Congress, the legislative department, and, of course, the judicial, its interpreter, were intended to be founded on such undoubted principles of liberty, that it would be difficult for them to use their everywhere acknowledged rights, and perform their everywhere expected duties, without first putting aside the strongest impediment to their exercise—slavery. In our judgment this has been done. There is no truth in public law more certain than that protection and allegiance are reciprocal. They must exist together or not at all. The power of the United States is adequate for the protection of all within her limits, and from all within them she expects allegiance. If she is informed, in any way to be relied on, that any person is restrained of his rights under the constitution of the United States, it is her duty to see him set at liberty, if he be confined, and see that he is redressed. It is in vain for Congress to excuse itself from acting, by saying that it is a State concern. Can a citizen of the United States, if he be a citizen, be tortured or tormented by a State, when there is no pretence that he has violated the law of either? The constitution of the United States authorises no man to hold another as a slave. The United States has no power to hold a slave. It matters not that it was _intended_ to allow some to hold others as their slaves. A very vile person may _intend_ to lock up in prison an innocent and just one, but through mistake he leaves the door unlocked; does this, in the eyes of any reasonable men, prevent his making his escape through the door? We are certain not. The only proper inquiry here is, which is supreme, the government of the Union, or the government of a particular State of it? It is not necessary to answer this. If the first deal with no one as a slave, the subordinate cannot by law. Persons may be held as slaves by fraud, by cunning, by taking advantage of the ignorance in which we hold them by force, or a successful combination of force, but not by LAW. Footnote 20: “Our house stood within a few rods of the Chesapeake bay, whose broad bosom was ever white with sails from every quarter of the habitable globe. Those beautiful vessels, robed in purest white, so delightful to the eye of freemen, were to me so many shrouded ghosts to terrify and torment me with thoughts of my wretched condition. I have often, in the deep stillness of a summer’s Sabbath, stood all alone upon the lofty banks of that noble bay, and traced, with saddened heart and tearful eye, the countless number of sails moving off to the mighty ocean. The sight of these always affected me powerfully. My thoughts would compel utterance; and then, with no audience but the Almighty, I would pour out my soul’s complaint, in my rude way, with an apostrophe to the moving multitude of ships:—