Democrats, with a majority in both houses of
Congress, got once more a free hand with Kansas and the slavery
question.

They had, too, a majority of the Supreme Court, and now for the first
time the court came forward with its view of the question. Two days
after the inauguration, the Dred Scott decision was handed down, and the
territorial controversy passed into a new phase. All parties were forced
to reconsider their positions. Douglas, especially, had need of all his
adroitness to bring his doctrine of popular sovereignty into accord with
the decision; for so far as it went it accorded completely with that
extreme Southern view of Calhoun's and Yancey's and Jefferson Davis's
which he had never yet, in his striving after an approachment with the
South, ventured far enough to accept. The court decided that the
Declaration of Independence did not mean negroes when it declared all
men to be equal; that no negro could become a citizen of the United
States; that the right of property in slaves was affirmed in the
Constitution; and that Congress had no power to prohibit slavery in any
Territory. The announcement that the eighth clause of the Missouri
Compromise law was unconstitutional was acceptable enough to the man who
had accomplished its repeal, but what became of popular sovereignty if
the Constitution itself decreed slavery into the Territories? But
Douglas, whether he met the difficulty effectively or not, faced it
promptly. Speaking at Springfield in June, he indorsed the decision, not
merely as authoritative, but as right; and he claimed that it was in
accord with his doctrine. For slavery, he pointed out, was dependent for
its existence anywhere upon positive legislation. This the inhabitants
of a Territory, acting through their territorial legislature, could
grant or deny as they chose. The constitutional right of a slaveholder
to take his property into a Territory would avail him nothing if he
found there no laws and police regulations to protect it.

The decision was, however, universally and rightly considered a great
victory for slavery. It condemned the Republican programme as
unconstitutional, and it strengthened the contention of the
Southerners. But the Southern leaders were in little need of heartening:
no cause ever had bolder and firmer champions. Under cover of the panic
of 1857, which drew men's minds away from politics, a group of them were
already planning a most daring last attempt to bring Kan