Disunion Feed

"The Supreme Court has aimed a blow at State Sovereignty which is baser and more iniquitous than any thing we had before conceived of. The State of Illinois for example, under this decision in her legislative capacity, has no power to enact such a law as can make a slave coming there with the consent of his master a freeman!"

Written from the abstract that reached Pittsburgh by telegraph on Saturday morning. The Gazette goes straight to the point that would define Northern alarm for the next four years: if the master's title follows him, a free state's own laws cannot free anyone.

Read it in the original — Daily Pittsburgh Gazette, Mar 7, 1857 ↗

"To the friends of the "Wilmot Proviso" and the Abolition legislation for the Territories this decision of the Supreme Court will be most crushing and annihilating. Hereafter they will have no pretense whatever for keeping Congress and the country in a turmoil on that subject [...] The whole people, without distinction of party, have confidence in that august tribunal, the Supreme Court of the United States"

A Northern Democratic paper in a free state, reading the decision as the end of the argument rather than the start of one. The Enquirer's own city had produced the dissenter it goes on to chide — Justice John McLean of Cincinnati.

Read it in the original — Cincinnati Daily Enquirer, Mar 8, 1857 ↗