But this was not all.  In that same year the Supreme Court came to the aid of the South, already supported by the Executive and the Senate.  Six judges out of nine, headed by Chief Justice Taney, pronounced judgment that slaves, whether fugitive or taken by their masters into the free States, should be returned to their owners.  This celebrated case arose in Missouri, where a negro named Dred Scott—­who had been taken by his master to States where slavery was prohibited by law, who had, with his master’s consent, married and had children in the free States, and been brought back to Missouri—­sued for his freedom.  The local court granted it; the highest court of the State reversed the decision; and on appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States the case was twice argued there, and excited a wide and deep interest.  The court might have simply sent it back, as a matter belonging to the State court to decide; but it permitted itself to argue the question throughout, and pronounced on the natural inferiority of the negro, and his legal condition as property, the competence of the State courts to decide his freedom or slavery, and the right of slaveholders under the Constitution to control their property in the free States or Territories, any legislation by Congress or local legislatures to the contrary notwithstanding.  This was the climax of slavery triumphs.  The North and West, at last aroused, declared in conventions and legislative halls that slavery should advance no further.  The conflict now indeed became “irrepressible.”

At this crisis, Abraham Lincoln stepped upon the political stage, and his great career began.

As a local lawyer, even as a local politician, his work was practically done.  He came forth as an avowed antagonist of Douglas, who was the strongest man in Illinois, and the leader of the Democratic party in Congress.  He came forth as the champion of the antislavery cause in his native State, and soon attracted the eyes of the whole nation.  His memorable controversy with Douglas was the turning-point of his life.  He became a statesman, as well as a patriot, broad, lofty, and indignant at wrongs.  Theretofore he had been a conservative Whig, a devoted follower of Clay.  But as soon as the Missouri Compromise was repealed he put forth his noblest energies in behalf of justice, of right, and of humanity.

As he was driving one day from a little town in which court had been held, a brother lawyer said to him, “Lincoln, the time is coming when we shall either be Abolitionists or Democrats;” to which he replied, musingly, “When that time comes, my mind is made up, for I believe the slavery question can never be successfully compromised.”  And when his mind was made up, after earnest deliberation, he rarely changed it, and became as firm as a rock.  His convictions were exceedingly strong, and few influences could shake them.  That quiet conversation in his buggy, in a retired road, with a brother lawyer, was a political baptism.  He had taken his stand on one side of a great question which would rend in twain the whole country, and make a mighty conflagration, out of whose fires the truth should come victorious.