The election came.  Mr. Buchanan was elected, and the indorsement, such as it was, secured.  That was the second point gained.  The indorsement, however, fell short of a clear popular majority by nearly four hundred thousand votes, and so, perhaps, was not overwhelmingly reliable and satisfactory.  The out-going President, in his last annual message, as impressively as possible echoed back upon the people the weight and authority of the indorsement.  The Supreme Court met again; did not announce their decision, but ordered a reargument.  The presidential inauguration came, and still no decision of the court; but the incoming President in his inaugural address fervently exhorted the people to abide by the forthcoming decision, whatever it might be.  Then, in a few days, came the decision.

The reputed author of the Nebraska bill finds an early occasion to make a speech at this capital indorseing the Dred Scott decision, and vehemently denouncing all opposition to it.  The new President, too, seizes the early occasion of the Silliman letter to indorse and strongly construe that decision, and to express his astonishment that any different view had ever been entertained!

At length a squabble springs up between the President and the author of the Nebraska bill, on the mere question of fact, whether the Lecompton Constitution was or was not, in any just sense, made by the people of Kansas; and in that quarrel the latter declares that all he wants is a fair vote for the people, and that he cares not whether slavery be voted down or voted up.  I do not understand his declaration that he cares not whether slavery be voted down or voted up to be intended by him other than as an apt definition of the policy he would impress upon the public mind—­the principle for which he declares he has suffered so much, and is ready to suffer to the end.  And well may he cling to that principle.  If he has any parental feeling, well may he cling to it.  That principle is the only shred left of his original Nebraska doctrine.  Under the Dred Scott decision “squatter sovereignty” squatted out of existence, tumbled down like temporary scaffolding—­like the mould at the foundry served through one blast and fell back into loose sand,—­helped to carry an election, and then was kicked to the winds.  His late joint struggle with the Republicans against the Lecompton Constitution involves nothing of the original Nebraska doctrine.  That struggle was made on a point—­the right of a people to make their own constitution—­upon which he and the Republicans have never differed.

The several points of the Dred Scott decision, in connection with Senator Douglas’s “care not” policy, constitute the piece of machinery in its present state of advancement.  This was the third point gained.  The working points of that machinery are: 

(1) That no negro slave, imported as such from Africa, and no descendant of such slave, can ever be a citizen of any State, in the sense of that term as used in the Constitution of the United States.  This point is made in order to deprive the negro, in every possible event, of the benefit of that provision of the United States Constitution which declares that “the citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States.”