_From his Speech on the Dred Scott Decision. Springfield, Illinois. June

26, 1857_

... And now as to the Dred Scott decision. That decision declares two

propositions,--first, that a negro cannot sue in the United States

courts; and secondly, that Congress cannot prohibit slavery in the

Territories. It was made by a divided court,--dividing differently on

the different points. Judge Douglas does not discuss the merits of the

decision, and in that respect I shall follow his example, believing I

could no more improve on McLean and Curtis than he could on Taney.

He denounces all who question the correctness of that decision, as

offering violent resistance to it. But who resists it? Who has, in spite

of the decision, declared Dred Scott free, and resisted the authority of

his master over him?

Judicial decisions have two uses: first, to absolutely determine the

case decided; and secondly, to indicate to the public how other similar

cases will be decided when they arise. For the latter use, they are

called "precedents" and "authorities."

We believe as much as Judge Douglas (perhaps more) in obedience to and

respect for the judicial department of government. We think its

decisions on constitutional questions, when fully settled, should

control not only the particular cases decided, but the general policy of

the country, subject to be disturbed only by amendments of the

Constitution, as provided in that instrument itself. More than this

would be revolution. But we think the Dred Scott decision is erroneous.

We know the court that made it has often overruled its own decisions,

and we shall do what we can to have it overrule this. We offer no

resistance to it.

Judicial decisions are of greater or less authority as precedents

according to circumstances. That this should be so, accords both with

common-sense and the customary understanding of the legal profession.

If this important decision had been made by the unanimous concurrence of

the judges, and without any apparent partisan bias, and in accordance

with legal public expectation, and with the steady practice of the

departments throughout our history, and had been in no part based on

assumed historical facts, which are not really true; or if wanting in

some of these, it had been before the court more than once, and had

there been affirmed and reaffirmed through a course of years,--it then

might be, perhaps would be factious, nay, even revolutionary, not to

acquiesce in it as a precedent.

But when, as is true, we find it wanting in all these claims to the

public confidence, it is not resistance, it is not factious, it is not

even disrespectful to treat it as not having yet quite established a

settled doctrine for the country.

I have said in substance, that the Dred Scott decision was in part based

on assumed historical facts which were not really true, and I ought not

to leave the subject without giving some reasons for saying this, I

therefore give an instance or two, which I think fully sustain me. Chief

Justice Taney, in delivering the opinion of the majority of the court,

insists at great length that negroes were no part of the people who

made, or for whom was made, the Declaration of Independence, or the

Constitution of the United States.

On the contrary, Judge Curtis, in his dissenting opinion, shows that in

five of the then thirteen States--to wit, New Hampshire, Massachusetts,

New York, New Jersey, and North Carolina--free negroes were voters, and

in proportion to their numbers had the same part in making the

Constitution that the white people had. He shows this with so much

particularity as to leave no doubt of its truth; and as a sort of

conclusion on that point, holds the following language:

"The Constitution was ordained and established by the people of the

United States, through the action, in each State, of those persons

who were qualified by its laws to act thereon in behalf of

themselves and all other citizens of the State. In some of the

States, as we have seen, coloured persons were among those

qualified by law to act on the subject. These coloured persons were

not only included in the body of 'the people of the United States'

by whom the Constitution was ordained and established; but in at

least five of the States they had the power to act, and doubtless

did act, by their suffrages, upon the question of its adoption."

Again, Chief Justice Taney says:

"It is difficult at this day to realize the state of public

opinion, in relation to that unfortunate race, which prevailed in

the civilized and enlightened portions of the world at the time of

the Declaration of Independence, and when the Constitution of the

United States was framed and adopted."

And again, after quoting from the Declaration, he says:

"The general words above quoted would seem to include the whole

human family, and if they were used in a similar instrument at this

day, would be so understood."

In these the Chief Justice does not directly assert, but plainly assumes

as a fact, that the public estimate of the black man is more favourable

now than it was in the days of the Revolution. This assumption is a

mistake. In some trifling particulars the condition of that race has

been ameliorated; but as a whole, in this country, the change between

then and now is decidedly the other way; and their ultimate destiny has

never appeared so hopeless as in the last three or four years. In two

of the five States--New Jersey and North Carolina--that then gave the

free negro the right of voting, the right has since been taken away; and

in a third--New York--it has been greatly abridged: while it has not

been extended, so far as I know, to a single additional State, though

the number of the States has more than doubled. In those days, as I

understand, masters could, at their own pleasure, emancipate their

slaves; but since then such legal restraints have been made upon

emancipation as to amount almost to prohibition. In those days

legislatures held the unquestioned power to abolish slavery in their

respective States; but now it is becoming quite fashionable for State

constitutions to withhold that power from the legislatures. In those

days, by common consent, the spread of the black man's bondage to the

new countries was prohibited; but now Congress decides that it will not

continue the prohibition, and the Supreme Court decides that it could

not if it would. In those days our Declaration of Independence was held

sacred by all, and thought to include all; but now, to aid in making the

bondage of the negro universal and eternal, it is assailed and sneered

at, and construed, and hawked at, and torn, till, if its framers could

rise from their graves, they could not at all recognize it. All the

powers of earth seem rapidly combining against him. Mammon is after him;

ambition follows, philosophy follows, and the theology of the day is

fast joining in the cry. They have him in his prison-house; they have

searched his person, and left no prying instrument with him. One after

another they have closed the heavy iron doors upon him; and now they

have him, as it were, bolted in with a lock of a hundred keys, which can

never be unlocked without the concurrence of every key; the keys in the

hands of a hundred different men, and they scattered to a hundred

different and distant places; and they stand musing as to what

invention, in all the dominions of mind and matter, can be produced to

make the impossibility of escape more complete than it is. It is

grossly incorrect to say or assume that the public estimate of the negro

is more favourable now than it was at the origin of the government.

... There is a natural disgust in the minds of nearly all white people

at the idea of an indiscriminate amalgamation of the white and black

races; and Judge Douglas evidently is basing his chief hope upon the

chances of his being able to appropriate the benefit of this disgust to

himself. If he can, by much drumming and repeating, fasten the odium of

that idea upon his adversaries, he thinks he can struggle through the

storm. He therefore clings to this hope as a drowning man to the last

plank. He makes an occasion for lugging it in from the opposition to the

Dred Scott decision. He finds the Republicans insisting that the

Declaration of Independence includes _all_ men, black as well as white;

and forthwith he boldly denies that it includes negroes at all, and

proceeds to argue gravely that all who contend it does, do so only

because they want to vote, and eat, and sleep, and marry with negroes!

He will have it that they cannot be consistent else. Now I protest

against the counterfeit logic which concludes that because I do not want

a black woman for a slave, I must necessarily want her for a wife. I

need not have her for either. I can just leave her alone. In some

respects she certainly is not my equal; but in her natural right to eat

the bread she earns with her own hands without asking leave of any one

else, she is my equal, and the equal of all others.

Chief Justice Taney, in his opinion in the Dred Scott case, admits that

the language of the Declaration is broad enough to include the whole

human family; but he and Judge Douglas argue that the authors of that

instrument did not intend to include negroes, by the fact that they did

not at once actually place them on an equality with the whites. Now this

grave argument comes to just nothing at all, by the other fact that they

did not at once, nor ever afterward, actually place all white people on

an equality with one another. And this is the staple argument of both

the Chief Justice and the senator, for doing this obvious violence to

the plain, unmistakable language of the Declaration.

I think the authors of that notable instrument intended to include _all_

men, but they did not intend to declare all men equal _in all respects_.

They did not mean to say that all were equal in colour, size, intellect,

moral developments, or social capacity. They defined with tolerable

distinctness in what respects they did consider all men created

equal,--equal with "certain inalienable rights, among which are life,

liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." This they said, and this they

meant. They did not mean to assert the obvious untruth that all were

then actually enjoying that equality, nor yet that they were about to

confer it immediately upon them. In fact, they had no power to confer

such a boon. They meant simply to declare the right, so that the

enforcement of it might follow as fast as circumstances should permit.

They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society, which should be

familiar to all and revered by all,--constantly looked to, constantly

laboured for, and, even though never perfectly attained, constantly

approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its

influence, and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people

of all colours everywhere. The assertion that "all men are created

equal," was of no practical use in effecting our separation from Great

Britain; and it was placed in the Declaration, not for that, but for

future use. Its authors meant it to be as, thank God, it is now proving

itself, a stumbling-block to all those who in after times might seek to

turn a free people back into the hateful paths of despotism. They knew

the proneness of prosperity to breed tyrants, and they meant, when such

should reappear in this fair land and commence their vocation, that they

should find left for them at least one hard nut to crack.

I have now briefly expressed my view of the meaning and object of that

part of the Declaration of Independence which declares that all men are

created equal. Now let us hear Judge Douglas's view of the same

subject, as I find it in the printed report of his late speech. Here it

is:

"No man can vindicate the character, motives and conduct of the

signers of the Declaration of Independence except upon the

hypothesis that they referred to the white race alone, and not to

the African, when they declared all men to have been created equal;

that they were speaking of British subjects on this continent being

equal to British subjects born and residing in Great Britain; that

they were entitled to the same inalienable rights, and among them

were enumerated life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The

Declaration was adopted for the purpose of justifying the colonists

in the eyes of the civilized world in withdrawing their allegiance

from the British crown, and dissolving their connection with the

mother-country."

My good friends, read that carefully over some leisure hour, and ponder

well upon it; see what a mere wreck and mangled ruin Judge Douglas makes

of our once glorious Declaration. He says "they were speaking of British

subjects on this continent being equal to British subjects born and

residing in Great Britain!" Why, according to this, not only negroes but

white people outside of Great Britain and America were not spoken of in

that instrument. The English, Irish, and Scotch, along with white

Americans, were included, to be sure; but the French, Germans, and other

white people of the world are all gone to pot along with the Judge's

inferior races!

I had thought that the Declaration promised something better than the

condition of British subjects; but no, it only meant that we should be

equal to them in their own oppressed and unequal condition. According to

that, it gave no promise that, having kicked off the king and lords of

Great Britain, we should not at once be saddled with a king and lords of

our own.

I had thought the Declaration contemplated the progressive improvement

in the condition of all men, everywhere; but no, it merely "was adopted

for the purpose of justifying the colonists in the eyes of the

civilized world in withdrawing their allegiance from the British crown,

and dissolving their connection with the mother-country." Why, that

object having been effected some eighty years ago, the Declaration is of

no practical use now--mere rubbish--old wadding, left to rot on the

battle-field after the victory is won.

I understand you are preparing to celebrate the "Fourth," to-morrow

week. What for? The doings of that day had no reference to the present;

and quite half of you are not even descendants of those who were

referred to at that day. But I suppose you will celebrate, and will even

go so far as to read the Declaration. Suppose, after you read it once in

the old-fashioned way, you read it once more with Judge Douglas's

version. It will then run thus: "We told these truths to be

self-evident, that all British subjects who were on this continent

eighty-one years ago, were created equal to all British subjects born

and then residing in Great Britain!"

... The very Dred Scott case affords a strong test as to which party

most favours amalgamation, the Republicans or the dear Union-saving

Democracy. Dred Scott, his wife and two daughters, were all involved in

the suit. We desired the court to have held that they were citizens, so

far at least as to entitle them to a hearing as to whether they were

free or not; and then also, that they were in fact and in law really

free. Could we have had our way, the chances of these black girls ever

mixing their blood with that of white people would have been diminished

at least to the extent that it could not have been without their

consent. But Judge Douglas is delighted to have them decided to be

slaves, and not human enough to have a hearing, even if they were free,

and thus left subject to the forced concubinage of their masters, and

liable to become the mothers of mulattoes in spite of themselves,--the

very state of the case that produces nine-tenths of all the mulattoes,

all the mixing of the blood of the nation.