Since then not only individuals but States have been possessed with a dark and fell spirit in relation to slavery, whose gratification is sought in the pursuit of measures whose inevitable consequence must be the overthrow and destruction of our Government.

Under such circumstances it does not behoove the State of Missouri to show the least countenance to any measure which might gratify this spirit.

She is willing to assume her full responsibility for the existence slavery within her limits, nor does she seek to share or divide it with others.
To this partisan bravado the third judge replied with a dignified rebuke; in his dissenting opinion he said: [Sidenote] Gamble, J., 15 Mo.

Reports, pp.

589-92.
As citizens of a slave-holding State, we have no right to complain of our neighbors of Illinois, because they introduce into their State Constitution a prohibition of slavery; nor has any citizen of Missouri who removes with his slave to Illinois a right to complain that the fundamental law of the State to which he removes, and in which he makes his residence, dissolves the relation between him and his slave.