to afterwards 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 favour 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 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
(Douglas, Pierce, Taney, Buchanan),--and when we see those 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 many 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