ng a mere _obiter
dictum_,--a personal opinion carrying no judicial authority. The attempt
to make these side-remarks a decisive pronouncement on the supreme
political question of the time is beyond law or reason. It is
preposterous that the court's incidental opinion, on a case which it had
disclaimed the power to try, should invalidate that exclusion of slavery
by national authority which had been affirmed by the great acts of 1787
and 1820, and had been exercised for seventy years.

"As to fugitive slaves, the Personal Liberty laws are designed to
safeguard by the State's authority its free black citizens from the
kidnapping which the Federal statute, with its refusal of a jury trial,
renders easy. If they sometimes make difficulty in the rendition of
actual fugitives,--you must not expect a whole-hearted acceptance of the
role of slave-catchers by the Northern people. You have the Federal
statute, and may take what you can under it,--but if under the bond
Shylock gets only his pound of flesh, there is no help for him.

"Come now to your broader complaint, that the spirit of the Union has
been sacrificed by Northern hostility toward your peculiar institution.
True, you have had to put up with harsh words, but we have had to put up
with a harsh fact. You have had to tolerate criticism, but we have had
to tolerate slavery under our national flag. It is an institution
abhorrent to our sense of right. We believe it contrary to the law of
God and the spirit of humanity. We consider it unjust in its essential
principle, and full of crying abuses in its actual administration. Its
existence in one section of the Union is a reproach to us among the
nations of the earth, and a blot on the flag. Yet we so thoroughly
recognize that our national principle allows each State to shape its own
institutions that we have not attempted and shall not attempt to hinder
you from cherishing slavery among yourselves as long as you please. If,
for the vast and vital interests bound up with the unity of this nation,
we can tolerate the presence within it of a system we so disapprove,
cannot you on your part tolerate the inevitable criticism which it calls
out among us?

"If mutual grievances are to be rehearsed, we have our full share. What
has become of the constitutional provision which guarantees to the
citizens of every State their rights in all the States? When black
seamen, citizens of our commonwealths, enter South Carolina ports, the