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The Dred Scott Decision in the Ohio Legislature.
The Committee on Federal Relations in the Ohio House made a very full report in reaction to the Dred Scott case, on the 1st inst., accompanied with a bill and resolutions.
The bill is to prevent slaveholding and kidnapping in Ohio. It provides:
1. That any person attempting to hold another as a slave, directly or indirectly, shall be fined and imprisoned.
2. That if any person shall seize or arrest, or use any force or fraud for the purpose of detaining any other person upon pretence that such a person is a fugitive from service, he shall be punished by fine and imprisonment.
3. That any attempt to kidnap with intent to carry them out of the State, for the purpose of enslaving them, shall be punished by imprisonment in the penitentiary.
4. That the provisions of the bill shall not apply to any act lawfully done by any marshal in the execution of any legal process.
Among the resolutions reported are the following:
That the doctrine also announced in behalf of a majority of the Court, that there exists no power in the General Government to exclude Slavery from the Territories of the United States, subverts express provisions of the Constitution, annuls the just authority of the people of the United States over their own Territories, and contradicts the whole practice of the Government under every Administration, from that of WASHINGTON to that of POLK.
That in the promulgation of the doctrine against which we now protest, we recognize the natural effect of the ascendancy of the Slave power in the Supreme Court of the United States, secured by the arrangement with the Circuits, which gives to the Slave States, with less than one-third of the free population of this Union, five out of nine Judges, leaving to the Free States, with more than two-thirds of the free population, only four; and we hereby instruct our Senators, and request our Representatives in Congress, to use their best endeavors to obtain such a modification of existing laws as will secure to the Free States their just representation in that tribunal.
In addition to this, Senator GRISWOLD has reported to the Senate resolutions which, in view of Kansas outrages, propose $100,000 for the protection of Ohio citizens, to be employed by the Governor as his discretion shall dictate.
