s
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 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,
at least Northern 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 to come in afterward, 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 re-argument? Why the incoming President's advance exhortation
in favor 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 exact 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
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