Under the fugitive slave law, which was passed by Congress at the session of 1850, as one of the Compromise measures, introduced by Mr. Clay, a long and exciting litigation occurred to test the validity and constitutionality of the act, and the several laws on which it depended. The suit was instituted by Dred Scott, a negro slave, in the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of Missouri, in April Term, 1854, against John F. A. Sanford, his alleged owner, for trespass _vi et armis_, in holding the plaintiff and his wife and daughters in slavery in said District of Missouri, where by law slavery was prohibited; they having been previously lawfully held in slavery by a former owner—Dr. Emerson—in the State of Illinois, from whence they were taken by him to Missouri, and sold to the defendant, Sanford. The case went up on appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States, and was clearly and elaborately argued. The majority opinion, delivered by Chief Justice Taney, as also the dissenting opinions, are reported in full in Howard’s U. S. Supreme Court Reports, Volume 19, page 393. In respect to the territories the Constitution grants to Congress the power “to make all needful rules and regulations concerning the territory and _other property_ belonging to the United States.” The Court was of opinion that the clause of the Constitution applies only to the territory within the original States at the time the Constitution was adopted, and that it did not apply to future territory acquired by treaty or conquest from foreign nations. They were also of opinion that the power of Congress over such future territorial acquisitions was not unlimited, that the citizens of the States migrating to a territory were not to be regarded as colonists, subject to absolute power in Congress, but as citizens of the United States, with all the rights of citizenship guarantied by the Constitution, and that no legislation was constitutional which attempted to deprive a citizen of his property on his becoming a resident of a territory. This question in the case arose under the act of Congress prohibiting slavery in the territory of upper Louisiana, (acquired from France, afterwards the State), and of which the territory of Missouri was formed. Any obscurity as to what constitutes citizenship, will be removed by attending to the distinction between local rights of citizenship of the United States according to the Constitution. Citizenship at large in the sense of the Constitution can be conferred on a foreigner only by the naturalization laws of Congress. But each State, in the exercise of its local and reserved sovereignty, may place foreigners or other persons on a footing with its own citizens, as to political rights and privileges to be enjoyed within its own dominion. But State regulations of this character do not make the persons on whom such rights are conferred citizens of the United States or entitle them