overeignty as embodied in the Kansas-Nebraska legislation, which
implied that Congress should neither prohibit nor introduce slavery into
the Territories, but should leave the inhabitants free to decide that
question for themselves, the public domains being open to slaveowners
on equal terms with others. But once they had an organized territorial
Government and a duly elected territorial Legislature, the residents of
a Territory were empowered to choose either slave labor or exclusively
free labor. This at least was the view expounded by Stephen A. Douglas,
though the theory was apparently rendered untenable by the ruling of the
Court which extended protection to slave-owners in all the Territories
remaining under the control of the general Government. It followed that
if Congress had no power to interfere with that right, much less had a
local territorial Government, which is itself a creature of Congress.
A state Government alone might control the status of slave property. A
Territory when adopting a constitution preparatory to becoming a State
would find it then in order to decide whether the proposed State should
be free or slave. This was the view held by Jefferson Davis and the
extreme pro-slavery leaders. Aided by the authority of the Supreme
Court, they were prepared to insist upon a new plank in future
Democratic platforms which should guarantee to all slave-owners equal
rights in all Territories until they ceased to be Territories. Over this
issue the party again divided in 1860.

Republicans naturally imagined that there had been collusion between
Democratic politicians and members of the Supreme Court. Mr. Seward
made an explicit statement to that effect, and affirmed that President
Buchanan was admitted into the secret, alleging as proof a few words in
his inaugural address referring to the decision soon to be delivered.
Nothing of the sort, however, was ever proven. The historian Von Holst
presents the view that there had been a most elaborate and comprehensive
program on the part of the slavocracy to control the judiciary of the
federal Government. The actual facts, however, admit of a simpler and
more satisfactory explanation.

Judges are affected by their environment, as are other men. The
transition from the view that slavery was an evil to the view that it
is right and just did not come in ways open to general observation, and
probably few individuals were conscious of having altered their views.
Lea