“Southern opinion upon the subject of Southern slavery . . . is now the supreme law of the land.” The decision “crushes the life out of that miserable . . . Black Republican organization.”13 But the Republican party declined to die. Its press condemned this “Jesuitical decision” based on “gross historical falsehoods” and a “willful perversion” of the Constitution. If this ruling “shall stand for law,” wrote William Cullen Bryant, slavery was no longer the “peculiar institution” of fifteen states but “a Federal institution, the common patrimony and shame of all the States. . . . Hereafter,
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