But bear this in mind: if this demand had been acceded to, that meant that every territory in the United States which would become a state—and rememb… - Harry V. Jaffa

And so, the idea of slave property contradicts the idea of private property, and the Southerners taking their stand on their property rights and their slaves were, in fact, taking their stand on a principle which was incompatible with the idea of constitutional government.

The 14th Amendment was intended to drive a stake through the heart of Dred Scott. The heart of that opinion consisted in the assertion that Negroes were so far inferior that they had no rights which white men were bound to respect. This meant that as far as the Constitution was concerned, the distance between whites and blacks was no less than the distance between whites and any other inferior species. A white man had the same right to rule a Negro as he had to rule dog or a horse. Hence according to Taney blacks were not and could not have been included in the proposition "that all men are created equal." Whether or not they were intended to be so included was among the questions most fiercely debated by Lincoln and Douglas.

The motto of the United States is "e pluribus unum", or "from many, one." Originally, this referred to the one union formed from the many states. It became the motto of the country because we had to fight a great civil war to prevent the manyness of the states from destroying the oneness of the union. What led manyness nearly to destroy oneness was the presence of slavery in many of the states. The diversity that tolerated the difference between slavery and freedom had become intolerable. A crisis had been reached in which, according to the greatest American, the house divided had to cease being divided. It had to become either all free or all slave.