excited by the repudiation of the Missouri Compromise in the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill.

On the 2d of June, 1854, the repudiation of the Missouri compact having been consummated in the passage and Presidential approval of the Kansas-Nebraska bill-Anthony Burns having been adjudged a fugitive at Boston, President Pierce ordered the United States Cutter Morris to take him from that city to life long bondage in Virginia.

Our flag, the emblem of Freedom, proudly floating over one doomed to life long bondage! We grow sick at heart as we think : "Oh! Liberty! What crimes are committed in thy

name!"

At this time there appeared in a prominent New York paper the following spirited lines:

HAIL TO THE STARS AND STRIPES.

Hail to the Stars and Stripes! the boastful flag all hail!
The tyrant trembles now, and at the sight grows pale;
The old World groans in pain, and turns her eye to see,
Beyond the Western main, the emblem of the free.
Hail to the Stars and Stripes! hope beams in every ray!
And, shining through the bars of gloom, points out the way.
The old World sees the light that shall her cells illume;
And, shrinking back to night, oppression reads her doom.
Hail to the Stars and Stripes! they float in every sea;
The crystal waves speed on the emblem of the free!
Beneath the azure sky of soft Italia's clime,

Or where Auroras die in solitude sublime.

All hail the flaunting lie! the stars grow pale and dim-
The stripes are bloody scars, a lie the flaunting hymn!
It shields the pirate's deck, it binds a man in chains;
It yokes the captive's neck, and wipes the bloody stains.
Tear down the flaunting he! half mast the starry flag!
Insult no sunny sky with hate s polluted rag!
Destroy it ye who can! deep sink it in the waves!
It bears a fellow man to groan with fellow slaves.

Awake the burning scorn! the vengeance long and deep, .
That till a better morn, shall neither tire nor sleep-!
Swear once again the vow Oh, freeman! dare to do!
God's will is ever now! may this thy will renew!
Enfurl the boasted lie! till freedom lives again,
To reign once more in truth among untrammeled men !
Roll up the starry sheen-conceal its bloody stains;
For in its folds are seen the stamp of rusting chains.

Be bold ye heroes all! spurn, spurn the flaunting lie,
Till Peace, and Truth, and Love shall fill the bending sky;
Then floating in the air, over hill, and dale, and sea,
T'will stand forever fair, the emblem of the free!

CHAPTER XII.

THE DRED SCOTT DECISION.

"Great Heaven! Is this our mission? End in this the prayers and tears.
The toil, the strife, the watchings of our younger, better years?
Still, as the Old World rolls in light, shall ours in shadow torn,
A beamless chaos, cursed of God, through outer darkness borne?
Where the far nations looked for light, a blackness in the air?
Where for words of hope they listened, the long wail of despair?"

IN

N the year 1851, Dred Scott, an African, began suit in a local court in St. Louis, to recover his and his family's freedom from slavery.

He alleged that his master, one Dr. Emerson, an army surgeon living in Missouri, had taken him, as a slave, to the military post at Rock Island, in the State of Illinois, and, afterwards, to Fort Snelling, situated in what was originally upper Louisiana, but was at that time part of Wisconsin Territory, and now forms part of the State of Minnesota. While at this latter post, Dred Scott, with his master's consent, married a colored woman, also brought as a slave from Missouri, and of this marriage two children were born. All this happened between the years 1834 and 1838. Afterwards, Dr. Emerson brought Dred Scott and his family back to Missouri. In this suit they now claimed freedom, because, during the time of residence with their master at these military posts, slavery was there prohibited by positive law; namely, at Rock Island by the Ordinance of 1787, and later, by the Constitution of Illinois; at Fort Snelling, by the Missouri Compromise Act of 1820, and sundry other acts of Congress relating to Wisconsin Territory.

The local court, at St. Louis, before which this action was brought, appears to have made short work of the case. It had become settled legal doctrine, by Lord Mansfield's decision in the Sommersett case, rendered four years before our Declaration of Independence, that, "the state of slavery is of such a nature that it is incapable of being introduced on any reasons moral or political, but only positive law. It is so odious that

nothing can be suffered to support it but positive law." The learned Chief-Justice, therefore, ordered that Sommersett, being claimed as a Virginia slave, brought by his master into England, and attempted to be carried away against his will, should be discharged from custody or restraint, because there was no positive law in England to support slavery. The doctrine was subsequently modified by another English ChiefJustice, Lord Stowell, in 1827, to the effect, that absence of positive law to support slavery in England, only operates to suspend the master's authority, which is revived, if the slave. voluntarily returns into an English Colony where slavery does exist by positive law.

The States of the Union naturally inherited and retained the common law of England, and the principles and maxims of English jurisprudence, not necessarily abrogated by the change of government, and among others, this doctrine of Lord Mansfield. Unlike England, however, where there was no slavery and no law for or against it, some of the American States had positive laws establishing slavery, others positive laws prohibiting it. Lord Mansfield's doctrine, therefore, enlarged and strengthened by American statutes and decisions, had come to be substantially this: Slavery, being contrary to natural right, exists only by virtue of local law; if the master takes his slave from permanent residence into a jurisdiction where slavery is prohibited, the slave, therefore, acquires the right to his freedom everywhere. On the other hand, Lord Stowell's doctrine was similarly enlarged and strengthened, so as to allow the master right of transit and temporary sojourn in free States and Territories, without suspension or forfeiture of his authority over his slave.

Under the somewhat complex American system of Government, in which the Federal Union and the several States cach claim sovereignty and independent action within certain limitations, it became the theory and practice that toward each other the several States occupied the attitude of foreign nations, which relation was governed by international law, and that the principle of comity alone controlled the recognition