Autobiography: Memories and Experiences of Moncure Daniel Conway - Vol. 2

Settlement in Cincinnati--The Dred Scott Decision--Chief JusticeTaney --Stanley Matthews--Hon. Alphonzo Taft--Literary Club-- Theatres--Visit of the Prince (now Edward VII.)--Fanny Kemble --Relics of the Visionaries--Antioch College--Hon. Horace Mann --"Memnona"--The Village "Modern Times"--Germans in Cincinnati--August Willich--JudgeStallo--My First Book--Ministry--Sacrament--Emerson in Cincinnati--Archbishop PurcellLane Seminary.

I ENTERED on my ministry in Cincinnati (First Congregational Church) in November, 1856. Cincinnati was full of excitement because of the presidential campaign in which slavery and freedom had for the first time confronted each other. My first discourse was given on November 9, the first Sunday after the election of Buchanan--a bitter disappointment to us all. My discourse, printed by the congregation, bore the title "Virtue vs. Defeat," the text being "Add to your faith virtue."

On March 6, 1857, two days after the inauguration of President Buchanan, the Supreme Court gave its famous decision in the case of the negro Dred Scott. The decision was summed up popularly in the phrase, "Black men have no rights which white men are bound to respect." The decision was given by Chief Justice Taney, sprung from an old Maryland family, and it suited the Republicans that the odious sentiment should be ascribed to him and the consenting justices personally, the new party being founded on an opposite interpretation of the Constitution. But the Chief Justice had simply interpreted the constitutional concessions to slavery by a historical reference to the ideas prevailing at the time when the Constitution was framed concerning the black race, which for more than a century had been regarded as beings of an inferior order, politically and socially, having "no rights which white men were bound to respect." The decision did not applaud this sentiment of the colonies, but it was circu

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