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Updated: May 26, 2025
As to the effect of the Dred Scott decision upon slavery in the Territories, Douglas had only this to say: "With or without that decision, slavery will go just where the people want it, and not one inch further."
Slaves had been brought to England, it is true, and carried away; but, when the right to remove them was questioned in court, Lord Chief Justice Mansfield, with an abundance of argument and precedent to support a position similar to that of Justice Taney in the Dred Scott case, had taken the contrary view, and declared that the air of England was free, and the slave who breathed it but once ceased thereby to be a slave.
How to hold fast to his own doctrine, and at the same time keep to his programme of "nothing doing"; how to satisfy the negative Democrats of the North without losing his last hold on the positive men of the South such were his problems, and they were made still more difficult by a recent decision of the Supreme Court. The now famous case of Dred Scott had been decided in the previous year.
I care not how the Dred Scott decision may have settled the abstract question so far as the practical results are concerned. * If the people of the Territory want slavery they will encourage it by passing affirmatory laws and the necessary police regulations, patrol laws and slave code; if they do not want it they will withhold that legislation and by withholding it slavery is a dead as if prohibited by a constitutional provision. * They could pass such local laws as would drive slavery out in one day or one hour, if they were opposed to it; and therefore, so far as the question of slavery in the Territory is concerned, so far as the principle of popular sovereignty is concerned in its practical operation, it matters not how the Dred Scott case may be decided. * Whether slavery shall exist or shall not exist in any State or Territory will depend on whether the people are for or against it; and which ever way they shall decide it will be entirely satisfactory to me."
It was represented to me that in the last Presidential canvass that one of the Senators of Maine had convinced many of the voters that if Mr. Buchanan should be elected, slavery would be forced upon Maine, and that the other Senator was arguing that the Dred Scott decision of the Supreme Court had given authority to introduce and hold slaves in that State.
Vice-president Breckinridge, Frankfort Speech, December, 1859. Manifestly, when the educated intellects of the learned judges differed so radically concerning the principles of law and the facts of history applicable to the Dred Scott question, the public at large could hardly be expected to receive the new dogmas without similar divergence of opinion.
These cruelties were emphasized chiefly in the presence of those who were known to be averse to slavery in any form, and they could not escape from the revolting scenes. The culmination of this was in what is known as the Dred Scott decision. Dred Scott was a slave in Missouri. He was by his master taken to Fort Snelling, now in the state of Minnesota, then in the territory of Wisconsin.
After seeing the Dred Scott decision, which holds that the people cannot exclude slavery from a Territory, if another Dred Scott decision shall come holding that they cannot exclude it from a State, we shall discover that when the word was originally put there it was in view of something that was to come in due time, we shall see that it was the other half of something.
It was necessary for him, however, while retaining the support of the Democrats of the North, to make clear to those of the South that his influence would work for the maintenance and for the extension of slavery. The South was well pleased with the purpose and with the result of the Dred Scott decision and with the repeal of the Missouri Compromise.
Douglas had many an uncomfortable hour as Lincoln exposed his vain efforts to reconcile his popular sovereignty doctrine with the Dred Scott decision. As Lincoln expected, Douglas won the senatorship, but he lost the greater prize. The crusade against slavery was nearing its final stage.
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