To
them I am about to reply. To the others, I shall have something to say a
little later. What says the Senator from Maine (Mr. Fessenden)? He says:
"Had the result of that election been otherwise, and had not the
(Democratic) party triumphed on the dogma which they had thus
introduced, we should never have heard of a doctrine so utterly at
variance with all truth; so utterly destitute of all legal logic; so
founded on error, and unsupported by anything like argument, as is the
opinion of the Supreme Court."
He says, further:
"I should like, if I had time, to attempt to demonstrate the fallacy
of that opinion. I have examined the view of the Supreme Court of the
United States on the question of the power of the Constitution to carry
slavery into free territory belonging to the United States, and I tell
you that I believe any tolerably respectable lawyer in the United States
can show, beyond all question, to any fair and unprejudiced mind, that
the decision has nothing to stand upon except assumption, and bad logic
from the assumptions made. The main proposition on which that decision
is founded, the corner-stone of it, without which it is nothing, without
which it fails entirely to satisfy the mind of any man, is this: that
the Constitution of the United States recognizes property in slaves,
and protects it as such.
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