air field, under an impartial
administration;" and on this theory, if on any, the contest might have
been left to the decision of time.

The South started back in appalment from its victory, for it knew that
a fair competition foreboded its defeat. But where could it now find an
ally to save it from its own mistake? What I have next to say is spoken
with no emotion but regret. Our meeting to-day is, as it were, at the
grave, in the presence of eternity, and the truth must be uttered in
soberness and sincerity. In a great republic, as was observed more than
two thousand years ago, any attempt to overturn the state owes its
strength to aid from some branch of the government. The Chief Justice
of the United States, without any necessity or occasion, volunteered to
come to the rescue of the theory of slavery; and from his court there
lay no appeal but to the bar of humanity and history. Against the
Constitution, against the memory of the nation, against a previous
decision, against a series of enactments, he decided that the slave is
property; that slave property is entitled to no less protection than
any other property; that the Constitution upholds it in every Territory
against any act of a local legislature, and even against Congress
itself; or, as the President for that term tersely promulgated the
saying, "Kansas is as much a slave State as South Carolina or Georgia;
slavery, by virtue of the Constitution, exists in every Territory." The
municipal character of slavery being thus taken away, and slave
property decreed to be "sacred," the authority of the courts was
invoked to introduce it by the comity of law into States where slavery
had been abolished, and in one of the courts of the United States a
judge pronounced the African slave-trade legitimate, and numerous and
powerful advocates demanded its restoration.

Moreover, the Chief Justice, in his elaborate opinion, announced what
had never been heard from any magistrate of Greece or Rome; what was
unknown to civil law, and canon law, and feudal law, and common law,
and constitutional law; unknown to Jay, to Rutledge, Ellsworth, and
Marshall--that there are "slave races." The spirit of evil is intensely
logical. Having the authority of this decision, five States swiftly
followed the earlier example of a sixth, and opened the way for
reducing the free negro to bondage; the migrating free negro became a
slave if he but entered within the jurisdiction of a seventh; and