a house or a mill, all the tenons and mortises 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 relation to the Constitution therefore treated as
being precisely the same? While the opinion of the court, by Chief Justice
Taney, in the Dred Scott case, and the separate opinions of all the
concurring Judges, expressly declare that the Constitution of the United
States neither permits Congress nor a Territorial Legislature to exclude
slavery from any United States Territory, they all omit to declare whether
or not the same Constitution permits a State, or the people of a State, to
exclude it. Possibly, this is a mere omission; but who can be quite sure,
if McLean or Curtis had sought to get into the opinion a declaration of
unlimited power in the people of a State to exclude slavery from their
limits, just as Chase and Mace sought to get such declaration, in behalf
of the people of a Territory, into the Nebraska Bill,--I ask, who can be
quite sure that it would not have been voted down in the one case as it
had been in the other? The nearest approach to the point of declaring the
power of a State over slavery is made by Judge Nelson. He approaches it
more than once, Using the precise idea, and almost the language, too, of
the Nebraska Act. On one occasion, his exact language is, "Except in cases
where the power is restrained by the Constitution of the United States,
the law of the State is supreme over the subject of slavery wi