The blow annihilates the citizenship of every free colored person in the United States. Half a million men and women are disfranchised on the soil on which they were born — by the atheistic logic of the Dred Scott decision.
Original passage & context
"the barbarism of the blow which annihilates the citizenship of all the Free colored people in the United States, has fallen with a stunning force on all who have been taught that justice is obligatory on man, and that Christianity is the social law of Humanity. The half million of men and women paralysed by the atheistic logic of the decision of the case of Dred Scott, which disfranchises them on the soil on which they were born"
The part of the ruling least discussed at the time and least remembered since: the holding reached free Black Americans, not only the enslaved. The 1850 census counted about 434,000 free people of color in the United States.
Read it in the original — Albany Evening Journal, Mar 10, 1857 ↗