Dred Scott v. Sandford Quotes

The conspiracy is nearly completed. The Legislation of the Republic is in the hands of this handful of Slaveholders. The United States Senate assures it to them. The Executive power of the Government is theirs. Buchanan took the oath of fealty to them on the steps of the Capitol last Wednesday. The body which gives the supreme law of the land, has just acceded to their demands, and dared to declare that under the charter of the Nation, men of African descent are not citizens of the United States and can not be -- that the Ordinance of 1787 was void -- that human Slavery is not a local thing, but pursues its victims to free soil, clings to them wherever they go, and returns with them -- that the American Congress has no power to prevent the enslavement of men in the National Territories -- that the inhabitants themselves of the Territories have no power to exclude human bondage from their midst -- and that men of color can not be suitors for justice in the Courts of the United States!

The Supreme Court of the United States, in a recent case, has, by a decision of seven to two of the Judges, established as law what our Southern statesmen have been repeating daily for many years on the floors of Congress, that the whole action of this Government on the subject of slavery, for more than a quarter of a century, from the initiation of the Missouri Restriction in 1822, to the California Compromise in 1850, has been all beyond the limits of the Constitution; was without justifiable authority; and that the whole mass should be now proclaimed null and void, and that slavery is guaranteed by the constitutional compact.

The supreme court of the United States, the highest and most dignified tribunal in any civilized country, and composed of the very first order of talent in the world, and to whose decisions it is an honor to bow with respectful deference, have had the darling bantling of black republicanism under consideration, and announce it illegitimate. They say it is the offspring of red hot abolitionism, and cannot be acknowledged as having anything honest or upright about it. Thus it is thrown upon the hands of the black republicans who are compelled to provide for it.

The nation has achieved a triumph, sectionalism has been rebuked, and abolitionism has been staggered and stunned. Another supporting pillar has been added to our institutions; the assailants of the South and enemies of the Union have been driven from their point d'appui; a patriotic principle has been pronounced; a great, national, conservative, union saving sentiment has been proclaimed

Five of its nine silk gowns are worn by Slaveholders. More than half its long Bench is filled with Slaveholders. Its Chief Justice is a Slaveholder. The Free States with double the population of the Slave State, do not have half the Judges. The majority represent a minority of 350,000. The minority represent a majority of twenty Millions!

They (negroes) had for more than a century before the Declaration of Independence been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit. He was bought and sold and treated as an ordinary article of merchandise and traffic whenever a profit could be made by it.

Judge Taney requests the American people to believe that the framers of the Constitution did not know their own minds. For the same Statesmen who drew up the Constitution, (which he says forbids Congress to prohibit Slavery in the Territories,) adopted the Ordinance of '87, which prohibited it in all the Territories we then had. The Ordinance was passed in July, 1787 -- the Constitution was framed in September of the same year. The same States and the same men ratified both. And one of the first acts of the first Congress under the Constitution was to reaffirm the Ordinance, and to again prohibit Slavery! Which are the best interpreters of the Constitution, the opinions of Mr. Chief Justice Taney, or the ACTS of Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, Monroe, Adams, and Washington?

a majority of those congregated in any Washington bar room.

There is no appeal this side of Heaven.

It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of the recent decision of the Supreme Court. The grounds and methods of that decision we have exposed elsewhere; and we now turn from them to contemplate the great fact which it establishes -- the fact that Slavery is National; and that, until that remote period when different Judges, sitting in this same Court, shall reverse this wicked and false judgment, the Constitution of the United States is nothing better than the bulwark of inhumanity and oppression.

Judge Taney can do many things, but he cannot…change the essential nature of things—making evil good, and good, evil.

The constitution is the supreme law; the Supreme Court is the authorized interpreter of the constitution; the construction which that tribunal puts upon that instrument is, for all practical purposes, the constitution itself, and therefore their decision must be fully and freely acquiesced in by all good citizens. That decision is now the supreme law of the land; it is practically the constitution itself, being the meaning and intent of that instrument as officially interpreted and declared by the tribunal authorized to interpret it, and from whose decision there is no appeal. Resistance to that decision is, therefore, resistance to the constitution -- to the government -- to the Union itself. It cannot be made legally rightfully, peacefully, or with the least chance or hope of success. That decision must be carried into effect -- that interpretation must be acquiesced in and acted upon, or else it must be resisted by force. There is no other alternative. It is the law, the constitution, and will be respected and acted upon by the constituted authorities, no matter to what party they belong nor what their private views may be in regard to it. It cannot be evaded; if Congress and the President should undertake to resist it, the effort would be futile. In a word, we repeat, nothing but force, open rebellion, can successfully oppose the practical application and enforcement of the decision of the court in this case.

The importance of this decision in the highest legal tribunal established under our Federal Constitution is a sufficient reason for devoting to it so much of the space in our columns. The questions upon which these opinions have been rendered are among those which have shaken our Union from centre to circumference, and threatened imminently its dissolution. The points adjudicated are more strictly political than legal, and affect materially the status of political parties throughout the confederacy…. The importance of the decision is greatly enhanced by its immediate effect upon two of the great political parties of the country. At a single blow it shatters and destroys the platform of the Republican party. It annihilates the issue which was made paramount in the recent Presidential election, and takes away from the Democratic party all the advantages of its advocacy of popular sovereignty in the Territories. It leaves both of these great parties all abroad, without a single plank of their late platforms upon which to rest.

We do not know how other persons may feel in view of the recent dicta of the Supreme Court in the case of Dred Scott … but it appears to us that the almost diabolical spirit it evinces in going out of the way to Freedom at the expense of Slavery, ought to be sufficient to arouse to indignation the coolest and most torpid of northern men. The decision is a fitting crown to the aborted tyranny which has just submerged with Pierce; an iron clasp, well forged to link the dead with the living administration. It comes pat upon the recent inaugural, "rounds and caps it to the tyrant's eye" and just fills up the cup of inequity.