r from Vermont himself
has given; take his very case of the Delaware owner of a horse riding
him across the line into Pennsylvania. The Senator says: "Now, you
see that slaves are not property like other property; if slaves were
property like other property, why have you this special clause in your
Constitution to protect a slave? You have no clause to protect the
horse, because horses are recognized as property everywhere." Mr.
President, the same fallacy lurks at the bottom of this argument, as of
all the rest. Let Pennsylvania exercise her undoubted jurisdiction over
persons and things within her own boundary; let her do as she has
a perfect right to do--declare that hereafter, within the State of
Pennsylvania, there shall be no property in horses, and that no man
shall maintain a suit in her courts for the recovery of property in a
horse; and where will your horse-owner be then? Just where the English
poet is now; just where the slaveholder and the inventor would be if the
Constitution, foreseeing a difference of opinion in relation to rights
in these subject-matters, had not provided the remedy in relation to
such property as might easily be plundered. Slaves, if you please, are
not property like other property in this: that you can easily rob us of
them; but as to the right in them, that man has to overthrow the
whole history of the world, he has to overthrow every treatise on
jurisprudence, he has to ignore the common sentiment of mankind, he has
to repudiate the authority of all that is considered sacred with man,
ere he can reach the conclusion that the person who owns a slave, in
a country where slavery has been established for ages, has no other
property in that slave than the mere title which is given by the statute
law of the land where it is found. * * *

ABRAHAM LINCOLN,

OF ILLINOIS. (BORN 1809, DIED 1865.)

ON THE DRED SCOTT DECISION,

SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, JUNE 26, 1857.

And now as to the Dred Scott decision. That decision declares two
propositions--first, that a negro cannot sue in the United States
courts; and secondly, that Congress cannot prohibit slavery in the
Territories. It was made by a divided court--dividing differently on
the different points. Judge Douglas does not discuss the merits of the
decision, and in that respect I shall follow his example, believing I
could no more improve on McLean and Curtis than he could on Taney.

He denounces all who question the correctness o