1857-eo] Results of the decision. 435 juncture, by appeal, to the Supreme Court. That tribunal held that the lower Court had had no jurisdiction : that Dred Scott, at any rate after his return with his master to Missouri, was a slave, and not a citizen, and had no standing in the Courts. That was the only point it was necessary to decide, and might have ended the matter. But a majority of the judges persuaded themselves that they should go further and expound the whole question of the status of slavery in the Territories of the United States, though they must in doing so, in the opinion of every discriminating lawyer, be speaking obiter. Chief Justice Taney, speaking for a majority of his colleagues, declared it the opinion of the Court that it was not within the constitutional power of Congress to forbid citizens of any of the States to carry their property, no matter of what sort, into the public domain, or even to authorise the regularly constituted legislature of an organised Territory to forbid this, though it were property in slaves : that only States could regulate that matter. If this were law, the Missouri Compromise had been invalid from the first; even "popular sovereignty," to which Douglas looked for the settlement of the question, could do no authoritative thing until it spoke its purpose in a State constitution. The Free-Soilers were beyond their right at every point. To the Republicans the decision could seem nothing less than a stinging blow in the face. They were made to feel the smart of being stigmatised as disloyal to the Constitution. No doubt the judges had thought to quiet opinion and sustain the legislation of 1854 ; but instead they infinitely exasperated it. Their judgment gave the last touch of dramatic interest to the struggle in Kansas, now nearing its turning- point and culmination. In October, 1857, the Free-Soil settlers of Kansas got control of the territorial legislature at the polls ; but not before the pro-slavery men, hitherto in power, had made a last attempt to fix slavery upon the future State. They had hastened before the autumn elections came on to assemble a convention and frame a constitution (September, 1857), and to see that their application for admission to the Union was at Washington in due form before the Free-Soil men could intervene and undo their work. President Buchanan decided to sustain them, judging at least the formal right of application to be really theirs. But Congress would not go with him. It was Democratic in both houses ; but Douglas remembered his principles with manly consistency. It was known before Congress acted that a majority of the voters of the Territory did not in fact desire a pro-slavery State constitution ; and he would not force a constitution upon a majority. There were members enough in his immediate following to control the action of the Houses, and Kansas was refused admission to the Union pending the further contest of parties. President Buchanan's Administration inevitably incurred the suspicion, throughout all this trying business, of being conducted in the southern CH. xiii. 282
