[colorado tanker]

If Dred Scott is right (which I strongly dispute) about slaves being non-citizen chattel, then Davis and his "moderate" Southern Democrats logically are right - the Constitution would protect their "property" rights even in Northern free-soil states.

What it boils down to IMHO, is Lincoln was right, not Taney. The Union under the Constitution could not endure half slave and half free. Douglas has been trying to square a circle that cannot be squared and Freeport exposed him.

Taney thought Dred Scott would resolve the slavery issue once and for all. Instead, Dred Scott set up the split between Northern, Douglas, Democrats and Southern Democrats that would ultimately put Lincoln in the White House.

[BroJoeK]

Colorado Tanker: "If Dred Scott is right (which I strongly dispute) about slaves being non-citizen chattel..."

If I understand correctly, Taney's words covered not just slaves, but anyone of African descent, freedmen & mixed blood included, as non-citizens without rights which needed to be respected.
So Taney was way, way ahead of the political debate in, say, 1857 and was laying the groundwork for, as Lincoln's House Divided speech said:

"We shall lie down pleasantly dreaming that the people of Missouri are on the verge of making their State free; and we shall awake to the reality, instead, that the Supreme Court has made Illinois a slave State."

And abolished freedmen to boot!