If the South did not win the cause this time, it was not the fault of the government of the United States, but of the inhabitants of Kansas.  As for Mr. Buchanan, he showed himself what he has constantly been, the most humble servant of the slavery party.  They came together into collision with squatter sovereignty: they found for the first time in their path that solid resistance of the West which was manifested in the last election, and which, I firmly hope, is about to save America.  But in the mean time, they had taken a new step forward—­a formidable step, and one which introduced them into the very bosom of the free States:  they had obtained a decision from the Supreme Court—­the Dred Scott decree.  In the preamble of this too celebrated decision, the highest judicial power of the Confederation did not fear to proclaim two principles:  first, that there is no difference between a slave and any other kind of property; secondly, that all American citizens may settle everywhere with their property.

What a menace for the free-soilers!  How easy to see to what lengths the South would shortly go!  Since slavery constituted property like any other, it was necessary to prohibit the majority from proscribing it in States as well as in Territories.  Who knew whether we should not some day see slaves and even slave-markets (the right of property carries with it that of sale) in the streets even of Philadelphia or Boston!

Let no one cry out against this:  those who demanded and those who framed the Dred Scott decision knew probably what they wished to do.  With the right of property understood in this wise, no State has the power either to vote the real abolition of slavery, or to forbid the introduction of slaves, or to refuse their extradition.  And, effectively, horrible laws, ordering fugitive slaves to be given up, were accorded to the violent demands of the South.  Liberty by contact with the soil, that great maxim of our Europe, was interdicted America; the very States that most detested slavery were condemned to assist, indignant and shuddering, in the federal invasion of a sheriff entering their homes to lay hands on a poor negro, who had believed in their hospitality, and who was about to be delivered up to the whip of the planter.

It was asking much of the patience of the North; yet, notwithstanding, this patience was not yet at an end.  The Administration was given up a prey to the will of the Southerners.  On their prohibition, the mails ceased to carry books, journals, letters, which excited their suspicion.  They had seized upon the policy of the Union, and they ruled it according to their liking.  No one has forgotten those enterprises, favored underhand, then disavowed after failure, those filibustering expeditions in Central America and in the islands of Cuba.  They were the policy of the South, executed by Mr. Buchanan with his accustomed docility.  The point in question was to make conquests,