ection with Senator
Douglas's "care not" policy, constitute the piece of machinery in its
present state of advancement. This was the third point gained. The
working points of that machinery are:
_First._ That no negro slave, imported as such from Africa, and no
descendant of such slave, can ever be a citizen of any State, in the
sense of that term as used in the Constitution of the United States.
This point is made in order to deprive the negro, in every possible
event, of the benefit of that provision of the United States
Constitution which declares that "citizens of each State shall be
entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several
States."
_Secondly._ That "subject to the Constitution of the United States,"
neither Congress nor a territorial legislature can exclude slavery from
any United States Territory. This point is made in order that individual
men may fill up the Territories with slaves, without danger of losing
them as property, and thus enhance the chances of permanency to the
institution through all the future.
_Thirdly._ That whether the holding a negro in actual slavery in a free
State makes him free as against the holder, the United States Courts
will not decide, but will leave to be decided by the courts of any slave
State the negro may be forced into by the master. This point is made,
not to be pressed immediately; but if acquiesced in for a while, and
apparently indorsed by the people at an election, then to sustain the
logical conclusion that what Dred Scott's master might lawfully do 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
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
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