ourt, as also many other things, which are of no authority.
Nothing that has been said by them, which has not a direct bearing on
the jurisdiction of the court, against which they decided, can be
considered as authority. I shall certainly not regard it as such. The
question of jurisdiction, being before the court, was decided by them
authoritatively, but nothing beyond that question. A slave is not a
mere chattel. He bears the impress of his Maker, and is amenable to
the laws of God and man; and he is destined to an endless existence.

Under this head I shall chiefly rely on the decisions of the Supreme
Courts of the Southern States, and especially of the State of
Missouri.

In the first and second sections of the sixth article of the
Constitution of Illinois, it is declared that neither slavery nor
involuntary servitude shall hereafter be introduced into this State,
otherwise than for the punishment of crimes whereof the party shall
have been duly convicted; and in the second section it is declared
that any violation of this article shall effect the emancipation of
such person from his obligation to service. In Illinois, a right of
transit through the State is given the master with his slaves. This is
a matter which, as I suppose, belongs exclusively to the State.

The Supreme Court of Illinois, in the case of Jarrot _v._ Jarrot, (2
Gilmer, 7,) said:

"After the conquest of this Territory by Virginia, she ceded it to the
United States, and stipulated that the titles and possessions, rights
and liberties, of the French settlers, should be guarantied to them.
This, it has been contended, secured them in the possession of those
negroes as slaves which they held before that time, and that neither
Congress nor the Convention had power to deprive them of it; or, in
other words, that the ordinance and Constitution should not be so
interpreted and understood as applying to such slaves, when it is
therein declared that there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary
servitude in the Northwest Territory, nor in the State of Illinois,
otherwise than in the punishment of crimes. But it was held that those
rights could not be thus protected, but must yield to the ordinance
and Constitution."

The first slave case decided by the Supreme Court of Missouri,
contained in the reports, was Winny _v._ Whitesides, (1 Missouri Rep.,
473,) at October term, 1824. It appeared that, more than twenty-five
years before, the defendant, with h