But we think the Dred Scott decision is erroneous.  We know the court that made it has often overruled its own decisions, and we shall do what we can to have it overrule this.  We offer no resistance to it.  Judicial decisions are of greater or less authority as precedents according to circumstances.  That this should be so, accords both with common sense and the customary understanding of the legal profession.  If this important decision had been made by the unanimous concurrence of the judges, and without any apparent partisan bias, and in accordance with legal public expectation, and with the steady practice of the departments throughout our history, and had been in no part based on assumed historical facts which are not really true; or, if wanting in some of these, it had been before the court more than once, and had there been affirmed and reaffirmed through a course of years, it then might be, perhaps would be, factious, nay, even revolutionary, not to acquiesce in it as a precedent.  But when, as is true, we find it wanting in all these claims to the public confidence, it is not resistance, it is not factions, it is not even disrespectful, to treat it as not having yet quite established a settled doctrine for the country.

Rising above all questions of technical construction to the broad and universal aspects of the issue, Mr. Lincoln continued: 

The Chief-Justice does not directly assert, but plainly assumes as a fact, that the public estimate of the black man is more favorable now than it was in the days of the Revolution.  This assumption is a mistake.  In some trifling particulars the condition of that race has been ameliorated; but as a whole, in this country, the change between then and now is decidedly the other way; and their ultimate destiny has never appeared so hopeless as in the last three or four years.  In two of the five States—­New Jersey and North Carolina—­that then gave the free negro the right of voting, the right has since been taken away; and in a third—­New York—­it has been greatly abridged; while it has not been extended, so far as I know, to a single additional State, though the number of the States has more than doubled.  In those days, as I understand, masters could, at their own pleasure, emancipate their slaves; but since then such legal restraints have been made upon emancipation as to amount almost to prohibition.  In those days, legislatures held the unquestioned power to abolish slavery in their respective States; but now it is becoming quite fashionable for State constitutions to withhold that power from the legislatures.  In those days, by common consent, the spread of the black man’s bondage to the new countries was prohibited; but now Congress decides that it will not continue the prohibition, and the Supreme Court decides that it could not if it would.  In those days, our Declaration of Independence was held sacred by all, and thought to include all; but now, to aid in making the bondage of the negro