Posted on 03/08/2016 10:37:11 AM PST by iowamark
On March 6, 1857, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in the Dred Scott case, which had a direct impact on the coming of the Civil War and Abraham Lincoln’s presidency four years later.
The case of Dred Scott v. Sandford was one of the most controversial decisions in the court’s history. At the time, the Supreme Court’s majority came from pro-slavery states or had connections to pro-slavery presidents.
The case had been in the court system for more than a decade. Scott had been born into slavery in 1795. In subsequent years, he lived in two parts of the United States that didn’t allow slavery, Illinois and Wisconsin, along with his master.
When his current master died in 1846, Scott filed suit on behalf of himself and his wife, also a slave, to gain their freedom. The case was heard by three other courts as it made its way to Washington.
The Dred Scott decision came just two days after President James Buchanan took office, and it set the tone for his controversial term that led to the Civil War.
Chief Justice Roger Taney gave the court’s opinion; it had ruled 7-2 against Scott.
Taney announced that slaves were not citizens of the United States and had no rights to sue in federal courts, and in fact, blacks couldn’t be citizens.
“There are two clauses in the Constitution which point directly and specifically to the negro race as a separate class of persons, and show clearly that they were not regarded as a portion of the people or citizens of the Government then formed,” Taney argued.
The court also declared the Missouri Compromise of 1820 to be unconstitutional. And it said that Congress did not have the authority to prohibit slavery in the territories.
The decision was celebrated in the South and by slavery supporters. There was outrage in the North and among abolitionists.
One person who was publicly upset with the Dred Scott decision was Lincoln, who was a rising figure in the newly formed Republican Party. The Dred Scott case was a focal point of the famous debates between Lincoln and Stephen Douglas in 1858.
The decision also made the Republican Party a national force, and led to the division of the Democratic Party during the 1860 presidential elections.
The growing power of the Republicans, who received considerable support from the northern states, directly led to fears in the South that slavery would be ended, and those fears started the momentum for secession and the Civil War.
Scott died in 1858 about a year after he and his family had gained their freedom, when his owner (under pressure from her husband) sent the Scotts back to their original owners, who promptly freed them.
Taney passed away in 1864. A year later, a request to include a bust of Taney in a hall that recognized chief justices was blocked by Republicans.
“I declare that the opinion of the chief justice in the case of Dred Scott was more thoroughly abominable than anything of the kind in the history of courts. Judicial baseness reached its lowest point on that occasion,” said Charles Sumner, a leading Radical Republican.
Sumner had been brutally beaten and almost killed on the Senate floor in 1856 when he made antislavery remarks. His attacker was Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina.
After the Civil War, the 13th Amendment and 14th Amendment effectively overturned the Dred Scott decision.
Today, the words “Dred Scott” are tossed out by politicians when they vehemently try to link a recent Supreme Court decision to a historically bad precedent. In 2010, for example, some critics compared the Citizens United v. FEC decision to it.
In 2007, Lynne Jackson, Scott’s great-great-granddaughter, told NPR on the 150th anniversary of the decision that the lesson from the case is that people should try to do what is right.
“Even if it doesn’t look like it’s going to work out, in the end, it usually does,” she said.
One of the last attempts by a governing class to stem the growing tide of egalitarianism.
Another lesson is that humans are not perfect, but that what is right eventually wins.
Talk about judicial activism. If it didn’t get its start with Scott v. Sanford then it sure got a heck of a push.
Same with the SCOTUS abortion ruling...
If only a baby in the womb could file with the court...
Republicans may have blocked Taneys’ bust in a Hall of Justices, but a bust of Taney sits outside the Maryland State Capitol Building today
Taney was an interesting man who lived in interesting times
Sworn in by Andrew Jackson to replace the popular Justice John Marshall, was the first Catholic Supreme Court Justice. He was the Chief Justice who swore in his ideological foe Abraham Lincoln to the office of the presidency, a President who had little respect for his Chief Justice. Taney in fact In confronted Lincoln over his suspension of habeas corpus in Baltimore arrest during the Civil war
Taney, who was married to a sister of Francis Scott Key, died on the same day that slavery became illegal in the State of Maryland. His family slaves (inherited) were all freed upon his death and given pensions
Spengler described the Southern leaders as being closest to a true nobility as America ever achieved.
Racebaiters make it resonate today because well, they are race baiters.
They want you and other blacks to believe it happened yesterday. To keep your white guilt high and their black anger high.
If they spent as much time and energy fixing their own self-imposed communities and families, instead of murdering each other for shoes and being dissed, race baiting and waiting for whitey and gubmint to do stuff for them,
think of how much better off they, and by extension, all of us, would be.
The words of Taney that liberals hate even today...
Dred Scott vs Sanford.
What the SCOTUS thought about gun control in the pre Civil War era.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0060_0393_ZO.html
“It would give to persons of the negro race, who were recognised as citizens in any one State of the Union, the right to enter every other State whenever they pleased, singly or in companies, without pass or passport, and without obstruction, to sojourn there as long as they pleased, to go where they pleased at every hour of the day or night without molestation, unless they committed some violation of law for which a white man would be punished;
and it would give them the full liberty of speech in public and in private upon all subjects upon which its own citizens might speak; to hold public meetings upon political affairs,
and to KEEP AND CARRY ARMS wherever they went.”
Any wonder why the POST-Civil War SCOTUS had to redefine the Second Amendment as a “collective” right and not an individual right?
“[Charles] Sumner had been brutally beaten and almost killed on the Senate floor in 1856 when he made antislavery remarks. His attacker was Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina.”
Sumner called Brooks’ (distant) cousin an imbecile on the floor of the House. Like many in 19th century America, Brooks felt compelled to defend the honor of a family member; hence, the public @$$-whipping he delivered on Sumner.
Where I live it is no defense to a charge of assault that one has insulted his assailant´s relative.
There are more than a few in the 21st century that think the same way if you “diss” someone else.
This occurred in 1856, and I was trying to provide some context for the assault, as well as refute the statement in the article that it was a reaction to an anti-slavery speech. Brooks was fined $300 for the assault, but an attempt to expel him from the House failed.
Dred Scott was a legally correct decision. Those who criticized the decision are similar to those of today who want to read new found “rights” and/or restrictions into the Constitution. The USSC has at varying times found a “right” to abortion, a “right” to disseminate pornography, and prohibition on displays of Christianity on public property. , The drafters of the Constitution clearly had no intent to establish such rights or prohibitions. If the left takes total control of the USSC, the Court will find that the “right to bear arms” is not truly a right and can be overridden by current “societal” security concerns. It will further expand homosexual marriage, access to illicit drugs, and the “rights” of illegal border jumpers and convicted terrorists and criminals. In other words, the USSC will become as liberal as the Supreme Court of Canada and the 9 robed emperors will become legislators.
The Whigs and anti-slavery Democrats together founded the Republican party.
It was not even close to being right. Taney, a slave owner, who abhored the abolition movement, grasped at every legal straw and thread he could find and laid out over 50 pages an activist attempt by the Court to squash forever the abolition of slavery.
Louie XVI? Henry XII? Ivan the Terrible?
LBJ, A negro community organizer from Chicago, JFK, FDR, Woodrow Wilson. (I liked Ivan the Terrible as he nailed the cap on the head of a peasant who failed to bow.) No one ever claims any form of government is perfect but some are better than others and a well functioning nobility is best. Democracy is worst. Monarchy in the middle.
I would like you to read this section of the U.S. Constitution.
Article IV, Section 2, paragraph 2.
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.
You may or may not be aware, this clause was specifically put in the US Constitution to protect Slave owners. In 1787, there were no "free states", but there were rumors that there soon would be. The delegates recognized that they needed the South, especially the Virginians, (Washington, Jefferson, Madison, etc.) and they could not get the South to unify with them if they didn't agree to protect slavery.
So in light of a clause of the constitution guaranteeing anyone compelled to labor in another state to be returned to the person to which their labor is due, how do you create a "free state"?
No State law can override the US Constitution, and the US Constitution says slaves must always be returned to the person to whom their labor is due.
Short of an Amendment (such as the 13th) I don't see how you can get around this.
That would make Judge Taney legally correct about not being able to restrict slavery in the Territories, or in any other state for that matter.
It's ugly, but that is how I understand the legalities of the issue for that time period.
If you have a legal argument for getting around that clause of the Constitution, I would be very interested in hearing it.
So you're saying individual states could not outlaw slavery?
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