Disunion Feed

"We mean to show that this Dred Scott decision is deficient in every element which should entitle it to respect -- that it violates the truth of history and the logic even of the law; and in our humble way, we mean to assist in getting it overruled. [...] When we are ready to surrender sense and reason, conscience and intellect, and all pretension to mental and physical freedom [...] then, and not till then, will we get on our knees to Roger Taney."

Answering the charge that criticizing the Court was itself treason. The Tribune's defense is that the two dissenters said the same thing — that a court's word on questions not properly before it does not bind. Getting it overruled took the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments.

Read it in the original — New-York Daily Tribune, Mar 12, 1857 ↗

"This is a seeming blow at the doctrine of squatter sovereignty, but not quite as hard a one as we could wish the Court had given. As Congress has no power to exclude slavery from the territory and confer freedom upon negroes, it cannot confer that power on territorial agents. The stream can rise no higher than the fountain, as a matter of course."

A Mississippi paper that reads the great pro-slavery victory and wants more. The unanswered question it names — whether settlers could bar slavery on their own authority, without Congress — is exactly the gap Stephen Douglas would try to stand in at Freeport a year later, and it split the Democratic party in 1860.

Read it in the original — Natchez Daily Courier, Mar 14, 1857 ↗