the court. They decide in this case that Dred Scott is a slave. Nobody
resists that, not only that, but they say to everybody else that persons
standing just as Dred Scott stands are as he is. That is, they say that
when a question comes up upon another person, it will be so decided again,
unless the court decides in another way, unless the court overrules its
decision. Well, we mean to do what we can to have the court decide the
other way. That is one thing we mean to try to do.

The sacredness that Judge Douglas throws around this decision is a degree
of sacredness that has never been before thrown around any other decision.
I have never heard of such a thing. Why, decisions apparently contrary
to that decision, or that good lawyers thought were contrary to that
decision, have been made by that very court before. It is the first of
its kind; it is an astonisher in legal history. It is a new wonder of the
world. It is based upon falsehood in the main as to the facts; allegations
of facts upon which it stands are not facts at all in many instances, and
no decision made on any question--the first instance of a decision made
under so many unfavorable circumstances--thus placed, has ever been held
by the profession as law, and it has always needed confirmation before the
lawyers regarded it as settled law. But Judge Douglas will have it
that all hands must take this extraordinary decision, made under these
extraordinary circumstances, and give their vote in Congress in accordance
with it, yield to it, and obey it in every possible sense. Circumstances
alter cases. Do not gentlemen here remember the case of that same Supreme
Court some twenty-five or thirty years ago deciding that a National Bank
was constitutional? I ask, if somebody does not remember that a National
Bank was declared to be constitutional? Such is the truth, whether it be
remembered or not. The Bank charter ran out, and a recharter was granted
by Congress. That recharter was laid before General Jackson. It was urged
upon him, when he denied the constitutionality of the Bank, that the
Supreme Court had decided that it was constitutional; and General Jackson
then said that the Supreme Court had no right to lay down a rule to govern
a coordinate branch of the government, the members of which had sworn
to support the Constitution; that each member had sworn to support that
Constitution as he understood it. I will venture here to say that I have
heard Judge Doug