interfere on the one side or the other, but protecting each individual
in his constitutional rights, to leave every independent community to
determine and adjust all domestic questions as in their wisdom may
seem best."

In other speeches made elsewhere, in New England and in New York the
equality of the South as joint owners was declared and maintained, as
I had often done before the people of Mississippi and in the Senate of
the United States when the subject was in controversy. The position
taken by me in 1850, in the form of an amendment offered to one of the
compromise measures of that year, was intended to assert the equal
right of all property to the protection of the United States, and to
deny to any legislative body the power to abridge that right. The
decision of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case has fully
sustained our position in the following passage:

"If Congress itself cannot do this, (prohibit slavery in a Territory,)
if it is beyond the powers conferred on the Federal Government--it
will be admitted, we presume, that it could not authorize a
territorial government to exercise them. _It could confer no power on
any local government established by its authority, to violate the
provisions of the Constitution._

"And if the Constitution recognizes the right of property of the
master in a slave; and makes no distinction between that description
of property and other property owned by a citizen, _no tribunal_,
acting under the authority of the United States, whether legislative,
executive, or judicial, has a right to draw such a distinction, or
deny to it the benefit of the provisions and guarantees which have
been provided for the protection of private property against the