Perrysburg journal. (Perrysburg, Wood Co., O. [Ohio]) 186?-1965, 1900-10-12
DRED SCOTT DECISION.
Invoked by Democrats to Sus-
tain Anti-Expansion.
REPUBLICAN POSITION IN 1850.

Took tho Same Ground Then rs Now,
vhnt Congross Has Full Power To
Govern All United Sintes Territory
whioh Has Not Reaohed statchouJ.
How the deadly virus OF states
rights, born of the determination to
destroy the Union, II need be, to sus-
tain human slavery, inhere in the De-
mocracy! David b. Hill, of New YORK,
in a speech at Brooklyn recently, de-
clared that, "it Is monstrous doctrine
that the constitution does not extend
to the territories" He added, by way
OF more complete explanation, that "it
has only now been invoked to justify
the proposed establishment of colonial
governments, which are confessedly to
be and to remain outside of the con-
stitution." In this historical state
ment, Governor Hill is forty years out
of the road; for the doctrine that he
denounces was proudly Incorporated
by the Republican party in its national
platform of 1860, upon which Abra-
ham Lincoln stood AT the time of his
election to be president of the United
States. The seventh plank in that plat
form reads:
"7. That the new dogma,-that the
constitution, of it's own force, carries
slavery into any or all of the terri
tories of the United States,-is dam
gerous political heresy, at variance
with the explicit provisions Of that in
exposition, and with legislative and ju-
dicial precedent; is revolutionary in its
tendency and subversive of the peace
and harmony of the country"
II this quotation is not plain enough
to show the genesis of the present
Democratic way of stating the doctrine
that "the constitution follows the
flag," that had its birth in sup
port of human slavery, 1t is put
beyond question by the eighth section
of the Republican national platform of
the same year, to-wit:
IS. That the normal condition OF
all the territory of the United States
is that OF freedom; that, as our repub-
lican fathers, when they had abolished
slavery in all our national territory,
ordained that no person should be de-
prived Of life, liberty, or property
without due process OF law, it becomes
our duty. by legislation, whenever such
legislation is necessary, to maintain
this provision OF the constitution
against all attempts to violate it; and
10 trth nf M
q territorial legislature, or of any in
dividuals, to give legal existence to
slavery in any territory of the United
States"
There is the Democratic party ar
raigned forty years ago for setting
aside the express provisions of the
constitution itself, in order to force
slavery into free territory. That too.
as today, was done under the very
identical plea that they now put for
ward, that the constitution OF its own
force carries slavery into any territory
of the United States" Mr.. Hill knows
perfectly well where the Democratic
party got its pretended warrant for the
doctrine that it advocated forty years
ago, and which 1t has now revived. In
support of it, he quoted United States
supreme court decision, which he gave
as "19 Howard, 393-477," denying that
congress has plenary power to rule
territory at its discretion.
Lir. Hill is too good a lawyer not to
know that the quotation, whose origin
he thus concealed under technical
phrase, was really that most detested
opinion of Chief Justice Taney, known
as the Dred Scott decision, by which
control over the extension of the area
of slavery was denied to congress and
to any and every territory; and its
right to indefinite expansion was de-
clared by a majority of the supreme
court to be implied in the very terms
of the constitution.
BY the bred Scott decision slavery
was ordained to be the irreversible
law of the republic" and the basis ol
that decision survives today in the
Democratic national platform adopted
at Kansas City July S, 1900, in the
smoothly stated but misleading words
that "the constitution follows tht
flag" This was born of that infamous
decision, which the war shot to pieces
when 1t destroyed human slavery. Tht
Democratic occasion of that day for tn,
false doctrine has been destroyed, bu
the doctrine still survives. as pernici
GUS as ever.