Page:A legal review of the case of Dred Scott, as decided by the Supreme Court of the United States.djvu/53

 have stated in discussing the fourth division of our subject, that he and his master resided so long in the free State and Territory, as to become subject to their laws; but we are inclined to the opinion that the mere fact of the residence of an officer of the navy for two years at a military post, under the orders of his government, does not of itself raise a presumption of change of domicil of the officer or his servant, and that the facts agreed would not therefore warrant an inference that the plaintiff and his master became actually domiciled either in Illinois or in the Territory. But whether this be so or not, the fourteen years' residence of the plaintiff in Missouri after his return before the decision of the State court in his case, is much more conclusive evidence of his having resumed his domicil in Missouri, than the other facts of the case are of his having ever lost it. And the plaintiff in his writ alleged himself to be a citizen of Missouri, and upon that ground only claimed the right to maintain his suit in the courts of the United States.

Measuring the point adjudged, therefore, by all the material facts of the case, it is set forth at length in our head note, or may be briefly stated thus: A slave taken by his master into a State or Territory where slavery is prohibited by law, and afterwards returning with his master into a slave State, and acquiring a residence there, if deemed by the highest court of that State, after his return, to be a slave, must be deemed a slave by the courts of the United States, and therefore not entitled to sue in one of those courts as a citizen of that state. In this conclusion seven of the nine judges concur; and it is best stated by Mr. Justice Nelson, whose opinion is wholly devoted to the question of the plaintiff's condition in Missouri after his return, and is the ablest in reasoning and most judicial in tone of all the opinions of the majority. It also bears conclusive marks on its face of having been prepared to be the opinion of the court, as will be put beyond doubt by a few quotations from it. "In the view we have taken of the case," he says, when speaking of the plea in abatement, "it will not be necessary to pass upon this question, and we shall therefore proceed at once to an examination of the case upon its merits." p. 458. "Our opinion is, that the question is one which belongs to each State to decide for itself, either by its legislature or courts of justice." p. 459. "Our conclusion therefore is, upon this branch of the case, that the question involved is one depending solely upon the laws of Missouri, and that the federal court sitting in the State, and trying