Northern Outrage over Scott v. Sandford, 1857

From New York Tribune, March 7, 1857

The long trumpeted decision of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case was pronounced by Judge Taney yesterday, having been held over from last year in order not too flagrantly to alarm and exasperate the Free States on the eve of an important Presidential election. Its cardinal points are reported as follows:

1. A negro, because of his color, is denied the rights of a citizen of the United States--even the right to sue in our Courts for the redress of the most flagrant wrongs.

2. A slave being taken by his master into a Free State and thence returning under his masters sway, is not therefore entitled to his freedom. 3. Congress has no rightful power to prohibit Slavery in the Territories: hence the Missouri Restriction was unconstitutional.

Justice Nelson, we are happy to say, does not fully concur in this abominable judgment. Justice McLean of course dissents in toto; so, we presume, does Justice Curtis in the main, despite his eminence in Union saving. Justice Grier, we presume, went all lengths, with the five slaveholders who compose a majority of the Court, leaving but four-ninths to the immense preponderance of population in the Free States.

This decision, we need hardly say, is entitled to just so much moral weight as would be the judgment of a majority of those congregated in any Washington bar-room. It is a dictum prescribed by the stump to the bench--the Bowie-knife sticking in the stump ready for instant use if needed. It is of a piece with the votes of Benton, Dix and Bagby for the Annexation of Texas with the boundary of the Rio Grande.

This judgment annihilates all Compromises and brings us face to face with the great issue in the right shape. Slavery implies slave laws--that is, laws sustaining and enforcing the claim of one man to own and sell another. In the absence of such laws, Slavery cannot exist; and a Republican ascendancy in the nation, insuring Republican rule over the Territories, will prove a shield against the enactment of any such laws. Under any other role, all our Territories are henceforth Slave Territories, on the way to be ripened into Slave States.

--We postpone further comments until the opinions pronounced yesterday are fully before us.

Let not Slavery exult over this as a second and separate triumph from the inauguration and inaugural of Buchanan. They are parts of one whole, and as such will be regarded and met in the spirit of Freemen.