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,
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, wither 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 afterward 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 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 workmen, Stephen, Franklin, Roger, and James, for instance, and
when we see these timbers joined together, and see they exactly make the
frame of