We cannot absolutely know that all these exact adaptations are the
result of preconcert. 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,--Stephen, Franklin, Roger,
and James, for instance--and we see these timbers joined together, and
see they exactly make the frame of a house or a mill, all the tenons
and mortices exactly fitting, and all the lengths and proportions of
the different pieces exactly adapted to their respective places, and
not a piece too many or too few, not omitting even scaffolding--or, if
a single piece be lacking, we see the place in the frame exactly fitted
and prepared yet to bring such piece in--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.

It should not be overlooked that, by the Nebraska bill, the people of a
_State_ as well as Territory were to be left "perfectly free," "subject
only to the Constitution." Why mention a State? They were legislating
for Territories, and not for or about States. Certainly the people of
a State are and ought to be subject to the Constitution of the United
States; but why is mention of this lugged into this merely Territorial
law? Why are the people of a Territory and the people of a State
therein lumped together, and their relation to the Constitution therein
treated as being precisely the same? While the opinion of the court,
by Chief Justice Taney, in the Dred Scott case, and the separate
opinions of all the concurring judges, expressly declare that the
Constitution of the United States neither permits Congress nor a
Territorial Legislature to exclude slavery from any United States
Territory, they all omit to declare whether or not the same
Constitution permits a State, or the people of a State, to exclude it.