"
His position, as stated by himself, was, substantially that the
Lecompton Pro-Slavery Constitution was a fraud upon the people of
Kansas, in that it did not embody the will of that people; and he denied
the right of Congress to force a Constitution upon an unwilling people
--without regard, on his part, to whether that Constitution allowed or
prohibited Slavery or any other thing, whether good or bad. He held
that the people themselves were the sole judges of whether it is good or
bad, and whether desirable or not.
The Supreme Court of the United States had in the meantime made a
decision in a case afterward known as the "Dred Scott case," which was
held back until after the Presidential election of 1856 had taken place,
and added fuel to the political fire already raging. Dred Scott was a
Negro Slave. His owner voluntarily took him first into a Free State,
and afterward into a Territory which came within the Congressional
prohibitive legislation aforesaid. That decision in brief was
substantially that no Negro Slave imported from Africa, nor his
descendant, can be a citizen of any State within the meaning of the
Constitution; that neither the Congress nor any Territorial Legislature
has under the Constitution of the United States, the power to exclude
Slavery from any Territory of the United States; and that it is for the
State Courts of the Slave State, into which the negro has been conveyed
by his master, and not for the United States Courts, to decide whether
that Negro, having been held to actual Slavery in a Free State, has, by
virtue of residence in such State, himself become Free.
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