The Supreme Court of the United States decided in a fugitive-slave
case, one Dred Scott, that no negro slave could be any State citizen;
that neither Congress nor a territorial organization can exclude
slavery; that the United States courts would not decide whether a slave
in a free State becomes free, but left that to the slave-holding State
courts. Lincoln, in debate with Senator Douglas, asserted that the
latter, Chief Justice Taney, and others, were in a league to perpetuate
slavery and extend it.
"We cannot absolutely know, but when we see a lot of framed timbers,
different portions of which we know have been gotten out at different
times and places, and by different workmen--as Stephen, Franklin,
Roger, and James (Douglas, President Pierce, Taney, Buchanan), and when
we see these timbers joined together, and see they exactly make the
frame of a house or mill ... in such a case we find it impossible not
to believe that Stephen, and Franklin, and Roger, and James all
understood one another from the beginning, and all worked upon a common
plan or draft, drawn up before the first blow was struck." --(The
"Divided House" Speech, June 17, 1858, Springfield, Illinois.)
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