; and that demurrer came up before the court, and it was the only question they could decide. After getting the plaintiff out of court, and saying he has no standing here, after murdering him, the court go on to declare principles most fatal to the liberties and rights of many of the American people. The like was never done before in any court. No court in thia Union has been heretofore more chary of giving decisions that were not called for by the case, than the Supreme Court of the United States. They have always repudiated it. They would never go further than the necessities of the case required them to go Was not the decision of the question of jurisdiction an end of this case? A majority of the judges decided that Dred Scott had no right to be in the court. They dismissed him from their consideration. What further was there to do? The Senator from Louisiana, in his argument, did not pretend, as a lawyer, to argue that this was not the effect of the decision; but he uttered what seemed to me very much like sophistry. He read from the opinions of the court, claiming that they had a right to go further. I do not care what they claimed. Any man that ever went through a lawyer’s office knows that when they decided that the plaintiff had no standing in court, the case was at an end; and any opinion they should give after that was a ir ere obiter dictum, entitled to no more respect than though it had been delivered here or in the streets. Mr. President, there is another thing to be considered in reference to that case. Here, to be sure, was a poor negro, having no friends,, no consideration, nobody to look to his interests. He was a member of a degraded class, with yhom the court m’ght deal with perfect impunity. I fear that the court, swayed by political reasons, forgot the rights of Dred Scott, and plunged into this political whirlpool, in order to control its currents. Is it not remarkable that America, the first nation in the world, should decide that a man may be so low that he cannot even seek his rights in the courts of the country ? Was there ever anything like it in any community before, whether civilized or
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