In Congress, Charles Sumner made a number of eloquent speeches on what he called the “crime against Kansas”; and in them he openly attacked slavery. One day, as he was sitting in the members’ reading-room, a Southern member called Brookes came in. Although there were several other people in the room, Brookes fell upon Sumner, and with his heavy walking-stick, which was weighted with lead at the end, beat him within an inch of his life. For the next four years Sumner was an invalid, and unable to take part in politics. This incident caused great indignation in the North; their indignation was heightened by the attempt to force slavery on Kansas, till it grew in very many cases to a real hatred of slavery itself. But there was still a large party in the North which did not disapprove of slavery. This party was led, of course, by Douglas. Douglas had been successful up till now, because he represented the ordinary man of the North, whose conscience was not yet awake, who did not see that slavery, in itself, was wrong. Lincoln had never really succeeded until now, because his conscience had always been awake, and the ordinary Northerner was not ready to follow him. The whole question of slavery was brought under discussion in the next year--1857--by the famous case of a negro called Dred Scott. Dred Scott claimed his freedom before the United States courts, because his master, a doctor, had taken him to live in the free State of Illinois. The chief-justice--Taney--was an extreme pro-slavery man. He was not satisfied with deciding the case against Dred Scott; he went much further, and declared that since a negro is property and not a person in the legal sense, he could not bring a case before an American court. A negro, he declared, has no rights which a white man is bound to respect. The South, of course, was delighted with this verdict. What it meant was this. When the Declaration of Independence declared that all men are equal, and possess right to life and liberty, what was intended was not all men, but all white men, since black men are not legally men. And yet free negroes had fought in the War of Independence, and signed the Declaration. To the North such reasoning was hateful. People like Mr. Seward of New York began to say, If slavery is part of the Constitution of America, there is a law that is higher than the Constitution--the moral law. Abraham Lincoln in a noble speech declared: “In some respects the black woman is certainly not my equal, but in her natural right to eat the bread she earns with her own hands she is my equal, and the equal of all others.” The point was, could a negro have rights? The Dred Scott decision declared “no,” the South shouted “no.” The Republican party said “yes.” In this same year a free election at last took place in Kansas; and a huge majority decided that the State should not hold slaves. All these events showed that troublous times were coming.