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Page 34
Without this protection, what would be the condition of the northern
inventor? Why, sir, the Vermont inventor protected by his own law would
come to Massachusetts, and there say to the pirate who had stolen his
property, "Render me up my property or pay me value for its use." The
Senator from Vermont would receive for answer, if he were the counsel of
the Vermont inventor, "Sir, if you want protection for your property go
to your own State; property is governed by the laws of the State within
whose jurisdiction it is found; you have no property in your invention
outside of the limits of your State; you cannot go an inch beyond it."
Would not this be so? Does not every man see at once that the right
of the inventor to his discovery, that the right of the poet to his
inspiration, depends upon those principles of eternal justice which God
has implanted in the heart of man, and that wherever he cannot exercise
them it is because man, faithless to the trust that he has received from
God, denies them the protection to which they are entitled?'
Sir, follow out the illustration which the Senator from Vermont himself
has given; take his very case of the Delaware owner of a horse riding
him across the line into Pennsylvania. The Senator says: "Now, you
see that slaves are not property like other property; if slaves were
property like other property, why have you this special clause in your
Constitution to protect a slave? You have no clause to protect the
horse, because horses are recognized as property everywhere." Mr.
President, the same fallacy lurks at the bottom of this argument, as of
all the rest. Let Pennsylvania exercise her undoubted jurisdiction over
persons and things within her own boundary; let her do as she has
a perfect right to do--declare that hereafter, within the State of
Pennsylvania, there shall be no property in horses, and that no man
shall maintain a suit in her courts for the recovery of property in a
horse; and where will your horse-owner be then? Just where the English
poet is now; just where the slaveholder and the inventor would be if the
Constitution, foreseeing a difference of opinion in relation to rights
in these subject-matters, had not provided the remedy in relation to
such property as might easily be plundered. Slaves, if you please, are
not property like other property in this: that you can easily rob us of
them; but as to the right in them, that man has to overthrow the
whole history of the world, he has to overthrow every treatise on
jurisprudence, he has to ignore the common sentiment of mankind, he has
to repudiate the authority of all that is considered sacred with man,
ere he can reach the conclusion that the person who owns a slave, in
a country where slavery has been established for ages, has no other
property in that slave than the mere title which is given by the statute
law of the land where it is found. * * *
ABRAHAM LINCOLN,
OF ILLINOIS. (BORN 1809, DIED 1865.)
ON THE DRED SCOTT DECISION,
SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, JUNE 26, 1857.
And now as to the Dred Scott decision. That decision declares two
propositions--first, that a negro cannot sue in the United States
courts; and secondly, that Congress cannot prohibit slavery in the
Territories. It was made by a divided court--dividing differently on
the different points. Judge Douglas does not discuss the merits of the
decision, and in that respect I shall follow his example, believing I
could no more improve on McLean and Curtis than he could on Taney.
He denounces all who question the correctness of that decision, as
offering violent resistance to it. But who resists it? Who has, in spite
of the decision, declared Dred Scott free, and resisted the authority of
his master over him?
Judicial decisions have two uses,--first, to absolutely determine the
case decided; and secondly, to indicate to the public how other similar
cases will be decided when they arise. For the latter use they are
called "precedents" and "authorities."
We believe as much as Judge Douglas (perhaps more) in obedience to,
and respect for, the judicial department of government. We think its
decisions on constitutional questions, when fully settled, should
control not only the particular cases decided, but the general policy
of the country, subject to be disturbed only by amendments to the
Constitution as provided in that instrument itself. More than this would
be revolution. But we think the Dred Scott decision is erroneous. We
know the court that made it has often overruled its own decisions,
and we shall do what we can to have it to overrule this. We offer no
resistance to it.
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