e; and who say
to all men: "Look ye now, how holy, how pure we are; you are polluted by
the touch of slavery; we are free from it."

* * * * *

Now, sir, because the Supreme Court of the United States says--what
is patent to every man who reads the Constitution of the United
States--that it does guaranty property in slaves,it has been attacked
with vituperation here, on this floor, by Senators on all sides. Some
have abstained from any indecent, insulting remarks in relation to the
Court. Some have confined themselves to calm and legitimate argument. To
them I am about to reply. To the others, I shall have something to say a
little later. What says the Senator from Maine (Mr. Fessenden)? He says:

"Had the result of that election been otherwise, and had not the
(Democratic) party triumphed on the dogma which they had thus
introduced, we should never have heard of a doctrine so utterly at
variance with all truth; so utterly destitute of all legal logic; so
founded on error, and unsupported by anything like argument, as is the
opinion of the Supreme Court."

He says, further:

"I should like, if I had time, to attempt to demonstrate the fallacy
of that opinion. I have examined the view of the Supreme Court of the
United States on the question of the power of the Constitution to carry
slavery into free territory belonging to the United States, and I tell
you that I believe any tolerably respectable lawyer in the United States
can show, beyond all question, to any fair and unprejudiced mind, that
the decision has nothing to stand upon except assumption, and bad logic
from the assumptions made. The main proposition on which that decision
is founded, the corner-stone of it, without which it is nothing, without
which it fails entirely to satisfy the mind of any man, is this: that
the Constitution of the United States recognizes property in slaves,
and protects it as such. I deny it. It neither recognizes slaves as
property, nor does it protect slaves as property."

The Senator here, you see, says that the whole decision is based on
that assumption, which is false. He says that the Constitution does
not recognize slaves as property, nor protect them as property, and his
reasoning, a little further on, is somewhat curious. He says:

"On what do they found the assertion that the Constitution recognizes
slavery as property? On the provision of the Constitution by which
Congress is prohibited from passi