cases.] ...  But the Supreme Court of Missouri, so far from standing alone on this question, is supported by the decisions of other slave-States, including those in which it may be supposed there was the least disposition to favor emancipation. [Citing cases.] ...  Times may have changed, public feeling may have changed, but principles have not and do not change; and in my judgment there can be no safe basis for judicial decision but in those principles which are immutable.

These utterances, it must be remembered, occurred in the year 1852, when all slavery agitation was supposed to have been forever settled.  They show conclusively that the calm was superficial and delusive, and that this deep-reaching contest was still, as before the adjustment of 1850, actually transforming the various institutions of society.  Gradually, and as yet unnoticed by the public, the motives disclosed in these opinions were beginning to control courts of justice, and popular discussion and excitement were not only shaping legislation, but changing the tenor of legal decisions throughout the country.

Not long after the judgment by the Supreme Court of Missouri, Dred Scott and his family were sold to a man named Sandford, who was a citizen of New York.  This circumstance afforded a ground for bringing a similar action in a Federal tribunal, and accordingly Dred Scott once more sued for freedom, in the United States Circuit Court at St. Louis.[1] The case was tried in May, 1854, and a decree rendered that they “were negro slaves, the lawful property” of Sandford.  As a final effort to obtain justice, they appealed by writ of error to the Supreme Court of the United States, the highest judicial tribunal of the nation.

Before this court of last resort the case was argued a first time in the spring of 1856.  The country had been for two years in a blaze of political excitement.  Civil war was raging in Kansas; Congress was in a turmoil of partisan discussion; a Presidential election was impending, and the whole people were anxiously noting the varying phases of party politics.  Few persons knew there was such a thing as the Dred Scott case on the docket of the Supreme Court; but those few appreciated the importance of the points it involved, and several distinguished lawyers volunteered to take part in the argument.[2] Two questions were presented to the court:  First, Is Dred Scott a citizen entitled to sue?  Secondly, Did his residence at Rock Island and at Fort Snelling, under the various prohibitions of slavery existing there, work his freedom?

The Supreme Court was composed of nine justices; namely, Chief-Justice Taney and Associate Justices McLean, Wayne, Catron, Daniel, Nelson, Grier, Curtis, and Campbell.  There was at once manifested among the judges not only a lively interest in the questions presented, but a wide difference of views as to the manner of treating them.  Consultations of the Supreme Court are always shrouded in inviolable secrecy,