nents was sixty. Thus the Kansas-Nebraska act, with its repeal of the Missouri compromise, was, by an overwhelming popular and electoral majority of the nation, approved.

In addition to the above historical facts, the very question at issue in regard to the territories came up before the Supreme Court of the United States, in the celebrated Dred-Scott case. This case having been determined by the Supreme Court of Missouri, in 1852, adversely to Dred Scott, and remanded to the court below, his counsel endeavored to better his client's chances by resorting to another jurisdiction, and accordingly carried the case into the Federal Court, at St. Louis, on the 2d of November, 1853, where it was decided, and by writ of error taken to the Supreme Court of the United States before the Kansas-Nebraska bill was passed After the case had been heard twice, and after the most deliberate consideration and elaborate research by each and all of the Judges, Chief Justice TANEY, in 1857, delivered the opinion of the court, deciding in clear, unequivocal language, the question as above stated against the Republican party, and in favor of the constitutional right as exercised under the earliest administrations of the Government, as maintained by Jefferson and Madison, and as claimed by the South. The Judges of this august tribunal had been appointed to their offices, from different sections of the Union, before the existence of the Republican party, and before its issues had been formed. Unlike the appointment by a late Republican President of two Judges to the Supreme Bench, for the purpose of getting a party decision, and for party ends, these Judges were free from any such committals to a preconcerted judgment, were wholly independent, and above all party dictation, of unblemished character, and of the highest judicial integrity. The decision, therefore, deserved to be received by all fair-minded men as an honest and impartial one, free from any possible reproach, or impeachment as to its integrity of purpose, and high judicial character. Mr. Lincoln, in his canvass with Mr. Douglas, speaking of the above decision, said: "If the territories attempt, by any direct legislation, to drive the man with his slave out of the territory, or to decide that his slave is free because of his being taken in there, or to tax him to such an extent that he cannot keep him there, the Supreme Court will unhesitatingly decide all such legislation unconstitutional, as long as that Supreme Court is constructed as the Dred Scott's

Supreme Court is. The first two things they have already decided, except that there is a little quibble among lawyers between the words dieta and decision." "Judge Douglas understands the constitution according to the Dred Scott decision, and he is bound to support it (the constitution) as he understands it. I understand it another way, and, therefore, I am bound to support it in the way in which I understand it." Here, let it be observed, Mr. Lincoln very justly recognizes the truth that the territorial question was judicially before the court for its decision, and that all objection to it as mere dicta was no more than a lawyer's quibble; and that the ground of his disobedience to it was, that he differed with the court in his construction of the constitution. He further said: "If I were in Congress, and a vote should come up on a question whether slavery should be prohibited in a new territory, in spite of the Dred Scott decision, I would vote that it should." So the Republican party declared that they would not be bound by this decision nor by the precedents and practice of the government under Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison, but that they would give their own construction to the constitution and enforce it. Let us now turn our attention to the second right claimed by the South.

From the days of Washington to the election of Lincoln, Congress, in acting on the clause in the constitution for the return of fugitives from service, had passed laws for its faithful fulfillment in the reclamation of runaway slaves. Congress, in 1793, with the approval of Washington, had passed an act for carrying this provision into effect, which had been approved by the Supreme Court as constitutional, and which had been executed without interference through the administrations of the Fathers of the Declaration of Independence and of the constitution, and until the years from 1840 to 1850. Within this decade, the elements of the future Republican party sprang into existence, and began to be formed into an organized opposition, one purpose of which was to resist the enforcement of the above constitutional provision through the action of state authority. To counteract this organized and rebellious effort, the act of 1850 was passed; in the advocacy of which Mr. Webster declared: "That there has been found at the North, among individuals and among legislators, a disinclination to perform fully their constitutional duties in regard to the return of persons, bound to service, who have escaped into the free states. In that respect,

the South, in my judgment, is right, and the North is wrong. Every member of every Northern legislature is bound by oath, like every other officer of the country, to support the constitution, which says to these states that they shall deliver up fugitives from service, which is as binding in honor and conscience as any other article. No man fulfills his duty, in any legislature, who sets himself to excuses, evasions, escapes from this constitutional obligation. I put it to all the sober, sound minds at the North, as a question of morals and a question of conscience. What right have they, in their legislative capacity, or any other capacity, to endeavor to get round this constitution, or to embarrass the free exercise of the rights secured by the constitution to the persons whose fugitives escape from them? None at all. None at all; neither in the forum of conscience, nor before the face of the constitution, are they, in my opinion, justified in such an attempt. I repeat, therefore, sir, that there is a well-founded ground of complaint against the North which ought to be removed; which calls for the enactment of proper laws authorizing the judicature of this government, in the several states, to do all that is necessary for the recapture of fugitives, and for the restoration to those who claim them." In confirmation and support of the truth of these admissions by the North, through her most distinguished representative, the act of 1850, amendatory of that of 1793, was passed by Congress, approved by all the departments of the Government, declared to be constitutional by its judiciary, and sought to be enforced by its judgments and processes. It was also one of those compromise measures of 1850, framed by Clay, Webster, and Douglas, which, in the election of Mr. Pierce, had been so signally approved by an overwhelming majority of the American people, both North and South. Mr. Lincoln, in his speech at Jonesboro, in 1858, said: "I recollect I, as a member of that (the Whig) party, acquiesced in that compromise. All had acquiesced in the compromise measures of 1850. We never had been seriously disturbed by any abolition agitation before that period." Finally, however, so far from securing the return of fugitives, in fulfillment of a plain provision of the constitution, this act aroused and strengthened the resistance to it; so that states in the North endeavored, through their state legislatures and courts, to defeat its enforcement under the assertion of a false doctrine of state rights and state sovereignty. The acts here alluded to were

passed under the name of "Personal Liberty Bills." To illustrate their true character, let us cite the act of Vermont, in which it was provided, that such persons, as are called fugitives from service or labor," who shall come," or "shall be in this state, shall be free;” and then provides that any person who shall hold or attempt to hold one in violation of such freedom, "shall, on conviction thereof, be imprisoned in the state prison for a term not less than five years nor more than twenty, and be fined not less than $1,000." Thus did this act not only intend, but professed, to nullify a federal law, and a provision of the constitution itself.

In 1856, a party of fugitives escaped from Kentucky into Ohio. A warrant for their apprehension was obtained from one Pendery, a Federal Commissioner appointed by Judge McLean, of the Supreme Court of the United States, under the fugitive slave act of 1850. This warrant was executed by a United States Marshal, who placed the fugitives in custody. The opponents of the law then procured a writ of habeas corpus, returnable before a State Probate Judge, named Burgoyne, which the sheriff executed so far as to take into his custody the fugitives, and lodge them in the county jail. Judge Leavitt, of the United States Court, before whom the case was brought, announced his decision, and declared that the custody of the sheriff as against the claim of the Marshal under the fugitive act, was unlawful, and ordered the former to deliver the fugitives to the latter. In the meantime Burgoyne, the Probate Judge, hastened to Columbus to see Governor Chase, to know of him, if he would sustain the process of the State Probate Court, against the proceedings of the General Government for the delivering up of the fugitives under the act of 1850. Governor Chase, who has given a narrative himself of the above facts, states his reply to the application made to him, as the Executive of Ohio in these words: "I did not hesitate to assure him (Burgoyne, the Probate Judge), that the process of the State Courts should be enforced in every part of the State, whether in Hamilton, or any other county, and authorized him to say to the sheriff, that in the performance of his duties he would be sustained by the whole power at the command of the Executive." Before this authority reached the sheriff he had obeyed the order of Judge Leavitt, and the resistance, or rather open rebellion, not only threatened, but ordered by the Republican Governor of Ohio against the action of the General Government was thus averted. Referring

afterwards to this case, Mr. Chase, on the 13th of March, 1864, wrote to Mr. Trowbridge as follows; "All that I could do in their (the fugitives') behalf, under the circumstances then existing, was done; the power of the State was pledged to maintain the process of the State." Gov. Chase, in a letter to the South, dated at Columbus, November 30, 1860, wrote as follows: "Besides the question of extension, there seems to me to be but one other which need occasion any anxiety. I refer, of course, to the extradition of escaping slaves. I have no doubt that the constitution stipulates for such extradition of escaping slaves; but I cannot help saying the natural sentiment and conscientious convictions make the exention of this stipulation, in the free states, well nigh impracticable, and I would not delude, or attempt to delude, any body with the notion of its execution under what some people call a fair law;' for all such propositions mean evasion, and I would evade nothing. It is high time to have done with evasion. In this spirit I would recognize the fact of constitutional obligation, and the fact that it cannot be fulfilled with any thing like completeness."

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In the Peace Congress, in February, 1861, Gov. Chase, just before entering Mr. Lincoln's Cabinet, spoke as follows. 'I must speak to you plainly, gentlemen of the South. It is not in my heart to deceive you. I therefore tell you explicitly, that if we of the North and West would consent to throw away all that has been gained in the recent triumph of our principles, the people would not sustain us, and so the consent would avail you nothing. And I must tell you further that under no inducements whatever will we consent to surrender a principle which we believe to be so sound and so important as that of restricting slavery within state limits.” Aside from (this) the territorial question, I know of but one serious difficulty. I refer to the question concerning fugitives from service. The people of the free states, however, who believe that slave-holding is wrong, cannot and will not aid in the reclamation; and the stipulation (in the constitution) becomes, therefore, a dead letter. You complain of bad faith, and the complaint is retorted by denunciations of the cruelty which would drag back to bondage the poor slave who has escaped from it." On the 4th of March, 1861, a few days after the delivery of this open and unreserved confession by Mr. Chase, that the Republican party of the North had refused, and would continue to refuse, to permit the fugitive slave clause of