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THE NEW ORDER OF BATTLE – Some of our rabid anti-slavery journals have been venting their wrath in the most violent terms of abuse against the late decisions of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case. With the receipt of the news, the New York Tribune flatly declared that these decisions were “entitled to just so much moral weight as would be the judgment of a majority of those congregated in any Washington barroom.” The Boston Atlas said the “names of the Judges would go down to posterity with that of Arnold the traitor;” and the Boston Chronicle, not wishing to be found behind its abolition neighbors, fiercely remarks that “a majority of the Court are great scoundrels.” The Albany Journal was equally violent in its denunciation in the outset; but with a little reflection, it seems to have made the discovery that whatever may be the merits or demerits of the judgment in the Dred Scott case, it is the law of the land henceforth, till it shall have been reversed by the same tribunal that has decreed it. Thus the Journal of Wednesday says: -
“No shaking of old ermines, nor fluttering of moth [illegible] silk gowns, nor invocation of the shades of Marshall, Jay, Ellsworth and Story – no extent of snivel [illegible] about the purity of the federal judiciary and [illegible] obligation to put up with false law and falser equity, with avail at all to persuade the people of the free States that slavery has unrestricted rights in the public domain, and neither freedom nor Congress has any opposing right therein – that people of African descent cannot be citizens of the United States – and that men and women can lawfully be held in slavery on free soil. No, the people will from the hour of this Dred decision, unintermittingly [illegible] this mixed conspiracy, till through a recovered and reorganized federal judiciary and a republicanized Executive, they can administer justice and good government to the whole nation.
Very well. This is the constitutional and legitimate way of proceeding in behalf of a reversal of this late decision. It can only be reached through a change of the majority of the Court, and that will require the incessant labor and political agitation of many years. By the year of grace 1860, however, we shall understand the full extent and hearings of a sectional organization of parties.
