On March 6, 1857 the U.S. Supreme Court issued its infamous Dred Scott decision, which legitimized the institution of slavery. Within days the baiduhai printed the full text of the opinion and dissenting opinions, and published this editorial.
Is Illinois a free state? She was one up to March 6, 1857. On that day the five slaveholders and one doughface of the United States Supreme Court, constituting a majority of the National Tribunal, solemnly decided:
First–that black men, whose ancestors came from Africa, were not and could not be citizens of the United States.
Second–that black men had no rights which white men were bound to respect.
Third–that black men, whose ancestors were brought to this country as slaves, are property, exactly the same as oxen or sheep.
Fourth–that the Constitution of the United States recognizes slaves as property, and makes no difference whatever between them and horses, wagons, and any other kind of property.
From these premises the court laid down the law that a slaveholder has the same right to take and hold slaves in any territory, that he has to take and hold horses; and that he cannot be deprived of the right to hold slaves in the territories, any more than of the right to hold his horses and farming utensils.
We may reply that it is a bad law; that it is a false interpretation of the Constitution; that it does not represent the judicial or legal opinion of the nation. So have Judges McLean and Curtis replied; but the five slaveholders and doughface have overruled their opinion, as well as every other man’s, and settled the law. It is the final action of the National Judiciary, established by the founders of the Republic, to interpret the Constitution.
The court has only applied its decision to the territories, but if the new doctrine applies to territories it must apply with equal force to the states. No state has the constitutional or legal right to prevent the citizens of another state from bringing their horses, cows or furniture within its jurisdiction, and having brought them from holding or using them; and it is by virtue of the Constitution, that the emigrant from one state into another possesses these rights of property. Now, if the Constitution of the United States recognizes slaves as property, differing in no respect, as the Supreme Court declares, from any other property, then no state court, legislature or state constitution can deprive the owner of such slave property of the full use and enjoyment of it in any state, into which he may see proper to emigrate with his Negroes.
Under this decision, (Stephen)Douglas may bring his plantation Negroes, in North Carolina and Mississippi, into Illinois, and set them to farming his lands in this state, with the editor of the Chicago Times for his overseer, and no law of the state of Illinois can interfere to prevent him. We really can see nothing in the law, as interpreted by Taney & Co., to prevent opening a slave pen and an auction block for the sale of black men, women and children, right here in Chicago. And if there is any doubt on the subject, the forthcoming decision on the Lemmon case will remove it. Slavery is now national. Freedom has no local habitation nor abiding place, save in the hearts of Freemen. Illinois, in law, has ceased to be a free state!
The Lemmon case: In 1852, Jonathan and Juliet Lemmon, Virginians, took eight slaves with them to New York to await a ship bound for Texas where the Lemmons intended to settle. In a habeas corpus proceeding, the slaves were declared to be free. There was great indignation in the South and the attorney general of Virginia was authorized by his state’s legislature to intervene in the appeal. He, of course, argued that the Dred Scott precedent was binding. A decision upholding the lower court was handed down, however, in December, 1857, seven months after the editorial appeared. A second appeal, this time to New York’s highest court, was decided in 1860 and was also favorables to the Negroes.