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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: JOHN CABELL BRECKENRIDGE. OF KENTUCKY. (born 1821, Died 1875.) ON THE DRED SCOTT DECISION, BEFORE THE KENTUCKY LEGISLATURE, DECEMBER, 1859. The election took place on Monday. The day before I received a letter signed by a number of gentlemen in the Legislature asking my opinion in reference to the Dred Scott decision, in reference to Territorial sovereignty and the power of Congress to protect the property of citizens within the Territories. I received that letter with profound respect, and only regret that it did not come to my hands in time, that I might answer it before the election. Gentlemen, I bow to the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States upon every question within its proper jurisdiction, whether it corresponds with my private opinion or not; only, I bow a trifle lower when it happens to do so, as the decision in this Dred Scott case does. 28 I approve it in all its parts as a sound exposition of the law and constitutional rights of the States, and citizens that inhabit them. I was in the Congress of the United States when that Missouri line was repealed. I never would have voted for any bill organizing the Territory of Kansas as long as that odious stigma upon our institutions remained upon the statute book. I voted cheerfully for its repeal, and in doing that I cast no reflection upon the wise patriots who acquiesced in it at the time it was established. It was repealed, and we passed the act known as the Kansas-Nebraska bill. The Abolition, or quasi Abolition, party of the United States were constantly contending that it was the right of Congress to prohibit slavery in the common Territories of the Union. The Democratic party, aided by most of the gentlemen from the South, took the opposite view of the case. Our object was, if pos...