The people and press of that section seized upon the salient phrase of the statement, and applying it in the present tense, accused the Chief-Justice with saying that "a negro has no rights which a white man is bound to respect." This was certainly a distortion of his exact words and meaning; yet the exaggeration was more than half excusable, in view of the literal and unbending rigor with which he proclaimed the constitutional disability of the entire African race in the United States, and denied their birthright in the Declaration of Independence.

His unmerciful logic made the black before the law less than a slave; it reduced him to the status of a horse or dog, a bale of dry-goods or a block of stone.

Against such a debasement of any living image of the Divine Maker the resentment of the public conscience of the North was quick and unsparing.
Had Chief-Justice Taney's delineation been historically correct, it would have been nevertheless unwise and unchristian to embody it in the form of a disqualifying legal sentence and an indelible political brand.

But its manifest untruth was clearly shown by Justice Curtis in his dissenting opinion.

He reminded the Chief-Justice that at the adoption of the Constitution: [Sidenote] 19 Howard, p.