The Supreme Court of the United States decided in a fugitive-slave case, one Dred Scott, that no negro slave could be any State citizen; that neither Congress nor a territorial organization can exclude slavery; that the United States courts would not decide whether a slave in a free State becomes free, but left that to the slave-holding State courts. Lincoln, in debate with Senator Douglas, asserted that the latter, Chief Justice Taney, and others, were in a league to perpetuate slavery and extend it. "We cannot absolutely know, but when we see a lot of framed timbers, different portions of which we know have been gotten out at different times and places, and by different workmen--as Stephen, Franklin, Roger, and James (Douglas, President Pierce, Taney, Buchanan), and when we see these timbers joined together, and see they exactly make the frame of a house or mill ... in such a case we find it impossible not to believe that Stephen, and Franklin, and Roger, and James all understood one another from the beginning, and all worked upon a common plan or draft, drawn up before the first blow was struck." --(The "Divided House" Speech, June 17, 1858, Springfield, Illinois.) * * * * * PLAYING CUTTLEFISH. "Judge Douglas is playing cuttlefish!--a small species of fish that has no mode of defending itself when pursued except by throwing out a black fluid which makes the water so dark the enemy cannot see it, and thus it escapes."--(Lincoln in Lincoln-Douglas Debate, Illinois, 1858.) * * * * * A VOICE FROM THE DEAD. "Fellow citizens, my friend, Mr. Douglas, made the startling announcement to-day that the Whigs are dead. If that be so, you will now experience the novelty of hearing a speech from a dead man." With his arms waving like windmill-sails, and his frame vibrating in every one of the seventy-five inches perpendicular, he shrilled: "And I suppose you might properly say, or sing, in the language of the old hymn: 'Hark, from the tombs a doleful sound!'"--(Lincoln-Douglas Debate, 1858.) * * * * * "IF I MUST GO DOWN, LET IT BE LINKED TO TRUTH."