If any one of the three branches of government had done their job properly, there never would have been a Civil War.
Dred Scott Decision:
1856 - Victory For Slavery, Defeat For Scott
The Scott case was filed with the Supreme Court on December 30, 1854, and set for oral argument on the Court's February 1856 Term before Justices John A. Campbell, John Catron, Benjamin R. Curtis, Peter Daniel, Robert Cooper Grier, John McLean, Samuel Nelson, Roger Brooke Taney, and James M. Wayne.
The political makeup of the Court would weigh heavily in its eventual decision. Southern and pro-slavery justices had a clear majority.
- Campbell was from Alabama.
- Catron was from Tennessee.
- Curtis was from Massachusetts, but was sympathetic to the South.
- Daniel was from Virginia.
- Grier was from Pennsylvania, but he was a conservative states' rights advocate.
- McLean, from Ohio, was the only openly anti-slavery justice on the Court.
- Nelson was from New York, but like Grier he was a defender of states' rights and lukewarm to the anti-slavery cause.
- Taney, the chief justice, was from Maryland and the leader of the Court's Southern majority, and finally,
- Wayne was from Georgia.
The justices also were conscious of the fact that 1856 was an election year and that the Scott decision would have important political consequences.
During the 1856 February Term, the justices listened to the parties' arguments for three days. Scott's attorneys presented the "free soil" argument, one favored by Northern abolitionists: once a slave stepped into a free state or territory, he or she was emancipated, or else the power to prohibit slavery was meaningless. Sanford's attorneys presented the states' rights argument, which favored the institution of slavery: Scott had been a slave in Missouri, he had returned to Missouri, and had subjected himself to the jurisdiction of Missouri law and Missouri courts. Therefore, Missouri was entitled to declare Scott a slave, and ignore the fact that Scott would not be a slave elsewhere.
Not surprisingly, most of the justices were in favor of rejecting Scott's freedom plea. However, they could not agree on the proper legal grounds. Some justices wanted to hold that a slave couldn't sue in federal court, other justices wanted to discuss Congressional power to prohibit slavery in the territories and the constitutionality of the Missouri Compromise. The justices decided to postpone their decision until after the presidential election and ordered Scott's and Sanford's lawyers to re-argue the case during the Court's 1856 December Term.
In November 1856, Democrat James Buchanan was elected President. Buchanan, indifferent to the slavery issue, would sit idly by over the next four years while the country was split into North and South and headed toward civil war. After the second round of oral arguments in December, during which the parties reiterated the same basic positions, Chief Justice Taney announced the decision of the majority of the Court. Taney and six other justices voted to hold that Scott was still a slave. Taney refused to recognize any rights for blacks as citizens under the U.S. Constitution:
"We think they are not, and that they are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word "citizens" in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States.
On the contrary, they were at that time considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings, who had been subjugated by the dominant race, and, whether emancipated or not, yet remained subject to their authority, and had no rights or privileges but such as those who held the power and the Government might choose to grant them."
From this holding, Taney went on to state that Scott was a slave wherever he went, and could be reclaimed at any time by his lawful owner under that provision of the Constitution that forbids Congress from depriving Americans of life, liberty, and property without due process of law. Taney held that Scott was "property" and therefore the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional:
"An Act of Congress which deprives a citizen of the United States of his property, merely because he came himself or brought his property into a particular Territory of the United States, and who had committed no offense against the laws, could hardly be dignified with the name of due process of law."
Scott was a slave once again, and the South had won an important victory. The Missouri Compromise, which had preserved the political status quo for nearly 40 years, was swept away. The North would eventually prevail and abolish slavery, but it would do so only after many battles of a much different and bloodier nature during the Civil War.
—Stephen G. Christianson
Read more: Dred Scott Decision: 1856 - Victory For Slavery, Defeat For Scott - Justices, Court, Missouri, and Taney - JRank Articles http://law.jrank.org/pages/2542/Dred-Scott-Decision-1856-Victory-Slavery-Defeat-Scott.html#ixzz3XOaXeEeE
Replies
The Dred Scott case and its importance is misunderstood today because no one is deemed to be only a citizen of a state without being a citizen of the fed gov via the United States.
For true state-only citizens, rights arose on a state by state level and were secured / protected by their relevant state constitution - each complete with its own bill of rights.
Basically what the court stated in the Scott case was this: Scott was owned by a man from a state that allowed its citizens to own slaves and the right to own that slave went with him where ever he went, even into free states and territories.
Today, under the claim we are all deemed to be 14th subjects, we are deemed to have almost no rights, thus a privilege allowed by your state and city of residence is not something that you can carry into another state or even a city that does not recognize that privilege.
Well said Bill
My ancestors came over from England in the 1640's with many slaves, but a short time later, they were freed. The war of northern aggression was primarily about state's rights, over taxed, federal rights over the state's. Slavery was part of it but not major. If our government, similar to today had acknowledged in God we trust and all men were created equal, slavery would have been dissolved. But now the black people use those circumstances as their authority to discriminate against whites and if not corrected another civil war may ensue! I sure hope not for my trust is in the Lord!
THANK YOU, JAMES!!
Yes. Ma'am!
This article misrepresents the Supreme Court decision in Dread Scott v. Sandford. The decision upheld the Constitution, against the emotional objections to the two provisions in the Constitution that provided the constitutional nexus for the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.
This article is the epitome of Revisionist History.
People are not Property Gary. The Dread Scott decision was a travesty. Period!
Morton, the point is, they were then, and the Constitution supported that ownership.
Is that difficult to understand? Or, do you damn everybody in the past that doesn't have your moral values?
If so, join the fucking revisionists.
Article IV, Section 2, clauses 2 & 3:
A Person charged in any State with Treason, Felony, or other Crime, who shall flee from Justice, and be found in another State, shall on Demand of the executive Authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the State having Jurisdiction of the Crime.
No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.
That means it was constitutional at the time, ro don't you even accept the Constitution -- unless it meets your standard?
Not misunderstanding so much, Gary,
Although I probably don't understand as much as I'd like. I just didn't understand what you were saying; and I agree. That sure does say that, doesn't it?
It says in two parts that it was legal to own property and retrieve that property from another state. It also says that if someone owes or has committed a crime, they can't just skip town and not expect to be brought back to "pay up", so to speak.
That said, it doesn't really say that "people are property", but it does say "held to service". So, unless you interpret the two statements apart or together to mean that as a "person", that is a legal fiction/corporation, or as such "and" is somehow "subject to the jurisdiction" and therefore is liable to be "owned", perhaps due to some "Debt"? In that, like I said, I agree. I think they've been trying to turn people into dollars, like some kind of re-chargeable battery from the word "GO".
They DO allow that to be when they make the first part apply to "citizens" and the second and third parts to apply only to "persons"; it makes you have to define why they did that. Were they trying to separate whites from blacks? Or "Master" from "Slave"? I would ask that question of the SCOTUS. See what they think, just for fun.
They avoided the word s "slave" and "slavery", though there was no doubt of the meaning of "held to service". There were many indentured white people that were subject to the same, However, if you go to the Constitution, in Article I, Section 9, clause 1, you will find:
The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.
There is no misunderstanding, if you read the Debates, just who those "Persons" were.
We all talk about the Constitution, yet very few really read and understand it. But, that was the way it was.
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