Disunion Feed

"this is the most important decision every made by any Court in this country, and that it fortifies as by a wall of brass the rights of the slaveholder in the States and in the common territories. [...] The idea of the abolitionists, that a slave is free as soon as he touches the soil of a free State, is again exploded"

The Standard numbers the holdings one through six off the telegraphic dispatch and warns its own readers the summary "may not be strictly accurate." "every made" is the printed text, for "ever made." A Southern paper drawing the conclusion Northern editors most feared: the free states' soil no longer frees anyone.

Read it in the original — Weekly North Carolina Standard, Mar 11, 1857 ↗

"First, it subdued the Executive Government; second, the Legislative; and now it grasps the Judiciary. The grand object of the oligarchs has been perfected. They have made Slavery National, Freedom Sectional. [...] The Territories have become one great slave pen."

"Slavery National, Freedom Sectional" became the Republican formula of the next three years — the exact inversion of the party's own charge that it was the sectional one. Lincoln built the House Divided speech on this claim in June 1858.

Read it in the original — Ohio State Journal, Mar 11, 1857 ↗