with
Dred Scott, in the free State of Illinois, every other master may
lawfully do with any other one, or one thousand slaves, in Illinois, or
in any other free State.

Auxiliary to all this, and working hand in hand with it, the Nebraska
doctrine, or what is left of it, is to educate and mould public
opinion, at least Northern public opinion, not to care whether slavery
is voted down or voted up. This shows exactly where we now are; and
partially, also, whither we are tending.

It will throw additional light on the latter, to go back and run the
mind over the string of historical facts already stated. Several
things will now appear less dark and mysterious than they did when they
were transpiring. The people were to be left "perfectly free,"
"subject only to the Constitution." What the Constitution had to do
with it outsiders could not then see. Plainly enough now, it was an
exactly fitted niche for the Dred Scott decision to afterward come in,
and declare the perfect freedom of the people to be just no freedom at
all. Why was the amendment, expressly declaring the right of the
people, voted down? Plainly enough now, the adoption of it would have
spoiled the niche for the Dred Scott decision. Why was the court
decision held up? Why even a Senator's individual opinion withheld
till after the presidential election? Plainly enough now, the speaking
out then would have damaged the perfectly free argument upon which the
election was to be carried. Why the outgoing President's felicitation
on the indorsement? Why the delay of a reargument? Why the incoming
President's advance exhortation in favor of the decision? These things
look like the cautious patting and petting of a spirited horse
preparatory to mounting him, when it is dreaded that he may give the
rider a fall. And why the hasty after-indorsement of the decision by
the President and others?

We cannot absolutely know that all these exact adaptations are the
result of preconcert. But when we see a lot of framed timbers,
different portions of which we know have been gotten out at different
times and places and by different workmen,--Stephen, Franklin, Roger,
and James, for instance--and we see these timbers joined together, and
see they exactly make the frame of a house or a mill, all the tenons
and mortices exactly fitting, and all the lengths and proportions of
the different pieces exactly adapted to their respective places, and
not a piece too m