adopted, not without shrewdness, as
being far better suited to the Northern mind. For clearly the people
enjoyed no sovereignty where they had no option. Consequently in the
Territories there was no longer a slavery question. The indignation of
anti-slavery men of all shades of opinion was intense, and was
unfortunately justifiable. For wholly apart from the controversy as to
whether the law was better expounded by the chief justice or by Judge
Curtis in his dissenting opinion, there remained a main fact, undeniable
and inexcusable, to wit: that the court, having decided that the lower
court had no jurisdiction, and being therefore itself unable to remand
the cause for a new trial, had then outstepped its own proper function
and outraged legal propriety by determining the questions raised by the
rest of the record,--questions which no longer had any real standing
before this tribunal. This course was well known to have been pursued
with the purpose on the part of the majority of the judges to settle by
judicial authority, and by a _dictum_ conspicuously _obiter_, that great
slavery question with which Congress had grappled in vain. It was a
terrible blunder, for the people were only incensed by a volunteered and
unauthorized interference. Moreover, the reasoning of Chief Justice
Taney was such that the Republicans began anxiously to inquire why it
was not as applicable to States as to Territories, and why it must not
be extended to States when occasion should arrive; and in this
connection it seemed now apparent why "States" had been named in the
bill which repealed the Missouri Compromise.[70] In spite of this menace
the struggle in Kansas was not slackened. Time had been counting heavily
in favor of the North. Her multitudinous population ceaselessly fed the
stream of immigrants, and they were stubborn fellows who came to stay,
and therefore were sure to wear out the persistence of the
boot-and-saddle men from over the Missouri border. Accordingly, in 1857,
the free-state men so vastly outnumbered the slavery contingent, that
even pro-slavery men had to acknowledge it. Then the slavery party made
its last desperate effort. Toward the close of that year the Lecompton
Constitution was framed by a convention chosen at an election in which
the free-state men, perhaps unwisely, had refused to take part. When
this pro-slavery instrument was offered to the people, they were not
allowed to vote simply Yea or Nay, but only "for