The Constitutional Power of Congress Over the Territories. An Argument Delivered in the Supreme Court of the United States, December 18, 1856, in the Case of Dred Scott, Plaintiff in Error, vs. John F. A. Sandford

A landmark legal treatise arguing against the infamous Supreme Court decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford, which upheld slavery and denied citizenship rights to African Americans in the territories of the United States. Curtis's eloquent and passionate defense of the unenumerated rights of all people against arbitrary state power remains relevant today.

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