But when, as is true, we find it wanting in all these claims to the
public confidence, it is not resistance, it is not factious, it is not
even disrespectful to treat it as not having yet quite established a
settled doctrine for the country.

I have said in substance, that the Dred Scott decision was in part based
on assumed historical facts which were not really true, and I ought not
to leave the subject without giving some reasons for saying this, I
therefore give an instance or two, which I think fully sustain me. Chief
Justice Taney, in delivering the opinion of the majority of the court,
insists at great length that negroes were no part of the people who
made, or for whom was made, the Declaration of Independence, or the
Constitution of the United States.

On the contrary, Judge Curtis, in his dissenting opinion, shows that in
five of the then thirteen States--to wit, New Hampshire, Massachusetts,
New York, New Jersey, and North Carolina--free negroes were voters, and
in proportion to their numbers had the same part in making the
Constitution that the white people had. He shows this with so much
particularity as to leave no doubt of its truth; and as a sort of
conclusion on that point, holds the following language:

"The Constitution was ordained and established by the people of the
United States, through the action, in each State, of those persons
who were qualified by its laws to act thereon in behalf of
themselves and all other citizens of the State. In some of the
States, as we have seen, coloured persons were among those
qualified by law to act on the subject. These coloured persons were
not only included in the body of 'the people of the United States'
by whom the Constitution was ordained and established; but in at