Buchanan made hot haste to use this _pronunciamento_ of his chief
justice, issued only a few hours after his inauguration as President,
and withheld until after the election of 1856 had taken place. He
proclaimed--on its authority as a judicial exposition of a point of
constitutional law--the existence of slavery in the Territory of
Kansas. And he endeavored to make it efficient and powerful by
practical application in the administration of the government of the
Territory, and by interpolating these bastard dogmas, dropped from the
Federal bench, into the creed of the political party of which he was
the official chief.
These _dicta_ of Mr. Chief Justice Taney made Dred Scott neither more
nor less a _slave_, neither more nor less a _citizen_, than he had been
without their utterance. But they aided the purpose of subjugating
Kansas, of opening all American territory to slavery, of Africanizing
the continent by reopening the slave-trade, of breaking down barriers
which State legislation has interposed against the introduction of
slaves, and of putting the propagandists of slavery in full possession
of every power.
We gladly record our sense of the skill, learning, and intrepidity with
which Mr. Sumner fulfilled his task of presenting, defining, and
defending, within the brief limits of a single oration, the cause of
Liberty,--Liberty,--American, European, universal.
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