The Court, after holding that Scott could not maintain his action for want of citizenship, decided among other things that: "Whatever the General Government acquires it acquires for the benefit of the people of the several States who created it. It is their trustee, acting for them and charged with the duty of promoting the interests of the whole people of the Union. * * * * The right of property in a slave is distinctly and expressly affirmed in the Constitution. The right to traffic in it, like an ordinary article of merchandise and property, is guaranteed to the citizens of the United States. * * * * The Government * * * is pledged to protect it in all future time. * * * * The act of Congress which prohibits a citizen from holding and owning property of this kind in the territory of the United States north of the line mentioned (36 degrees 30 minutes) is not warranted by the Constitution and is therefore void. * * * * * If Congress cannot do this it will be admitted that it could not authorize a territorial legislature to do it." Thousands of copies of the opinion of Judge Taney were printed and distributed among the people by the Democrats who, at first, were so elated over the blow dealt to the Republican fanatics that they overlooked the fact that the decision was even more fatal to the favorite doctrine of the Northern wing of their own party. The dissenting opinions were printed in enormous numbers by Republican committees and distributed among the anti-slavery people of the Northern and Middle States. Far from settling the controversy, the powerful conflicting opinions confirmed the already inveterate prejudices and disclosed with scientific clearness the fact, long dimly felt, that there existed two fundamentally different and irreconcilably hostile theories of government among the people which must sooner or later grapple for the mastery. Naturally among Northern Democrats the first emotion on hearing of the decision was exultation over the disastrous reverse suffered by the Republicans, whose whole political creed seemed annihilated. They had declared in sounding phrase that it was the duty of Congress to wipe from the Territories those twin relics of barbarism, slavery and polygamy; and promptly the Supreme Court had decided that Congress had no such power. But it soon grew uncomfortably clear to them that while the decision upset the favorite dogma of the Republicans, it was utterly inconsistent with the doctrine of popular sovereignty, the fundamental tenet of Northern Democratic faith. The decision was not only a victory of the Democrats over the Republicans, but a complete victory of the Southern slave-holding Democracy over that of the free North.