Argument of George T. Curtis, Esq., In the Case of Dred Scott, Plaintiff in Error, Vs. John F. A. Sandford

Excerpt from Argument of George T. Curtis, Esq., In the Case of Dred Scott, Plaintiff in Error, Vs. John F. A. Sandford: Delivered in the Supreme Court of the United States, December 18, 1856 I wish, in the next place, to say, may it please your Honors, what indeed is obvious to every one, - that this is eminently a historical question. But I shall press that consideration somewhat further than it is generally carried on this subject, and much furtherthan it has been carried by the counsel for the defend ant in error; for I believe it to be true of this, as it is of almost all questions of power arising under the Con stitution, that when you have Once ascertained the his torical facts out of which the particular provision arose, and have placed those facts in their true historical re lations, you have gone far towards deciding the whole controversy. SO true is it that every power and func tion Of this Government had its origin in some previ ously existing facts of the national history, or in some then existing state of things, that it is impossible to approach one of these questions as one of mere theory, or to solve it by the aid of any merely speculative rea soning. Hence it is eminently necessary, on all such oc casions, to ascertain the history Of the subject supposed to be involved in a controverted power of Congress, and, above all, to approach it with the single purpose of drawing that deduction which the constitutional history of the country clearly warrants. The first proposition that I shall maintain, then, is the following. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.