If, by reason of any want or infirmity in the laws of
Illinois, or of conformity on his part to their behests, Dred Scott
remained a slave while he remained in that State, then--for the sake of
learning the effect on him of his territorial residence beyond the
Mississippi, and of his marriage and other proceedings there, and the
effect of the sojournment and marriage of Harriet, in the same
territory, upon herself and her children--it might become needful to
advance one other step into the investigation of the law; to inspect the
Missouri Compromise, banishing slavery to the south of the line of 36 deg.
30' in the Louisiana purchase.
"But no exigency of the cause ever demanded or justified that advance;
for six of the Justices, including the Chief Justice himself, decided
that the _status_ of the plaintiff, as free or slave, was dependent, not
upon the laws of the State in which he had been, but of the State of
Missouri, in which he was at the commencement of the suit. The Chief
Justice asserted that 'it is now firmly settled by the decisions of the
highest court in the State, that Scott and his family, on their return
were not free, but were, by the laws of Missouri, the property of the
defendant.' This was the burden of the opinion of Nelson, who declares
'the question is one solely depending upon the law of Missouri, and that
the Federal Court, sitting in the State, and trying the case before us,
was bound to follow it.
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