any or too few, not omitting even scaffolding--or, if
a single piece be lacking, we see the place in the frame exactly fitted
and prepared yet to bring such piece in--in such a case we find it
impossible not to believe that Stephen and Franklin and Roger and James
all understood one another from the beginning, and all worked upon a
common plan or draft drawn up before the first blow was struck.

It should not be overlooked that, by the Nebraska bill, the people of a
_State_ as well as Territory were to be left "perfectly free," "subject
only to the Constitution." Why mention a State? They were legislating
for Territories, and not for or about States. Certainly the people of
a State are and ought to be subject to the Constitution of the United
States; but why is mention of this lugged into this merely Territorial
law? Why are the people of a Territory and the people of a State
therein lumped together, and their relation to the Constitution therein
treated as being precisely the same? While the opinion of the court,
by Chief Justice Taney, in the Dred Scott case, and the separate
opinions of all the concurring judges, expressly declare that the
Constitution of the United States neither permits Congress nor a
Territorial Legislature to exclude slavery from any United States
Territory, they all omit to declare whether or not the same
Constitution permits a State, or the people of a State, to exclude it.
Possibly, this is a mere omission; but who can be quite sure, if McLean
or Curtis had sought to get into the opinion a declaration of unlimited
power in the people of a State to exclude slavery from their limits,
just as Chase and Mace sought to get such declaration, in behalf of the
people of a Territory, into the Nebraska bill--I ask, who can be quite
sure that it would not have been voted down in the one case as it had
been in the other? The nearest approach to the point of declaring the
power of a State over slavery is made by Judge Nelson. He approaches
it more than once, using the precise idea, and almost the language too,
of the Nebraska act. On one occasion his exact language is: "except in
cases where the power is restrained by the Constitution of the United
States, the law of the State is supreme over the subject of slavery
within its jurisdiction." In what cases the power of the States is so
restrained by the United States Constitution is left an open question,
precisely as the same question as to the rest