Page 28 - Civil War Curriculum Book

First, That no negro slave, imported as such from Africa, and no descendant of such slave, can ever
be a citizen of any State, in the sense of that term as used in the Constitution of the United States.
This point is made in order to deprive the negro, in every possible event, of the benefit of that
provision of the United States Constitution, which declares that "The citizens of each State, shall be
entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States."

Secondly, That "subject to the Constitution of the United States," neither Congress nor a Territorial
Legislature can exclude slavery from any United States territory. This point is made in order that
individual men may fill up the Territories with slaves, without danger of losing them as property,
and thus to enhance the chances of permanency to the institution through all the future.

Thirdly, That whether the holding a negro in actual slavery in a free State, makes him free, as against
the holder, the United States courts will not decide, but will leave to be decided by the courts of any
slave State the negro may be forced into by the master. This point is made, not to be pressed
immediately; but, if acquiesced in for awhile, and apparently indorsed by the people at an election,
then to sustain the logical conclusion that what Dred Scott's master might lawfully do with Dred
Scott, in the free State of Illinois, every other master may lawfully do with any other one, or one
thousand slaves, in Illinois, or in any other free State.

Auxiliary to all this, and working hand in hand with it, the Nebraska doctrine, or what is left of it, is
to educate and mould public opinion, at least Northern public opinion, not to care whether slavery
is voted down or voted up. This shows exactly where we now are; and partially, also, whither we
are tending.

It will throw additional light on the latter, to go back, and run the mind over the string of historical
facts already stated. Several things will now appear less dark and mysterious than they did when they
were transpiring. The people were to be left "perfectly free," "subject only to the Constitution." What
the Constitution had to do with it, outsiders could not then see. Plainly enough now, it was an exactly
fitted niche, for the Dred Scott decision to afterward come in, and declare the perfect freedom of the
people to be just no freedom at all. Why was the amendment, expressly declaring the right of the
people, voted down? Plainly enough now: the adoption of it would have spoiled the niche for the
Dred Scott decision. Why was the court decision held up? Why even a Senator's individual opinion
withheld, till after the Presidential election? Plainly enough now: the speaking out then would have
damaged the perfectly free argument upon which the election was to be carried. Why the outgoing
President's felicitation on the indorsement? Why the delay of a reargument? Why the incoming
President's advance exhortation in favor of the decision? These things look like the cautious patting
and petting of a spirited horse preparatory to mounting him, when it is dreaded that he may give the
rider a fall. And why the hasty after-indorsement of the decision by the President and others?

We cannot absolutely know that all these exact adaptations are the result of preconcert. But when we
see a lot of framed timbers, different portions of which we know have been gotten out at different
times and places and by different workmen -- Stephen, Franklin, Roger and James, for instance -- and
when we see these timbers joined together, and see they exactly make the frame of a house or a mill,
all the tenons and mortices exactly fitting, and all the lengths and