Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/888

 government. Congress can exercise no power over the rights of persons or property of a citizen in the territory which is prohibited by the constitution. The government and the citizen, whenever the territory is open to settlement, both enter it with their respective rights defined and limited by the constitution.

2. Congress has no right to prohibit the citizens of any particular state or states from taking up their home there, while it permits citizens of other states to do so. Nor has it a right to give privileges to one class of citizens which it refuses to another. The territory is acquired for their equal and common benefit—and if open to any, it must be open to all upon equal and the same terms.

3. Every citizen has a right to take with him into the territory any article of property which the constitution of the United States recognizes as property.

4. The constitution of the United States recognizes slaves as property, and pledges the federal government to protect it. And Congress cannot exercise any more authority over property of that description than it may constitutionally exercise over property of any other kind.

5. The act of Congress, therefore, prohibiting a citizen of the United States from taking with him his slaves when he removes to the territory in question to reside, is an exercise of authority over private property which is not warranted by the constitution—and the removal of the plaintiff, by his owner, to that territory, gave him no title to freedom.

1. The plaintiff acquired no title to freedom by being taken, by his owner, to Rock Island, in Illinois, and brought back to Missouri. This court has heretofore decided that the status or condition of a person of African descent depended on the laws of the state in which he resided.

2. It has been settled by the decisions of the highest court in Missouri, that, by the laws of that state, a slave does not become entitled to his freedom where the owner takes him to reside in a state where slavery is not permitted, and afterwards brings him back to Missouri.

Conclusion. It follows that it is apparent upon the record that the court below erred in its judgment on the plea in abatement, and also erred in giving judgment for the defendant, when the exception shows that the plaintiff was not a citizen of the United States. And as the Circuit Court had no jurisdiction, either in the case stated in the plea in abatement, or in the one stated in the exception, its judgment in favor of the defendant is erroneous, and must be reversed.

It was held by seven judges (M'Lean and Curtis dissenting) that the record showed on the part of Scott a disability to maintain his suit. Of these judges, Taney, Wayne and Daniel held that the fact set forth in the plea in abatement in the court below, and admitted in the demurrer, "that the plaintiff was a negro of African descent, whose ancestors were of pure African blood, and who were brought into this country and sold as slaves," showed him