hout our history and had been in no part based
on assumed historical facts which are not really true; or if, wanting in
some of these, it had been before the court more than once, and had
there been affirmed and reaffirmed through a course of years, it then
might be, perhaps would be, factious, nay, even revolutionary, not to
acquiesce in it as a precedent. But when, as is true, we find it wanting
in all these claims to the public confidence, it is not resistance, it
is not factious, it is not even disrespectful, to treat it as not having
yet quite established a settled doctrine for the country....

"The Chief Justice does not directly assert, but plainly assumes, as a
fact, that the public estimate of the black man is more favorable now
than it was in the days of the Revolution. This assumption is a mistake.
In some trifling particulars the condition of that race has been
ameliorated; but as a whole, in this country, the change between then
and now is decidedly the other way; and their ultimate destiny has never
appeared so hopeless as in the last three or four years. In two of the
five States--New Jersey and North Carolina--that then gave the free
negro the right of voting, the right has since been taken away; and in
the third--New York--it has been greatly abridged; while it has not
been extended, so far as I know, to a single additional State, though
the number of the States has more than doubled. In those days, as I
understand, masters could, at their own pleasure, emancipate their
slaves; but since then such legal restraints have been made upon
emancipation as to amount almost to prohibition. In those days,
legislatures held the unquestioned power to abolish slavery in their
respective States, but now it is becoming quite fashionable for State
constitutions to withhold that power from the legislatures. In those
days, by common consent, the spread of the black man's bondage to the
new countries was prohibited, but now Congress decides that it will not
continue the prohibition and the Supreme Court decides that it could not
if it would. In those days, our Declaration of Independence was held
sacred by all, and thought to include all; but now, to aid in making the
bondage of the negro universal and eternal, it is assailed and sneered
at and construed, and hawked at and torn, till, if its framers could
rise from their graves, they could not at all recognize it. All the
powers of earth seem rapidly combining against him