Page:A legal review of the case of Dred Scott, as decided by the Supreme Court of the United States.djvu/46

 rights conferred by that clause, it must at least exempt citizens from being made slaves. And it seems to us that it is only in view of this provision that the question whether Dred Scott acquired a domicil in the free State could become at all material, for the two years' residence of his master and himself in Illinois was certainly long enough to subject them to the operation of the laws of that State.

Cases are to be found in the highest court of every slave State in which the question has arisen, recognizing the condition of freedom acquired by a slave who has been submitted, with the consent of his master, to the operation of a Constitution or laws forbidding slavery. Such cases are David v. Porter, 4 Har. & McHen. 418, in Maryland; Griffith v. Fanny, Gilmer, 143, and Foster v. Foster, 10 Grat. 485, in Virginia; Rankin v. Lydia,2 A. K. Marsh. 470, and Mercer v. Gilman, 11 B. Monroe, 210, in Kentucky; and Blackmore v. Phill, 7 Yerger, 452, in Tennessee. The only disputes have been upon what facts would show the consent of the master, and how long a residence was necessary to give effect to the law of the free State. The decisions in the States of Maryland and Virginia, mutually giving effect to each other's statutes, enfranchising slaves imported contrary to law, strongly tend to the same conclusion; for there is surely no reason why a general law, prohibiting all slavery whatever, should have a more limited effect, in any respect, than a statute conferring freedom on slaves brought into the State under particular circumstances. Such decisions were Stewart v. Oakes, 5 Har. & Johns. 107, note; and Hunter v. Fulcher, 1 Leigh, 172.

The only other slave States, so far as we know, in which decisions have been made upon this question, are Missouri and Louisiana; and it is somewhat remarkable, in view of the argument, to which we have already alluded, of the peculiar rights supposed to be secured by the treaty under which the Louisiana Territory was acquired, that no courts have gone farther than those of the States formed out of this Territory, in recognizing the rights of slaves to their freedom, growing out of a residence in a free State or Territory.

The supreme court of Missouri, within the first sixteen years after the admission of that State into the Union, repeatedly decided that a slave residing for any time, either in the State of Illinois or in the Territory of the United States, where slavery was prohibited by act of Congress, was free, and might enforce his right to freedom in the courts of Missouri; and even applied this doctrine to the