pressly to test the status of slavery in the Territories. Suit was
brought before it to obtain freedom for Dred Scott, who being held as a
slave in Missouri had been taken by his master to reside for a time in
Illinois, and afterward at Fort Snelling in unorganized territory north
of 36 degrees 30 minutes, and so free under the Missouri compromise. It
was claimed that by being taken upon free soil, in State or Territory,
he became free. The court, in an elaborate opinion delivered by
Chief-Justice Taney, dismissed the case for want of jurisdiction, on the
ground that no person of slave descent or African blood could be a
citizen of the United States or be entitled to sue in its courts. The
court affirmed that the sweeping language of the Declaration, that "all
men are born free," had no application to negroes, because at that time
they were generally regarded "as so far inferior that they had no
rights which the white man was bound to respect." The case being thus
thrown out of court, all further discussion of its merits was
superfluous--a mere _obiter dictum_, without legal force. Nevertheless,
the court through its chief-justice went on to pronounce upon the
plaintiff's claim and declare it baseless; on the ground that inasmuch
as a slave was lawful property, and the Constitution decreed that no man
should be deprived of his property without due process of law, therefore
an act of Congress declaring in effect that when carried beyond a
certain line a slave was lost to his master, was unconstitutional and
void. Thus the court set aside as invalid the exclusion of slavery from
the Territories by Congress. As to the effect of a slave's residence in
a free State by his master's act, followed by a return to a slave
State,--the court held that this question belonged properly to the
Missouri courts, which had decided against the slave's claim.

Two of the justices, McLean and Curtis (Northern Whigs), dissented
emphatically from the decision. Justice Curtis pointed out, as to the
alleged incapacity of the negro for citizenship at the era of the
Constitution, that at that period free negroes had the right of suffrage
in five of the thirteen States. As to the argument against depriving a
man of his property, the contention of the Republicans was that slaves
were property, not by the common usage of mankind, but only by local
law, and that when a slaveholder moved into a Territory he did not carry
with him that local law by which