a similar instrument at this day they would be so
understood." But the writers of that instrument had not, he said,
intended to include men of the African race, who were at that time
regarded as not forming any part of the people. Therefore--strange
logic!--these men of the revolutionary era who treated negroes actually
as citizens having full equal rights did not understand the meaning of
their own words, which could be comprehended only after three-quarters
of a century when, forsooth, equal rights had been denied to all persons
of African descent.

The ruling of the Court in the Dred Scott case came at a time when
Northern people had a better idea of the spirit and teachings of
the founders of the Republic regarding the slavery question than any
generation before or since has had. The campaign that had just closed
had been characterized by a high order of discussion, and it was also
emphatically a reading campaign. The new Republican party planted itself
squarely on the principles enunciated by Thomas Jefferson, the reputed
founder of the old Republican party. They went back to the policy of the
fathers, whose words on the subject of slavery they eagerly read. From
this source also came the chief material for their public addresses.
To the common man who was thus indoctrinated, the Chief Justice, in
describing the sentiments of the fathers respecting slavery, appeared to
be doing what Horace Greeley was wont to describe as "saying a thing and
being conscious while saying it that the thing is not true."

The Dred Scott decision laid the Republicans open to the charge of
seeking by unlawful means to deprive slaveowners of their rights, and it
was to the partizan interest of the Democrats to stand by the Court and
thus discredit their opponents. This action tended to carry the entire
Democratic party to the support of Calhoun's extreme position on the
slavery question. Republicans had proclaimed that liberty was national
and slavery municipal; that slavery had no warrant for existence except
by state enactment; that under the Constitution Congress had no more
right to make a slave than it had to make a king; that Congress had no
power to establish or permit slavery in the Territories; that it was, on
the contrary, the duty of Congress to exclude slavery. On these points
the Supreme Court and the Republican party held directly contradictory
opinions.

The Democratic platform of 1856 endorsed the doctrine of popular
s