in pursuance of the Constitution, being of no
binding obligation upon the citizen, that he
would make every individual in all the length
and breadth of our land an authority to de-
cide the constitutionality of a law of Con-
gress? By what right dors the gentleman
pronounce an act of this Government uncon-
stitutional before the Supreme Court of the
United States has so decided it? By what
light dues the gentleman declare this war
waged tor the enslavement of the while race,
until the Supreme Court of the United States
has so declared? By what right does lie tell
us that to-day we are enacting aclause for the
enslavement of the white race because we de-
clare the supremacy of the General Govern-
ment? is the gentleman aware that he is as-
suming upon the floor of Ibis house preroga-
tives which the possibly defective education
of our youth taught us belonged only to the
Supreme Court or' the United States ?
And then the gentleman brought us to the
Dred Scott decision, and I thank him for do-
ing so, I thank the Almighty that for once
in the course of my life I have an opportunity
to raise my voice in protest against an ini-
quity so foul that I wonder the main who per-
petrated it would ever appear in the face of
honest men again. Forgetting that the court
over which he presided was at court of appel-
late jurisdiction alone, he travelled out of the
record, and assuming original jurisdiction for
party purposes, gave voice to language which
set at nought every fact of history and every
truth and principle of the Government under
which he lived. I will read to gentlemen
from the opinions of a Democrat, a member
of the party to which the Chief Justice him-
self belongs, concerning this Dred Scott de-
cision. I refer to the Hon. George Bancroft,
the historian of America. Hear what he
says:
"During all these decisions the United
States stood unchanged, admitting none but
the slightest modifications in its charter,. and
proving itself the most stable Government of
the civilized world. But at hast we have
fallen on evil days. ''The propitious smiles
of Heaven,' such are the words of Washing-
ton, 'can never be expected on a nation that
disregards the eternal rules of order and
right.' During eleven years of perverse gov-
ernment, those rules were disregarded; and it
came to pass that men who should firmly
avow the sentiments of Washington, and
Jefferson, and Franklin, and Chancellor Liv-
ingstone, were disfranchised for the public
service; that the spotless Chief Justice whom
Washington placed at the head of our Su-
preme Court could by no possibility have
been nominated for that office, or confirmed
Nay, the corrupt influence invaded even the
very house of justice. The final decree of the
Supreme Court, in its decision in a particular
case, must be respected and obeyed. The
present Chief Justice has, on one memorable |
appeal, accompanied his decision with an im-
passioned declamation, wherein, with pro-
found immortality, which no one has as yet
fully laid bare, treating the people of the
United States as a shrew to be tamed, by an
open scorn of the facts of history, with a
dreary industry collecting cases where justice
may have slumbered or weakness been op-
pressed, compensating for want of evidence
by confidence of assertion, with a partiality
that would have disgraced an advocate ne-
glecting humane decisions of colonial courts
and the enduring memorials of colonial
statute-books, in his party zeal to prove that
the fathers of our country held the negro to
have 'no rights which the white man was
bound to respect,' he has not only denied the
rights of man and the liberties of mankind,
but has not left a foot-hold tor the liberty of
the white man to rest upon."
The gentleman has told us that, the Consti-
tution of the United States was made for white
men alone. The gentleman forgot that in
five States of this Union, on the question of
the adoption of the Federal Constitution, free
black men voted, and that their disfranchise-
ment arose afterwards from particular State
statutes. The gentleman forgot the facts of
history, when he told us that the Constitution
was made alone for white men. The gentle-
man forgot that at that day the free black
main in North Carolina voted upon the ques-
tion of the adoption or rejection of the Con-
stitution of the United States, and that the
vote of one black man might in that State
have controlled the quest on of the adoption
or rejection of the Constitution under which
we have lived so long. And why have gentle-
men who have gone before the gentleman of
Prince George's (Mr. Clarke,) in more ex-
tended political arenas than this, why have
they deliberately falsified the facts of history,
why have they perverted the truth, except as
a course of education for their people which
should finally bring on, what it has brought
on, the present civil war ?
And then the gentleman tells us that there
is a day of retribution coming in Maryland,
for those of us who vote for this article.
Now to those of us who have lived for the
last three years in Maryland, who have felt
that if the day ever comes when the suprem-
acy of the Federal Government is not ac-
knowledged, then there will be no place
in Maryland for us, this idea of a day
of retribution matters not. It is not an idea
which should influence us, under any circum-
stances. For the vote in this body that can
be controlled by the fear of possible retribu-
tion is a vote that can always be bought.
From mere respect to the essential manhood
of those of his associates here, who he thinks
may "vote for this article, the gentleman might
have spared us that reflection; from the mere
fact that, if we are not the best sort of men,
we are at least white men and brothers, the |
