JUDGE CURTIS ON NEGRO CITIZENSHIP. 263 the right of Dred Scott to bring this right of each slaveholder to remove action, as follows: "Second. That, as free colored persons, born within some of the States, are citizens of those States, such persons are also citi zens of the United States. "Third. That every such citizen, residing in any State, has a right to sue, and is liable to be sued, in the Federal Courts, as a citizen of that State in which he resides. "Fourth. That, as the plea to the jurisdiction in this case shows no facts except that the plaintiff was of African descent, and that his ancestors were sold as slaves, and as these facts are not inconsistent with his with his slaves into any territory of the United States, and there retain and control them under the ægis of the Federal Constitution. He shows, further, that the majority erred in upholding a majority of the Supreme Court of Missouri in overruling their own Chief Justice and their own former decisions, whereby it had been established, in accordance with kindred decisions in Louisiana, as in other Slave States, that a slave taken by his master, or removed with his assent, to a Free State, or to any country wherein Slavery is prohibit citizenship of the United States and his residence in the State of Missouri, the plea to the jurisdiction was bad, and the judged, becomes thereby a freeman, and ment of the Circuit Court overruling it was correct. "I dissent, therefore, from that part of the opinion of the majority of the court in which it is held that a person of African descent cannot be a citizen of the United States; and I regret I must go further, and dissent both from what I deem their assumption of authority to examine the constitutionality of the act of Congress commonly called the Missouri Compromise act, and the grounds and conclusions announced in their opinion. "Having first decided that they were bound to consider the sufficiency of the plea to the jurisdiction of the Circuit Court, and having decided that this plea showed that the Circuit Court had not jurisdiction, and consequently that this is a case to which the judicial power of the United States does not extend, they have gone on to examine the merits of the case as they appeared on the trial before the court and jury, on the issues joined on the pleas in bar, and so have reached the question of the power of Congress to pass the act of 1820. On so grave a subject as this, I feel obliged to say that, in my opinion, such an exertion of judicial power transcends the limits of the authority of the Court, as described by its repeated decisions, and, as I understand, acknowledged in this opinion of the majority of the Court." Mr. Curtis proceeds to confute at length, and with decided ability, the doctrines of the majority, affirming the invalidity of the Missouri Restriction, and asserting the paramount cannot be returned or reduced again to Slavery. It cannot, however, be necessary to quote further on this head. He concludes: "For these reasons, I am of the opinion that so much of the several acts of Congress tude within that part of the Territory of as prohibited Slavery and involuntary serviMissouri lying north of thirty-six degrees thirty minutes north latitude, and west of the river Mississippi, were constitutional and valid laws. "In my opinion, the judgment of the Circuit Court should be reversed, and the cause remanded for a new trial." The majority of the Justices composing the Supreme Court, after deciding that Dred Scott had no standing in that Court, and that the case was, therefore, entirely beyond, or outside of, its jurisdiction, had proceeded to take and make jurisdiction, for the purpose of ousting Congress and the people from all right or power to exclude Slavery from the Federal Territories, organized or unorganized. Congress had repeatedly, and from the very origin of the Gov ernment, legislated on this subject, and to this end. The Supreme Court now interposes, in a case wherein it proclaims itself devoid of jurisdiction, and denies the validity of such legislation. The people are treated as inclining to usurp the power of excluding human bondage from their territorial possessions; so the Court decides that they have no rights in the premises, no power to act on the question. If twenty millions of freemen were unanimously and earnestly to insist that Freedom should be the law of their common territories, while but one slaveholder should claim the privilege of taking his slaves to and holding them in said territories, the claim of this one slaveholder, according to the Court, would override and defeat, conclusively, the earnest demands of those twenty millions of freemen. The war upon the Missouri Restriction, and against Slavery Inhibition in the Territories generally, had been commenced and prosecuted under the banner of "Popular Sovereignty;" and it was to this complexion it had come at last; and it was of this judgment, just about to be proclaimed to an astounded people, that Mr. Buchanan, in his Inaugural aforesaid, says: "The whole territorial question being thus settled upon the principle of Popular Sovereignty-a principle as ancient as free government itself-everything of a practical nature has been decided. No other question remains for adjustment; because all agree that, under the Constitution, Slavery in the States is beyond the reach of any human power, except that of the respective States themselves wherein it exists. May we not, then, hope that the long agitation on this subject is approaching its end, and that the geographical parties to which it has given birth, so much dreaded by the father of his country, will speedily become extinct?" ! XIX. OUR FOREIGN POLICY-CUBA. THE foundations of our foreign | To Washington and his eminent policy were firmly and strongly laid during the Presidency, and under the councils, of Washington. To mind our own business, and leave other nations to manage their affairs, and to preserve, recast, or modify their respective governments, as to them shall seem fit and advantageous -to regard the rule actually established and operative in any nation as the rightful government of that nation, however widely divergent it may be from our own notions of what is wisest and most beneficent: such are its great cardinal principles. compatriots in our Revolutionary struggle, and in the framing of our Federal Union, is the credit justly due of having originated and firmly upheld this policy, in defiance of popular passion, and under circumstances of great difficulty and embarrassment. But Jefferson, Madison, George Clinton, Gerry, and their associate founders of the Republican party, very generally yielded to this policy a tacit, if not positive and emphatic, approval. The mob of the seaboard cities, who shouted beneath the windows of Citizen Genet, OUR EARLY FOREIGN POLICY-FRANCE. 265 burned Jay's treaty in the streets, ing a strict neutrality between revoand clamored violently for alliance lutionary France and the banded with revolutionary France and war despots who assailed her, they did upon Tory England, were, of course, not entirely escape the imputation of anti-Federal; and their voices and ingratitude, if not positive bad faith. votes helped to strengthen the Re- Our country was deeply indebted to publican opposition in Congress, and France for the generous and vitally to swell the steadily-growing host important assistance received from that, in due time, ousted the Federal- her in our Revolutionary struggle; ists from power, by electing Mr. Jef- and, although France was not-as ferson to the Presidency. nations, like individuals, seldom are But Mr. Jefferson himself never-entirely disinterested in rendering shared in the blind passions by which that assistance, the advantage accruhe so largely profited. An earnest ing to and the obligation incurred by and unchanging devotee of cheap, us were scarcely lessened by that consimple, and frugal government, he sideration. When barely two of our profoundly realized that wars were seven years' arduous struggle had costly, and alliances perilous; and, passed, Louis XVI. decided to acwhile he hated the British Govern- knowledge our independence; and ment as embodying whatever was, at his minister soon after united with the same time, most pernicious to our envoys in a treaty of alliance, our country, and most seductive to whereof the preponderance of beneher wealthy and commercial classes, fits was very greatly on our side. he never, after our independence And among the stipulations of that was achieved, was eager to tempt treaty-a treaty whereby we profited again the desperate chances, the cer- too much in the general to be fastiditain devastations and enduring bur- ous as to the particulars—was the dens, of war with Great Britain. following: Before the close of his Presidency,' the popular feeling would have fully justified and sustained him in declaring war, but he wisely forbore; and it was only after the strong infusion young blood into the councils of the Republican party, through the election of Messrs. Clay, Grundy, Calhoun, John Holmes, etc., to Congress, that the hesitation of the cautious and philosophic Madison was overborne by their impetuosity, and war actually proclaimed. of When Washington and his advisers definitively resolved on preserv 'On the occasion of the outrageous attack on the frigate Chesapeake by the Leopard. "ART. XI. The two parties guarantee mutually, from the present time and forever, against all other powers, to wit: The United States, to his Most Christian Majesty, the present possessions of the crown of France in America, as well as those which it may acquire by the future treaty of peace: And his Most Christian Majesty guarantees on his part to the United States their liberty, sovereignty, and independence, absolute ment as commerce, and also their posses sions, and the additions or conquests that their confederation may obtain during the war, from any of the dominions now or heretofore possessed by Great Britain in North America, conformably to the 5th and and unlimited, as well in matters of govern 6th articles above written, the whole as their possessions shall be fixed and assured to the said States, at the moment of the 2 February 6, 1778. This treaty was kept secret for several months. cessation of their present war with Eng- entangle our peace and prosperity in the land." Here let us stop. "Europe has a set of primary interests, which to us have none, or a very remote, re lation. Hence, she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities. "Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course. If we remain one people, under an efficient government, the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions from us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interests, guided by jus tice, shall counsel. 66 Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand on foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, September 17, 1796. toils of European ambition, rivalships, interests, humor, or caprice? "It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world, so far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it; for let me not be understood as capable of patronizing infidelity to existing engagements. I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is the best policy. I repeat, therefore, let those engagements be observed in their genuine sense. my opinion, it is unnecessary and would be unwise to extend them." But, in No decided-at least no avoweddeparture from this policy had occurred down to 1823, when President Monroe was required to address a new Congress under peculiar circumstances. The Spanish people had revolted against the despotism of their imbecile, treacherous monarch, Ferdinand VII., and had established a Constitution which left him still in possession of the trappings, but with little of the substance, of royalty. to this change, though affecting to He was, of course, profoundly hostile acquiesce in it. A congress of the great powers of continental Europe, then united in a league, known as the "Holy Alliance," for the maintenance of their despotic authority and the repression of popular aspirations, had decreed the overthrow of this dangerous example; and, under its auspices, a French army of 100,000 men, led by the Duke d'Angoulême, a prince of the blood royal, had invaded Spain, and, meeting with little serious resistance, overthrown the Constitution and the Cortes, and restored to Ferdinand his beloved and grossly abused autocracy. Apprehensions were entertained that the discipline thus bestowed on Spain was about to 4 Held at Verona, Italy, in 1822. THE "MONROE DOCTRINE." be extended to her revolted and nearly independent American colonies, whereby they should be reduced to abject servitude to their mother country, and to the despotism that now enthralled her. To such a consummation, Great Britain, as well as this country, was intensely opposed -quite as much, probably, for commercial as for political reasons. Mr. Canning, then the master-spirit of the British Cabinet, at least with respect to foreign affairs, hinted to our Government the expediency of a moral demonstration against the apprehended design of the Holy Alliance with regard to this Continenta demonstration which could be made with less offense, yet with no less efficiency, from this side of the Atlantic than from the other. Thus prompted, Mr. Monroe spoke as follows:" "Of events in that quarter of the globe with which we have so much intercourse, and from which we derive our origin, we have always been anxious and interested spectators. The citizens of the United States cherish sentiments the most friendly in favor of the liberty and happiness of their fellow-men on that side of the Atlantic. In the wars of the European powers, in matters relating to themselves, we have never taken any part, nor does it comport with our policy so to do. It is only when our rights are invaded or seriously menaced, that we resent injuries, or make preparation for our defense. With the movements in this hemisphere, we are of necessity more immediately connected, and by causes which must be obvious to all enlightened and impartial observers. The political system of the Allied Powers is essentially different in this respect from that of America. This difference proceeds from that which exists in their respective governments. And to the defense of our own, which has been achieved by the loss of so much blood and treasure, and matured by the wisdom of their most enlightened citizens, and under which we have enjoyed unexampled felicity, this whole nation is de voted. We owe it, therefore, to candor, and to the amicable relations existing between 267 the United States and those powers, to declare, that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety. "With the existing colonies or dependencies of any European power, we have not interfered, and shall not interfere. But with the governments which have declared their independence and maintained it, and whose independence we have, on great consideration and on just principles, acknowledged, we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them, or controlling in any other manner their destiny, by any European power, in any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States. * * * * Our policy in regard to Europe, which was have so long agitated that quarter of the adopted at an early stage of the wars which globe, nevertheless, remains the same: which is, not to interfere in the internal concerns of any of its powers; to consider the government de facto as the legitimate government for us; to cultivate friendly relations with it; firm, and manly policy; meeting, in all inand to preserve those relations by a frank, stances, the just claims of every power, submitting to injuries from none. 66 But, in regard to these continents, cirdifferent. cumstances are eminently and conspicuously It is impossible that the Allied Powers should extend their political system endangering our peace and happiness; nor to any portion of either continent without can any one believe that our southern brethren, if left to themselves, would adopt it of their own accord. It is equally impossible, therefore, that we should behold such interposition, in any form, with indifference. If we look to the comparative strength and resources of Spain and those new governments, and their distance from each other, it must be obvious that she can never subdue them. It is still the true policy of the United States to leave the parties to themselves, in the hope that other powers will pursue the same course. In this remarkable passage, may probably be found the impulse to the invitation from several of the South American Republics to that Congress at Panama of representatives of American Republics, which Messrs. Adams and Clay so promptly and heartily accepted, and which the Opposition or Jackson party of 1825-6 "Seventh Annual Message, December 2, 1823. |