We Don't Need Another CIVIL WAR!

I’ve been watching documentary filmmaker Ken Burns’ classic series The Civil War , and I’m loving it! Since coming to the South, my interest in the horrific fight between Americans has increased dramatically.

I’ve also read Bill O’Reilly’s / Martin Dugard’s book Killing Lincoln, which I also enjoyed immensely.

Watching The Civil War, I heard Frederick Douglass quoted many times, which piqued my interest too, so now I’m also reading his autobiography! I definitely highly recommend this one. Too many have white-washed Slavery with an image of happy slaves joyfully singing spirituals. This is the other side, from the perspective of an ex-slave.

In times past, I may have watched The Civil War with a jaundiced eye, suspect that it originally aired on liberal PBS, or that Ken Burns is probably a liberal.

But I’m watching it with an open mind, and though I’m sure some people may tell me that it’s biased and is missing this or that key fact, I find it even-handed, and just as important–HUMANE.

In our mad desire to “win” in the political and cultural arena, I find a severe shortage of humanity among us (“right” and “left”). No, I will not equate the two, and pretend that humanity is equally lacking in the two sides. Many leftists are out of their minds with rage and destructive impulses. Yet, I see too little love on the right side of the spectrum as well.

As I watch The Civil War, I’m constantly struck by the good and bad on BOTH sides:

The North stood against the evil of Slavery (that’s a HUGE mark in their favor). Yet, life in northern cities could be de-humanizing, particularly in contrast with more natural and healthy rural living, which the South personified.

And the destruction of states’ rights, which Lincoln started, opened the door to today’s full-on ASSAULT against these rights. Yet nobody can rationally say that any state has the right to sanction the buying and selling of human beings against their will.

The South had a healthy distrust of the corrupting power of the federal government. Unfortunately for them, this distrust was so great that it impeded them from coming together sufficiently within their OWN government to maximize their chances for winning the war.

That so many Americans were essentially okay with a system that treated other Americans as PROPERTY is unsettling, to be frank. Of course, things have not changed all that much: the WHOLE country (North and South) permits the slaughter of unborn children in the womb. So are we any better than the slave-holders?

My point here, is that our hatred for our fellow man blinds us to the GOOD that resides within him. If the North and South COMBINED the good aspects of each, there never would have been a Civil War, and Reconstruction would have gone much better for all concerned, particularly the ex-slaves.

This principle is true of virtually EVERY division we have: black vs. white, right vs. left, rural vs. city, vegan vs. carnivore, “internal” vs. “external” martial arts, calisthenics vs. weight training, etc.

Tribes rule what was once the UNITED States of America, and this same phenomenon is playing out worldwide.

Everywhere we see the rise of “tribal chiefs”–those who benefit via money and power from fomenting DIVISION amongst us. We see it all over the Internet–“influencers” who get clicks by insulting people who don’t agree with them.

Think about it–is this really productive? Does this place us in a more or less united position? Many of the people doing this call themselves “Christians.” Is this Christian?

Tribes are typically led by “chiefs” who are charismatic, have a way with words, are bold, and insatiable for attention. They cater to our worst instincts. It reminds me of one of my favorite old quotes…

"The palaces of kings are built upon the ruins of the bowers of paradise"--Thomas Paine

Tribalism is killing our unity, and thus killing our nation and the civilized world. We must overcome it or perish!

I believe healing starts when we recognize the part we are playing in this deadly game. This site will continue to promote the best in natural health, success, and freedom, and it will continue to point out those who are enemies of these, but it will not indulge in gratuitous insults to build our readership.

And I have no illusions–we will not ALL unite. Only those of goodwill, despite our differences. But I believe that will be enough to save our countries, or at least to safeguard those of us who trust God’s grace and the power of a people united.

Patrick Rooney is the Founder of OldSchoolUs.com. He communicates clearly and fearlessly during perilous times about natural health, success, and freedom. To reach Patrick, email him at info@oldschoolus.com.

You seem to have no trouble using the cited sources of “my anonymous Wikipedia source”. Odd, that. Here’s more from the anonymous wiki article for your reading pleasure:

Just on how the source content refutes the article content. You rely on Wikipedia because you are too lazy to research the topic.

“Justice John Marshall Harlan was the lone dissenting vote in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which declared racial segregation constitutional and created the concept of "separate but equal". In his dissent, Harlan wrote that the majority's opinion would "prove to be quite as pernicious as the decision made by this tribunal in the Dred Scott case".

In all these commentaries, nobody attempts to explain how Dred Scott was to be held a citizen of Missouri after the Supreme Court of Missouri had ruled that in accordance with Missouri law, Dred Scott was not a citizen of Missouri. Harlan was on the losing end of an 8-1 opinion.

Charles Evans Hughes, writing in 1927 on the Supreme Court's history, described Dred Scott v. Sandford as a "self-inflicted wound" from which the court would not recover for many years.

How does this comment show that Dred Scott was a citizen of Missouri?

In a memo to Justice Robert H. Jackson in 1952, for whom he was clerking, on the subject of Brown v. Board of Education, the future Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist wrote that "Scott v. Sandford was the result of Taney's effort to protect slaveholders from legislative interference."

Scott v. Sandford resulted from a moot case falsely concocted by abolitionist parties conspiring in Missouri. Sanford was a falsely named party for whom there is no evidence he ever met Dred Scott, much less owned him. The owner was a Massachusetts congressman, and the Justice who caused the Taney opinion to be written was Benjamin Curtis of Massachusetts. Right after the decision was made, the news made headlines about the Massachusetts congressman, Calvin Chaffee. In May 1857, Calvin Chaffee executed a quitclaim deed to divest himself of his slave property. Before the Court had officially published any opinion, Justice Curtis rushed his 71-page opinion off to the printers and published it. Taney drafted his 56-page response. Justice Curtis resigned from the Court on September 1, 1857. In a letter to accept the resignation, Attorney Jeremiah Black included, as is usual, words of praise. President Buchanan ordered all such praise deleted, and it was deleted.

Justice Antonin Scalia made the comparison between Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992) and Dred Scott in an effort to see Roe v. Wade overturned.

Was Roe v. Wade overturned in 1992? Is Roe still the law of the land in 2021? Do you have any winning arguments that are on point?

This is a splendid topic. The hypocrites who want Roe reversed appear legion. It is not enough to overturn Roe, the anti-Roe crowd largely supports replacing it with a decision that makes all abortion illegal. While professing to be conservatives, or republicans, they support extending Federal control over an issue that the Constitution does not mention. It should properly be an issue for each state to decide.

Dred Scott ... rested upon the concept of "substantive due process" that the Court praises and employs today. Indeed, Dred Scott was very possibly the first application of substantive due process in the Supreme Court, the original precedent for... Roe v. Wade.

Yep, substantive due process. The law of the land since 1857. Scalia noted it was still employed in 1992. I note it is still employed in 2021. Do you have any winning arguments that are on point?

Scalia noted that the Dred Scott decision had been written and championed by Taney and left the justice's reputation irrevocably tarnished. Taney, who was attempting to end the disruptive question of the future of slavery, wrote a decision that "inflamed the national debate over slavery and deepened the divide that led ultimately to the Civil War".

In writing what was intended to be the opinion of the court, Nelson stated the relevant law. Curtis published his 71-page manifesto, written for public consumption, rather than judicial purpose. Taney responded with his 51-page takedown of Curtis. It inflamed those who chose to use slavery as a wedge issue for political purposes as it rubbed their nose in the actual laws of the self-righteous states.

The hypocrisy laid bare by Chief Justice Taney was as repulsive then as it is now. When it comes to the reality of history, the revisionists of today treat it like Facebook and Twitter treat Donald Trump, and issues about Donald Trump. Orange man bad. Justice who stated the law that actually existed and ruled accordingly, bad. Justice who recited what the state laws actually said, very, very bad.

Scott v. Sandford, Taney opinion, 60 U.S. 411-16

60 U.S. 411

But there are two clauses in the Constitution which point directly find 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.
One of these clauses reserves to each of the thirteen States the right to import slaves until the year 1808, if it thinks proper. And the importation which it thus sanctions was unquestionably of persons of the race of which we are speaking, as the traffic in slaves in the United States had always been confined to them. And by the other provision the States pledge themselves to each other to maintain the right of property of the master, by delivering up to him any slave who may have escaped from ms service, and be found within their respective territories. By the first above-mentioned clause, therefore, the right to purchase and hold this property is directly sanctioned and authorized for twenty years by the people who framed the Constitution. And by the second, they pledge themselves to maintain and uphold the right of the master in the manner specified, as long as the Government they then formed should endure. And these two provisions show, conclusively, that neither the description of persons therein referred to, nor their descendants, were embraced in any of the other provisions of the Constitution; for certainly these two clauses were not intended to confer on them or their posterity the blessings of liberty, or any of the personal rights so carefully provided for the citizen.
No one of that race had ever migrated to the United States voluntarily; all of them had been brought here as articles of merchandise. The number that had been emancipated at that time were but few in comparison with those held in slavery; and they were identified in the public mind with the race to which they belonged, and regarded as a part of the slave population rather than the free. It is obvious that they were not [*412] even in the minds of the framers of the Constitution when they were conferring special rights and privileges upon the citizens of a State in every other part of the Union.
Indeed, when we look to the condition of this race in the several States at the time, it is impossible to believe that these rights and privileges were intended to be extended to them.
It is very true that in that portion of the Union where the labor of the negro race was found to be unsuited to the climate and unprofitable to the master, but few slaves were held at the and measures had been taken for its gradual abolition in several others. But this change had not been produced by any change of opinion in relation to this race; but because it was discovered, from experience, that slave labor was unsuited to the climate and productions of these States: for some of the States, where it had ceased or nearly ceased to exist, were of the Union where their labor was found to be profitable, and suited to the climate and productions. And this traffic was openly carried on, and fortunes accumulated by it, without reproach from the people of the States where they resided. And it can hardly be supposed that, in the States where it was then countenanced in its worst form—that is, in the seizure and transportation—the people could have regarded those who were emancipated as entitled to equal rights with themselves.
And we may here again refer, in support of this proposition, to the plain and unequivocal language of the laws of the several States, some passed after the Declaration of Independence and before the Constitution was adopted, and some since the Government went into operation.
We need not refer, on this point, particularly to the laws of the present slaveholding States. Their statute books are foil of provisions in relation to this class, in the same spirit with the Maryland law which we have before quoted. They have continued to treat them as an inferior class, and to subject them to strict police regulations, drawing a broad line of distinction between the citizen and the slave races, and legislating in relation to them upon the same principle which prevailed at the time of the Declaration of Independence. As relates to these States, it is too plain for argument, that they have never been regarded as a part of the people or citizens, of the State, nor supposed to possess any political rights which the dominant race might not withhold or grant at their pleas- [*413] ure. And as long ago as 1822, the Court of Appeals of Kentucky decided that free negroes and mulattoes were not citizens within the meaning of the Constitution of the United States; and the correctness of this decision is recognised, and the same doctrine affirmed, in 1 Meigs’s Tenn. Reports, 331.
And if we turn to the legislation of the States where slavery had worn out, or measures takeh for its speedy abolition, we shall find the same opinions and principles equally fixed and equally acted upon.
Thus, Massachusetts, in 1786, passed a law similar to the colonial one of which we have spoken. The law of 1786, like the law of 1705, forbids the marriage of any white person with any negro, Indian, or mulatto, and inflicts a penalty of fifty pounds upon any one who shall join them in marriage; and declares all such marriages absolutely null and void, and degrades thus the unhappy issue of the marriage by fixing upon it the stain of bastardy. And this mark of degradation was renewed, and again impressed upon the race, in the careful and deliberate preparation of their revised code published in 1836. This code forbids any person from joining in marriage any white person with any Indian, negro, or mulatto, and subjects the party who shall offend in this respect, to imprisonment, not exceeding six months, in the common jail, or to hard labor, and to a fine of not less than fifty nor more than two hundred dollars; and, like the law of 1786, it declares the marriage to be absolutely null and void. It will be seen that tlie punishment is increased by the code upon the person who shall marry them, by adding imprisonment to a pecuniary penalty.
So, too, in Connecticut. We refer more particularly to the legislation of this State, because it was not only among the first to put an end to slavery within its own territory, but was the first to fix a mark of reprobation upon the African slave trade. The law last mentioned was passed in October, 1788, about nine months after the State had ratified and adopted the present Constitution of the United States; and by that law it prohibited its own citizens, under severe penalties, from engaging in the trade, and declared all policies of insurance on the vessel or cargo made in the State to be null and void. But, up to the time of the adoption of the Constitution, there is nothing in the legislation of the State indicating any change of opinion as to the relative rights and position of the white and black races in this country, or indicating that it meant to place the latter, when free, upon a level with its citizens. And certainly nothing which would have led the slaveholding States to suppose, that Connecticut designed to claim for them, under [*414] the new Constitution, the equal rights and privileges and rank of citizens in every other State.
The first step taken by Connecticut upon this subject was as early as 1774, when it passed an act forbidding the further importation of slaves into the State. But the section containing the prohibition is introduced by the following preamble:
“And whereas the increase of slaves in this State is injurious to the poor, and inconvenient.”
This recital would appear to have been carefully introduced, in order to prevent any misunderstanding of the motive which induced the Legislature to pass the law, and places it distinctly upon the interest and convenience of the white population—excluding the inference that it might have been intended in any. degree for the benefit of the other.
And in the act of 1784, by which the issue of slaves, born after the time therein mentioned, were to be free at a certain age, the section is again introduced by a preamble assigning a similar motive for the act. It is in these words:
“Whereas sound policy requires that the abolition of slavery should be effected as soon as may be consistent with the rights of individuals, and the public safety and welfare”—showing that the right of property in the master was to be protected, and that the measure was one of policy, and to prevent the injury and inconvenience, to the whites, of a slave population in the State.
And still further pursuing its legislation, we find that in the same statute passed in 1774, which prohibited the further importation of slaves into the State, there is also a provision by which any negro, Indian, or mulatto servant, who was found wandering out of the town or place to which he belonged, without a written pass such as is therein described, was made liable to be seized by any one, and taken before the next authority to be examined and delivered up to his master—who was required to pay the charge which had accrued thereby. And a subsequent section of the same law provides, that if any free negro shall travel without such pass; and shall be stopped, seized, or taken up, he shall pay all charges arising thereby. And this law was in full operation when the Constitution of the United States was adopted, and was not repealed till 1797. So that up to that time free negroes and mulattoes were associated with servants and slaves in the police regulations established by the laws of the State.
And again, in 1833, Connecticut passed another law, which made it penal to set up or establish any school in that State for the instruction of persons of the African race not inhabitants of the State, or to instruct or teach in any such school or [*415] institution, or board or harbor for that purpose, any such person, without the previous consent in writing of the civil authority of the town in which such school or institution might be.
And it appears by the case of Crandall v. The State, reported in 10 Conn. Rep., 340, that upon an information filed against Prudence Crandall for a violation of this law, one of the points raised in the defence was, that the law was a violation of the Constitution of the United States; and that the persons instructed, although of the African race, were citizens of other States, and therefore entitled to the rights and privileges of citizens in the State of Connecticut. But Chief Justice Dagget, before whom the case was tried, held, that persons of that description were not citizens of a State, within the meaning of the word citizen in the Constitution of the United States, and were not therefore entitled to the privileges and immunities of citizens in other States.
The case was carried up to the Supreme Court of Errors of the State, and the question fully argued there. But the case went off upon another point, and no opinion was expressed on this question.
We have made this particular examination into the legislative and judicial action of Connecticut, because, from the early hostility it displayed to the slave trade on the coast of Africa, we may expect to find the laws of that State as lenient and favorable to the subject race as those of any other State in the Union; and if we find that at the time the Constitution was adopted, they were not even there raised to the rank of citizens, but were still held and treated as property, and the laws relating to them passed with reference altogether to the interest and convenience of the white race, we shall hardly find them elevated to a higher rank anywhere else.
A brief notice of the laws of two other States, and we shall pass on to other considerations.
By the laws of New Hampshire, collected and finally passed in 1815, no one was permitted to be enrolled in the militia of the State, but free white citizens; and the same provision is found in a subsequent collection of the laws, made in 1855. Nothing could more strongly mark the entire repudiation of the African race. The alien is excluded, because, being born in a foreign country, he cannot be a member of the community until he is naturalized. But why are the African race, born in the State, not permitted to share in one of the highest duties of the citizen? The answer is obvious; he is not, by the institutions and laws of the State, numbered among its people. He forms no part of the sovereignty of the State, and is not therefore called on to uphold and defend it.
[*416] Again, in 1822, Rhode Island, in its revised code, passed a law forbidding persons who were authorized to join persons in marriage, from joining in marriage any white person with any negro, Indian, or mulatto, under the penalty of two hundred dollars, and declaring all such marriages absolutely null and void; and the same law was again re-enacted in its revised code of 1844. So that, down to the last-mentioned period, the strongest mark of inferiority and degradation was fastened upon the African race in that State.
It would be impossible to enumerate and compress in the space usually allotted to an opinion of a court, the various laws, marking the condition of this race, which were passed from time to time after the Revolution, and before and since the adoption of the Constitution of the United States. In addition to those already referred to, it is sufficient to say, that Chancellor Kent, whose accuracy and research no one will question, states in the sixth edition of his Commentaries, (published in 1848, 2 vol., 258, note 5,) that in no part of the country except Maine, did the African race, in point of fact, participate equally with the whites in the exercise of civil and political rights.
The legislation of the States therefore shows, in a manner not to be mistaken, the inferior and subject condition of that race at the time the Constitution was adopted, and long afterwards, throughout the thirteen States by which that instrument was framed; and it is hardly consistent with the respect due to these States, to suppose that they regarded at that time, as fellow-citizens and members of the sovereignty, a class of beings whom they had thus stigmatized; whom, as we are bound, out of respect to the State sovereignties, to assume they had deemed it just and necessary thus to stigmatize, and upon whom they had impressed such deep and enduring marks of inferiority and degradation; or, that when they met in convention to form the Constitution, they looked upon them as a portion of their constituents, or designed to include them in the provisions so carefully inserted for the security and protection of the liberties and rights of their citizens. It cannot be supposed that they intended to secure to them rights, and privileges, and rank, in the new political body throughout the union, which every one of them denied within the limits of its own dominion.

I warned you about wallowing in the mire.

Actually, you wrote in your #371, "And that's all you're getting from me."

I could copy and paste innumerable sources other than Wiki. Everybody knows the final decision was 7-2. The only dissenters were McLean and Curtis (both Republicans).

You obviously do not know what a concurring opinion is. A concurrence only indicates agreement with the judgment in the case. Unless explicitly stated, as by Justice Wayne in Scott, it does not mean agreement with everything in Taney's opinion.

Black's Law Dictionary, 11th Ed., 2019

concurrence. (15c) 1. Agreement; assent. 2. A vote cast by a judge in favor of the judgment reached, often on grounds differing from those expressed in the opinion or opinions explaining the judgment.
3. A separate written opinion explaining such a vote. — Also termed concurring opinion. “Though the judges of appellate courts do not feel obligated to explain their judicial votes in full by disclosing in every case the extent to which they agree or disagree with each thought expressed in the court’s opinion, it is nevertheless common practice to express differences of opinion on some occasions through concurring opinions. Such concurring opinions often serve as the robins that foretell a new spring. They give notice of the possibility of change by expressing minority views that may become majority views in the future for a variety of reasons — among them, changing views and changing personnel of the court. Coincidentally, they reduce the force of the majority opinion as precedent, increasing the likelihood that the rule there stated will be abandoned at some time in the future." Robert E. Keeton, Venturing to Do Justice: Reforming Private Law 29 (1969)

Vincent C. Hopkins, Dred Scott's Case, Ahtneum, 1971, New York, Originally published by Fordham University Press, 1951, 204 pp., at pg. 96

The question of citizenship, like the closely related question of the nature of the Federal Union, was, in 1857, still a debated one. Of the five judges who explicitly treated the issue in the Scott case, only three—Taney, Wayne and Daniel—concluded that, as they construed the Constitution, free Negroes were not entitled to share in the benefits conferred on the citizens of States by Article Four (section two, paragraph one) of the Constitution and, consequently, could not bring suit in the Federal courts. What Nelson, Campbell, Grier, and Catron felt about the matter, they did not say. The question had become further involved by a technical point: Whether the plea in abatement was before the Court at all. As a result, the clarity of the issue and the Court’s opinion on it suffered.

There was majority agreement that Scott was a slave, not a free person.

There was no majority opinion that a free Black person could not be a citizen.

Don. E. Fehrenbacher, The Dred Scott Case, Its Significance in American Law and Politics, Oxford University Press 1978, paperback edition 2001, at pp. 324, 390.

[324] Three justices held that a Negro could not be a citizen of the United States (Taney, Wayne, Daniel).
[324] Six justices held that the Missouri Compromise restriction was invalid (Taney, Wayne, Grier, Daniel, Campbell, and Catron).
[324] Seven justices held that Scott was still a slave, though there were differences on what the final judgment should be.
[390] The order in which the opinions were published in Howard’s Reports did not follow the order of their oral delivery on March 6 and 7, but rather was carefully specified by Taney. Thus, after Wayne’s outright concurrence came the Nelson opinion, presumably because it supplemented that of the Chief Justice with a more extensive treatment of the issue presented by Scott’s residence in Illinois. As we have seen in an earlier chapter, Nelson, writing what he thought was to be the opinion of the Court, avoided the two big issues of Negro citizenship and the constitutionality of the Missouri Compromise restriction. So only in a very limited way could it be regarded as a ‘concurring” opinion.

Learn to read a court opinion. And get better sources.

Here I leave just a brief synopsis from Encyclopedia Britannica:
“Dred Scott decision, formally Dred Scott v. John F.A. Sandford, legal case in which the U.S. Supreme Court on March 6, 1857, ruled (7–2) that a slave (Dred Scott) who had resided in a free state and territory (where slavery was prohibited) was not thereby entitled to his freedom; that African Americans were not and could never be citizens of the United States; and that the Missouri Compromise (1820), which had declared free all territories west of Missouri and north of latitude 36°30', was unconstitutional.

McLean and Curtis filed dissenting opinions and did not concur with Taney. Nelson did not concur with Taney about the Missouri Compromise or Black citizenship. I provided the Nelson opinion in full. Clearly, the Encyclopedia Brittanica article is in error in claiming that the Court ruled 7-2 that, "African Americans were not and could never be citizens of the United States; and that the Missouri Compromise (1820), which had declared free all territories west of Missouri and north of latitude 36°30', was unconstitutional."

Only two justices concurred with Taney that Blacks could never be citizens.

When a source claims that a 7-2 majority fully concurred with all of Taney's comments, it is just revealing the anonymous article author had no business writing the encyclopedia entry.

You can cite all the ridiculous sources you want, but none of them can change the actual court opinions.

Woodpusher quoting SCOTUS the Protector (?):
"The forts and property of the United States had, prior to that day, been forcibly seized by armed forces. Hostilities had commenced; and, in the light of subsequent events, it must be considered that a state of war then existed."

I cited Matthews v. McStea 91 U.S. 7, 9 (1875), from which I quoted.

Mr. Justice Strong delivered the opinion of the court.
The single question which this record presents for our consideration is, whether a partnership, where one member of the firm resided in New York and the others in Louisiana, was dissolved by the war of the rebellion prior to April 23, 1861.
That the civil war had an existence commencing before that date must be accepted as an established fact. This was fully determined in The Prize Cases, 2 Black, 635; and it is no longer open to denial. The President’s proclamation of April 19, 1861, declaring that he had deemed it advisable to set on foot a blockade of the ports within the States of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, was a recognition of a war waged, and conclusive evidence that a state of war existed between the people inhabiting those States and the United States.

Matthews v. McStea 91 U.S. 7, 11 (1875)

No declaration of war was ever made. The President recognized its existence by proclaiming a blockade on the 19th of April; and it then became his duty as well as his right to direct how it should be carried on. In the exercise of this right, he was at liberty to allow or license intercourse; and his proclamations, if they did not license it expressly, did, in our opinion, license it by very cogent implications. It is impossible to read them without a conviction that no interdiction of commercial intercourse, except through the ports of the designated States, was intended. The first was that of April 15, 1861. The forts and property of the United States had, prior to that day, been forcibly seized by armed forces. Hostilities had commenced; and, in the light of subsequent events, it must be considered that a state of war then existed. Yet the proclamation, while calling for the militia of the several States, and stating what would probably be the first service assigned to them, expressly declared, that, “in every event, the utmost care would be observed, consistently with the repossession of the forts, places, and property which had been seized from the Union, to avoid any devastation, destruction of or interference with property, or any disturbance of peaceful citizens in any part of the country.” Manifestly, this declaration was not a mere military order. It did not contemplate the treatment of the inhabitants of the States in which the unlawful combinations mentioned in the proclamation existed as public enemies. It announced a different mode of treatment, — the treatment due [*91 U.S. 12] to friends. It is to be observed that the proclamation of April 15, 1861, was not a distinct recognition of an existing state of war. The President had power to recognize it, The Prize Cases, supra; but he did not prior to his second proclamation, that of April 19, in which he announced the blockade.

Continuing in McStea shows that the Court found that the proclamation permitted commercial intercourse to continue.

Matthews v. McStea 91 U.S. 7, 12 (1875)

Even then, the war was only inferentially recognized; and the measures proposed were avowed to be “ with a view to . . . the protection of the public peace and the lives and property of quiet and orderly citizens pursuing their lawful occupations, until Congress shall have assembled.” The reference here was plainly to citizens of the insurrectionary States; and the purpose avowed appears to be inconsistent with their being regarded as public enemies, and consequently debarred from intercourse with the inhabitants of States not in insurrection. The only interference with the business relations of citizens in all parts of the country, contemplated by the proclamation, seems to have been such as the blockade might cause. And that it was understood to be an assent by the Executive to continued business intercourse may be inferred from the subsequent action of the government (of which we may take judicial notice) in continuing the mail service in Louisiana and the other insurrectionary States long after the blockade was declared. If it was not such an assent or permission, it was well fitted to deceive the public. But in a civil more than in a foreign war, or a war declared, it is important that unequivocal notice should be given of the illegality of traffic or commercial intercourse; for, in a civil war, only the government can know when the insurrection has assumed the character of war.
If, however, the proclamations, considered by themselves, leave it doubtful whether they were intended to be permissive of commercial intercourse with the inhabitants of the insurrectionary States, so far as such intercourse did not interfere with the blockade, the subsequent act of Congress passed on the thirteenth day of July, 1861, ought to put doubt at rest.
The act was manifestly passed in view of the state of the country then existing, and in view of the proclamation the President had issued. It enacts, that in a case therein described, a case that then existed, “it may and shall be lawful for the President, by proclamation, to declare that the inhabitants of such State, or any section or part thereof where such insurrection exists, are in a state of insurrection against the United States; and thereupon all commercial intercourse by and between the same and the citizens thereof, and the citizens of the rest of the United States, shall cease and be unlawful so long as such condition of hostility shall continue.” Under authority of this act, the President did issue such a proclamation on the 16th of August, 1861; and it stated that all commercial intercourse between the States designated as in insurrection and the inhab- [91 U.S. 13] itants thereof, with certain exceptions, and the citizens of other States and other parts of the United States, was unlawful. Both the act and the proclamation exhibit a clear implication, that before the first was enacted, and the second was issued, commercial intercourse was not unlawful; that it had been permitted. What need of declaring it should cease, if it had ceased, or had been unlawful before? The enactment that it should not be permitted after a day then in the future must be considered an implied affirmation that up to that day it was lawful; and certainly Congress had the power to relax any of the ordinary rules of war. We think, therefore, the Court of Appeals was right in holding that the partnership of Brander, Chambliss, & Co., had not been dissolved by the war when the acceptance upon which the plaintiff in error is sued was made. The judgment is affirmed.

After citing and quoting McStea, I commented,

Obviously, the Supreme Court explicitly and emphatically found that the proclamation of April 15, 1861 was not a distinct recognition of a state of war, rather it announced a different mode of treatment, the treatment due to friends. The court found that the President could have recognized such a state of war but chose not to, and did not do so, until April 19, 1861.
The precise dates, and the precise events, of the start and end of the civil war was addressed by the United States Supreme Court in the case of The Protector, 79 U.S. 700 (1870).

You responded "Woodpusher quoting SCOTUS the Protector (?): and continued with the following:

"The forts and property of the United States had, prior to that day, been forcibly seized by armed forces. Hostilities had commenced; and, in the light of subsequent events, it must be considered that a state of war then existed."

79 U.S. 700 (1871)

Statement of the case.
The Protector.
1. The beginning and termination of the late rebellion in reference to acts of limitation, is to be determined by some public act of the political department.
2. The war did not begin or close at the same time in all the States.
3. Its commencement in certain States will be referred to the first proclamation, of blockade embracing them and made on the 19th April, 1861; and as to other States to the second proclamation of blockade embracing them. and made on the 27th April, 1861.
4. Its termination as to certain States will be referred to the proclamation of the 2d April, 1866, declaring that the war had closed in those States, and as to Texas to the proclamation of the 20th August, 1866, declaring it had closed in that State also.
5. Alabama was one of the States named in the first proclamation of block ade, and the first proclamation as to the termination of the war.
6. Accordingly an appeal from a decree by the Circuit Court of Alabama of the 5th April, 1861, which was filed in the clerk’s office on the 17th May, 1871, was dismissed; it being held on the principles above stated, that more than five years had elapsed between the date of the decree and the filing of the appeal, allowing the suspension of the time produced by the war. Appeal from the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of Louisiana.
This was a motion by Mr. P. Phillips to dismiss an appeal from a decree of the Circuit Court of the United States in the Southern District of Alabama. A motion to dismiss an appeal from the same decree, for the reason that it was not brought within one year from the passage of the act of March 2d, 1867, had been made and denied at the December' Term, 1869. f The appeal was subsequently dismissed on another ground. The ground of this present motion [79 U.S. 701] was that more than five years, excluding the time of the rebellion, elapsed after the rendering of the decree, before the appeal was brought.
By the act of 1789, it is provided that writs of error shall not be brought but within five years from the rendering or passing the judgment or decree complained of. By the act of 1803, appeals from decrees were allowed, subject to the same rules, regulations, and restrictions as writs of error. As a writ of error is not brought until it is filed in the court where the judgment was rendered, so an appeal, as this court considers, is not brought until it is rendered or filed in the same way.
The decree in this ease was rendered on the 5th of April, 1861, and the present appeal was allowed on the 6th of May, 1871, and filed in the clerk’s office of the proper court, or brought, on the 17th of May, 1871.
In Hanger v. Abbott it was held that the statute of limitations did not run, during the rebellion, against citizens of States adhering to the national government having demands against citizens of the insurgent States. And the question of course was whether, making allowance for the suspension of time produced by the rebellion, the appeal was or was not in season.
Mr. Phillips contended that it was not; Mr. F. S. Blount, contra, urging that it was.
The CHIEF JUSTICE delivered the opinion of the court.
The question, in the present case is, when did the rebellion begin and end? In other words, what space of time must be considered as excepted from the operation of the statute of limitations by the war of the rebellion?
Acts of hostility by the insurgents occurred at periods so various, and of such different degrees of importance, and in parts of the country so remote from each other, both at the commencement and the close of the late civil war, that it [79 U.S. 702] would be difficult, if not impossible, to say on what precise day it began or terminated. It is necessary, therefore, to refer to some public act of the political departments of the government to fix the dates; and, for obvious reasons, those of the executive department, which may be, and, in fact, was, at the commencement of hostilities, obliged to act during the recess of Congress, must be taken.
The proclamation of intended blockade by the President may therefore be assumed as marking the first of these dates, and the proclamation that the war had closed, as marking the second. But the war did not begin or close at the same time in all the States. There were two proclamations of intended blockade: the first of the 19th of April, 1861, embracing the States of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas; the second, of the 27th of April, 1861, embracing the States of Virginia and North Carolina; and there were two proclamations declaring that the war bad closed; one issued on the 2d of April, 1866, embracing the States of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Mississippi, Tennessee, Alabama, Louisiana, and Arkansas, and the other issued on the 20th of August, 1866, embracing the State of Texas.
In the absence of more certain criteria, of equally general application, we must take the dates of these proclamations as ascertaining the commencement and the close of the war in the States mentioned in them. Applying this rule to the case before us, we find that the war began in Alabama on the 19tli of April, 1861, and ended on the 2d of April, 1866. More than five years, therefore, had elapsed from the close of the war till the 17th of May, 1871, when this appeal was brought. The motion to dismiss, therefore, must be
Granted.

The nation is not recognized in a state of war until there is a public proclamation to that effect. The said public proclamation occurred on April 19, 1861. The proclamation of April 15, 1861 did not do it. It did not announce a blockade. It spoke to individuals, combinations of persons, and in the words of the Court, "It announced a different mode of treatment, — the treatment due to friends."

A proclamation ordering combinations of people to disperse cannot create a state of war between the United States and combinations of individuals. A state of war cannot exist unless another power be recognized to be at war with. On the 19th, Lincoln announced a blockade of states, and thereby recognized the Confederacy as a belligerent power. The troops of a lawful belligerent power, when taken, become prisoners of war. In The Protector, the Court established the precise date of the start of the war.

[x #389 to DiogenesLamp]

Dred Scot's owner Chaffe?
The details of that story are unclear. Chaffee was an abolitionist. He may not have known that his wife's first husband's slave now belonged to him, or he many have arranged the case as a blow against slavery. In any case he transferred ownership to those who would free the Scott family, and he also faced many attacks for the hypocrisy of opposing slavery while owning slaves.

Clarification follows.

Sonix transcript of interview

Lynne Jackson is the great, great granddaughter of Dred Scott and the founder of the Dred Scott Heritage Foundation.

https://sonix.ai/r/pvFc24F28CbVReSNz8A87XWo/transcript.pdf

[00:21:19] Lynne Jackson
Finally, of course, within three months, the family got their freedom and that was a good thing.
[00:21:24] Hannah McCarthy
It's ultimately determined that Sanford does not even legally own the Scotts. So it's up to Irene and Calvin Chaffee to do something about this, especially because, remember, Chafee's an abolitionist and his supporters in Massachusetts won't stand for his being an enslaver. But the Chaffee's cannot management or release the Scotts only if an enslaver lives in the same state as they're enslaved could they do so. Instead, the Chaffee's sell the Scotts.
[00:21:57] Lynne Jackson
They actually use a quitclaim deed to transfer them and claim D is a property instrument. So I usually indicate that in order to make it legal, since they were legally their property, then that was the instrument that they had to use. But yes, again, the Blow family was there and they bought them with the express purpose to free them that they did on May 26 of 1857.
[00:22:27] Nick Capodice
So the Scots last owners are the same family who first enslaved Dred Scott.

- - - - - - - - - -

NPR, 150 Years Later, Dred Scott Remembered, October 1, 2007, Transcript, Excerpt

https://www.npr.org/transcripts/14855781

So joining us to talk about that - the history and legacy of Dred Scott - is Lynne Jackson. She is the great, great granddaughter of Dred Scott and the founder of the Dred Scott Heritage Foundation. She joins us from KWMU in St. Louis, Missouri. Thank you so much for speaking with us.
Ms. LYNNE JACKSON (Founder, Dred Scott Heritage Foundation): Thank you, Michel. It's a pleasure to be here today.
[...]
Ms. JACKSON: This is where the story gets much more interesting. As it turns out, Mrs. Emerson decided early on, around 1850, that she would go and - we say - seek her fortune. Sometimes we think maybe she was a gold-digger. But she went to Massachusetts and married Dr. Calvin Chaffee. And Dr. Chaffee was an ardent abolitionist. So it appears that she did not tell him that she owned slaves. In fact, she had given them over to the care of her brother John Sanford, which is why the court case says Dred Scott versus John Sanford.
Well, as it turns out, he read in the paper that his wife owned these slaves when the trial came down, and he was furious. So at that time, he began to talk with the attorney who was in (unintelligible) Montgomery Blair, Roswell Field in St. Louis, that wonderful exchange of letters which we have copies of, shows how ardently he was against this and how immediately he wanted to effect their freedom. And it was able to be done that they would quitclaim Dred, Harriet, Eliza and Libby, the whole family over to Taylor Blow, who was the son of the original owner.
MARTIN: So this new - so the - his owner's new husband pressured her to release them. That's an amazing story.

- - - - - - - - - -

Lea VanderVelde, Mrs. Dred Scott, A Life on Slavery's Frontier, Oxford University Press, 2009; First issued as an Oxford University Press Paperback 2010, pp. 321-22, 324:

[*321] Meanwhile, the embarrassment regarding the decision fell on Congressmen Chaffee, who had stood for Congress from Massachusetts as a free soil man and befriended Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner. Chaffee moved as quickly as possible to transfer ownership of the Scotts to someone in Missouri who would free them. The Scotts, resident in Missouri, could only be manumitted by a Missouri resident. Taylor Blow took care of the paperwork. Chaffee publicly announced that he did not and had never wished to profit from the case. What went unnoticed, however, was that Mrs. Chaffee’s attorney appeared in court to collect the wages that the Scotts had earned during the long trial. In the end, it seems all the wages earned by the Scotts for the trial’s duration were paid over to Chaf- [*322] fee’s attorney, and probably transferred to Irene Emerson Chaffee through the Chouteaus. From New York, Pierre Chouteau Jr., still the patriarch of the wealthy family, wrote the family in St. Louis: “Me domiant une appergue des sommes regue par Mr. Sanford pour Mad. Emerson; Sur nos livres nous ne trouvons que la precision somme mille piastres a son credit. Nous ne trouvons rien a son debit pour Mad. Emerson. Veuillez voir sur vos livres s’il est charge de quelques sommes page a cette dame.” [Regarding the sum received by Mr. Sanford for Mrs. Emerson, on our books we find only the sum of 1,000 piastres [probably dollars] as his credit. We find nothing of his debt for Madame Emerson. Look at your books to see if there is a charge of some amount to pay this lady.]
Almost anticlimactically, Taylor Blow then filed the $1,000 freedom bond necessary to emancipate each of the Scotts, as he had done for several others before.
[*324] In the coming Civil War, everyone was required to take sides. But when the Emancipation Proclamation was issued in the midst of war, it did not free the slaves of Missouri because Missouri did not join the Confederacy. Missouri itself split, with Judge Gamble becoming provisional governor of a state that was half in secession and half with the union. Harriet remained in the torn city through the war.
The Blow brothers split, with Henry taking the Union side and Taylor and William favoring the Confederacy.

And so it came to pass that Dred Scott was freed by Taylor Blow, his childhood friend and Confederate.

- - - - - - - - - -

Walter Erlich, They Have No Rights, Dred Scott's Struggle for Freedom, Congributions in Legal Studies, Number 9, Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut, 1979, pp. 180-82

[*180] Neither of the parties to this famous suit lived to witness the bloody orgy they were so instrumental in bringing about. Already insane and institutionalized at the time the decision was announced, John F. A. Sanford died in New York on May 5, 1857; and about one and one-half years later, on September 17, 1858, the now famous Dred Scott passed away in St. Louis. But despite the decree of the Supreme Court of the United States, Scott died a free man. Shortly after the Court rendered its decision, it became known that Scott’s real owner was not Sanford after all, but Dr. Calvin Clifford Chaffee, the Republican Congressman from the Tenth Congressional District of Springfield, Massachusetts, who had married Irene Emerson. This information was revealed to the public [*181] within a week after the Supreme Court’s decision by the Springfield (Mass.) Argus. Where this newspaper got its information is not known, but being a Democratic journal, it took the occasion to accuse the Republican and former Know-Nothing physician of complicity and collusion and publicly chided the abolitionist congressman for owning slave property. Even people friendly to Dr. Chaffee became concerned. On March 14 the Springfield (Mass.) Daily Republican, a politically sympathetic newspaper, published a lengthy anonymous letter that strongly suggested Chaffee had some explaining to do. That expanation was quickly forthcoming, in a reply the Republican published on March 16. Recognizing that the circumstances appeared spurious, Chaffee declared in no uncertain terms his opposition to slavery and his abhorrence of the decision of the Court. But in the case of Dred Scott, he stated, “the defendent [Sanford] was and is the only person who had or has any power in the matter, and neither myself nor any member of my family were consulted in relation to, or even knew of, the existence of the suit till after it was noticed for trial, when we learned of it in an accidental way.” When Mrs. Chaffee (then Mrs. Emerson) had moved from St. Louis, she simply had left Scott and his family there on their own. Chaffee was totally unaware that they even existed. Then in February 1857 he was suddenly and surprisingly informed (but how and by whom is unknown) that the Dred Scott who was the central figure in the great law suit going on in the Supreme Court was actually the slave of Mrs. Chaffee’s deceased first husband. It was the first inkling he had of any possible association with this suit—and this was only a month before the final decision was to be announced. “Possessed of no power to controlrefused all right to influence the course of the defendant in the cause,” Chaffee was advised by his legal counsel that he could do nothing in Dred Scott’s behalf until after the case had been decided by the Supreme Court.6 Now that time had come.
Stimulated by the adverse publicity in the opposition press all over the country, Chaffee now took measures to pave the way for Scott’s freedom. First he executed a quitclaim in which he, his wife, and his stepdaughter gave up any and all rights or interest they might have had in Dred Scott and his family. At the same time they also transferred these rights to Taylor Blow, back in St. Louis, one of those who had been supporting Scott’s case for such a long time. This was necessary because according to Missouri law a slave could be emancipated there only by a [*182] citizen of that state. Accordingly, on May 26, 1857, Dred and Harriet Scott appeared in the Circuit Court of St. Louis County with Taylor Blow, who formally freed them. The emancipation papers were drawn up by Arba N. Crane, the lawyer who worked in Roswell M. Field’s office and who had befriended the Scotts in the latter stages of their court action. The papers were duly acknowledged by Taylor Blow before Judge Alexander Hamilton, in whose court eight years earlier, coincidentally, the Scotts had had a tantalizingly brief taste of freedom. But now, after eleven years of frustrating court litigation and despite the adverse decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, Dred Scott and his family—his wife, Harriet, and their daughters Eliza and Lizzie—were all finally free.

Don E. Fehrenbacher, The Dred Scott Case, Its Significance in American Law and Politics, Oxford University Press, New York, 1978, First issued as an Oxford University Press paperback, 2001

[*420] A windfall in mid-March further strengthened the Democratic case; for at this point the public learned that the real owner of Dred Scott was probably not John F. A. Sanford but his sister Irene, the wife of a prominent Massachusetts Republican. The revelation apparently first appeared in the Springfield Argus, Democratic organ in the city where the onetime wife and widow of John Emerson lived with her second husband, Congressman Calvin C. Chaffee. Republican embarrassment was acute as Democrats relentlessly exploited their advantage with comments like this one by the Argus: “All the long years of servitude through which this family has been doomed to labor . . . has this hypocrite kept their ownership by his family from the public, while he has profited, not only by their labor but on the other hand by his extraordinary professions of love for the poor Negro.”
Chaffee, meanwhile, was responding to the expose with an emphatic disclaimer. “In the case of Dred Scott,” he wroote to the [*421] Springfield Republican, “the defendant was and is the only person who had or has any power in the matter, and neither myself nor any member of my family were consulted in relation to, or even knew of the existence of the suit till after it was noticed for trial, when we learned it in an accidental way.” Presumably, there being no “trial,” in the ordinary sense of the word, before the Supreme Court, this meant that Chaffee and his wife had known about the case since 1854 but denied having any association with it or any control over Sanford’s course of action.
Events soon conspired to impair the credibility of this disclaimer, however. John Sanford, confined to an asylum, died on May 5, and just three weeks later out in Missouri, Taylor Blow manumitted Dred Scott and his family, having received title to them by quitclaim from the Chaffees.’ Estates are never settled so swiftly; therefore the one thing clear is that Irene Chaffee did not recover possession of the Scotts by bequest from her brother. There are several possible explanations of the mysterious transaction, and the Chaffees’ use of quitclaim suggests that they themselves may have been unsure of their legal interest in the slaves. But Democratic editors naturally preferred to believe that Congressman Chaffee had acknowledged himself a slave-owner and a liar. Certainly the Dred Scott affair took on a peculiar odor with the revelations of the Chaffee role, and nothing contributed more to the suspicion that it was a contrived case, got up to serve the same Republican purpose as “bleeding Kansas.”15 The suspicion, as we have seen, was probably mistaken, but historians ever since have had difficulty putting the idea of a conspiracy aside.

Fehrehbacher, footnotes at 684

11. Printed in New York Tribune, March 17, 1857. Chaffee also described himself as “possessed of no power to control—refused all right to influence the course of the defendant in the cause—and all the while feeling and openly expressing the fullest sympathy with Dred Scott and his family.” What he seems to be saying is that, after learning about the case he tried to intervene and was rebuffed by Sanford.
[...]
13. Sanford’s probate records in St. Louis indicate that the inventory of his estate was not filed until December 3, 1858, by which time Dred Scott was dead.
14. In his letter to the Springfield Republican (note 11 above), Chaffee declared: “If in the distribution of the estate, of which this decision affirms these human beings to be part, it appears that I or mine consent to receive any part of the thirty pieces of silver, then, and not till then, let the popular judgment as well as the public press, fix on me the mark of a traitor to my conscience.” Since his brother-in-law Sanford was still alive, Chaffee must have been referring to the Emerson estate. This suggests that he did not regard Sanford as the owner of Scott and that he thought the Emerson estate was still not settled. One suspects that either Chaffee was dissimulating or that he had been misled by his wife. See also above, 248, and note 41 below.

One suspects that Chaffee was a politician and his lips were moving.

Fehrenbacher, 276

Dred Scott v. Sandford was a suit for freedom in the customary form of an action of trespass. The declaration filed for Scott on November 2, 1853, asserted that he was a citizen of Missouri. It complained that on the preceding January 1, Sanford had assaulted and wrongfully imprisoned Scott himself, his wife Harriet, and their two children, Eliza and Lizzie. The damages claimed on these three counts totaled $9000. LaBeaume and Taylor Blow provided the bond for costs. A summons was promptly issued and served personally on Sanford, who had come to St. Louis for business reasons.

Confederate Taylor Blow financed the case in 1853, and he stood ready to receive the quitclaim of Chaffee in 1857, and to manumit Scott and his family.

John Sanford had died. A corpse does not own property. The inventory of his estate was not filed until December 3, 1858. Under the laws of femes covert, still used in those days, Irene Sanford Emerson Chaffee was "covered" by her husband and, as a legal matter, they were joined as one person, and the wife did not legally own property. If Irene owned Scott when she married Chaffee, upon the marriage, Chaffee assumed ownership of his new slave. Only someone with the right to ownership could legally execute the quitclaim deed. Neither Sanford's corpse, nor the married Irene could do it. That leaves Calvin.

While Calvin Chaffee tried to maintain he could not free Scott before the legal case was decided, that is not true. Had Scott been freed before the case was decided, the case would have immediately become moot. The case to free Scott does not continue if he has already become free.

For a decision that ruled that Dred Scott had no jurisdiction

You can't even help but get that all twisted and backwards.

The Court in Scott did not rule that Dred Scott had no jurisdiction. Taney opined that the Circuit Court had no jurisdiction. The Mandate remanded the case to the Circuit Court with instructions for that court to dismiss for want of jurisdiction. Taney so opined because Scott had falsely claimed to be a citizen of Missouri, and the claim of jurisdiction by diversity of citizenship of the two parties failed.

Dr. Walter Erlich wrote his doctoral dissertation on the Dred Scott case, and later published a book, They Have No Rights, Dred Scott's Struggle for Freedom, 1979, (Chapter 15, Taney: Opinion of the Court), pp. 137-38,

[*137] Whether Roger Brooke Taney’s opinion was in fact the Court’s opinion has been for a long time a matter of controversy. If an “Opinion of the Court” reflects the collective reasoning of the majority, valid questions can be raised about whose thinking and what majority Taney spoke for. Undoubtedly a majority concurred in the basic judgment that Dred Scott did not have the right to sue, and in that respect Taney did indeed speak for the Court. But beyond that, Taney’s colleagues differed markedly in the reasons why Scott could not sue, and for none of those reasons was there an indisputable concurring majority. Indeed, within three months after the decision was announced, two prominent Boston attorneys, John Lowell and Horace Gray, published a widely read article in which they delineated with scholarly thoroughness a “box score” of which justices agreed on which issues. Their analysis was followed by many others, some agreeing, some disagreeing, resulting in prolonged confusion for [*138] more than a century about exactly what the Court ruled. Today, however, qualified analysts generally hold that Taney did not accurately reflect the reasoning of a majority and that his “Opinion of the Court” was in fact not that at all. Nevertheless the fruitless exercise of determining and analyzing what the Court “really” said has continued. It is time we recognize—if we are better to understand the passions that brought on the Civil War—that despite this controversy, Taney’s opinion rightly or wrongly still has been viewed as the Court’s opinion. In a sense, then, what the Court really decided is moot; more important is what contemporaries thought the Court had decided.

There it is in a nutshell. What had become most important is not what the Court decided, but what contemporaries thought it had decided. The opinions formed were necessarily based on media reports, and those were based on the AP report of what was read from the bench by Chief Justice Taney. There is no transcript of what Taney orally stated in March 1861. The original draft was destroyed. The final draft of Taney's opinion (and the other's opinions) was not officially published until May 1861. During those months, Taney made revisions to his opinion. Justice Curtis wrote,

I have no doubt of the correctness of my memory subject. I heard the opinion read twice—once in conference and once from the bench. I listened to it with attention and believe I know where and in what it was changed. These additions amount to upwards of eighteen pages. No one can read them, without perceiving that they are in reply to my opinion.

The state citizenship of Scott had been ruled upon by the Supreme Court of Missouri, and as a matter of state law, that was final. There was no actual controversy. At the trial court the defense, conspiring with the other party, filed a demurrer, which asserted the Complaint is inadequate, even if the court accepts all its allegations as true. Accepting Scott's claim of Missouri citizenship as true allowed the trial court to rule in favor of Scott without considering the obvious point that Scott was a slave. The Circuit Court reversed. The Supreme Court majority divided on whether to uphold the Circuit Court and its reversal, or remand for lack of jurisdiction in Federal court, officially deciding on the latter. Either way, Scott was still a slave.

and a decision that merely upheld the law, you surely must realize the Dred Scott case lead to the last final fracturing of the Nation as existing half free, half slave.

Slavery was immoral and wrong, but it was within the law. If the Supreme Court can overturn any part of the Constitution it feels is wrong, then the Federal government reigns supreme over the Constitution. If they have such power, they could strike any part of the Bill of Rights.

That the nascent Republican party used race as a wedge issue to divide the people, and concocted a fraudulent and moot case and took it before the Supreme Court is acknowledged. In furtherance of the effort, it involved a palpably false statement of facts, a Massachusetts congressman as the hidden owner of the slave, a Massachusetts lawyer who argued to the Supreme Court, and said lawyer's little brother sitting on the bench of the Supreme Court. Even before the Court published anything, Justice Curtis ran his opinion to the publishers. In order to stir the pot, the opinion of Justice Curtis and the argument of his older brother were packaged together and published in pamphlet form before the Court officially published anything.

The was not an isolated incident for St. Louis, Missouri. Minor v. Happersett 88 U.S. 162 (1875) was another blatantly concocted case. The Supreme Court correctly held that the Constitution did not give women the right to vote. To this day, the Constitution does not give anyone the right to vote. The 19th amendment only assures the right to vote cannot be denied or abridged on account of sex. Any state could abolish its popular vote for President and have its legislature appoint the state's delegates to the Electoral College, as was actually done, under the Constitution, in the early elections. It is not the place of the court to create a constitutional right where it does not exist in the Constitution.

Scott was a slave. Slaves were not citizens. Scott could not legitimately invoke the jurisdiction of the Court with a claim of diversity of state citizenship which depended on his own (non-existent) Missouri state citizenship.

As you like quotes of justices, try this one. "Dred Scott ... probably helped to promote the Civil War, as it certainly required the Civil War to bury its dicta." Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, Bernard Schwartz, A History of the Supreme Court New York, Oxford, 1993, pp. 120-121.

The issue of slavery was used to split the nation for political gain. It got a little out of hand.

As for Northern fear of freed slaves coming north, Lincoln, ever the salesman, had a solution.

CW 5:534-35, President Lincoln, December 1, 1862, Annual Message to Congress

Heretofore colored people, to some extent, have fled north from bondage; and now, perhaps, from both bondage and destitution. But if gradual emancipation and deportation be adopted, they will have neither to flee from. Their old masters will give them wages at least until new laborers can be procured; and the freed men, in turn, will gladly give their labor for the wages, till new homes can be found for them, in congenial climes, and with people of their own blood and race. This proposition can be trusted on the mutual interests involved. And, in any event, cannot the north decide for itself, whether to receive them?

Lincoln rivals Bill Clinton's ability as a salesman.

[woodpusher] "In The Protector, the Court established the precise date of the start of the war."
[BroJoeK] For certain legal purposes

For all legal purposes. For certain locations the date is different as proclamations were issued on more than one date, each pertaining to a seperate group of states.

[BroJoeK] And from The Prize Cases (?) you quoted:
"The forts and property of the United States had, prior to that day, been forcibly seized by armed forces.
Hostilities had commenced; and, in the light of subsequent events, it must be considered that a state of war then existed."

The date of April 15, 1861 had to be considered. It was considered. The opinion explicitly adopted the date of April 19, 1861 as the start date, and explicitly rejected April 15, 1861 as the start date.

I neither linked or quoted from The Prize Cases. In McStea the Court cited The Prize Cases without quotation. The specific matter you just quoted was linked, cited, and quoted from Matthews v. McStea, 91 U.S. 7, 11. The citation indicates the Opinion starts at 91 U.S. 7, and the quote is from page 91 U.S. at page 11. The link given to page 11 in my #404 goes directly to page 11 of Matthews v. McStea. Supreme Court opinions are officially published in the U.S. Reporter series, available online at the Library of Congress. The link goes to the Library of Congress online publication.

McStea, as quoted, stated,

MR. JUSTICE STRONG delivered the opinion of the court.
The single question which this record presents for our consideration is, whether a partnership, where one member of therein resided in New York and the others in Louisiana, was dissolved by the war of the rebellion prior to April 23, 1861. That the civil war had an existence commencing before that date must be accepted as an established fact. ...
No declaration of war was ever made. The President recognized its existence by proclaiming a blockade on the 19th of April....
It is to be observed that the proclamation of April 15, 1861, was not a distinct recognition of an existing state of war. The President had power to recognize it, The Prize Cases, supra; but he did not prior to his second proclamation, that of April 19....
in a civil war, only the government can know when the insurrection has assumed the character of war.

The start date was established fact in McStea in 1875 because it had been established in The Protector in 1871.

McStea held the war started on April 19, 1861 as set by the precedent in The Protector, but that the partnership between members in NY and LA had not been dissolved by that fact. Lincoln's proclamation of blockade was legally the start of the war, but it only prohibited commercial intercourse at the ports by the blockade. Commercial intercourse between individuals, Union and Confederate, had not been prohibited.

The Prize Cases syllabus, publishing the holdings, at 67 U.S. 635 (1862) provides,

7. The present civil war between the United States and the so called Confederate States, has such character and magnitude as to give the United States the same rights and powers which they might exercise in the case of a national or foreign war; and they have, therefore, the right jure bello to institute a blockade of any ports in possession of the rebellious States.
8. The proclamation of blockade by the President is of itself conclusive evidence that a state of war existed, which demanded and authorized recourse to such a measure.

For a state of war to exist, the rest of the world has to be informed that there is a war, and not just a civil disturbance. The Prize Cases cite to the proclamation of a blockade which is an act of war, not to the proclamation ordering combinations of persons to disperse, which pertains to a civil disturbance.

The real truth here is that Democrats have been waging war against the US Constitution, in one form or another, since Day One in 1787, when they voted against ratification and have been working to destroy its original intentions ever since.

In 1787, there were Federalists and Anti-Federalists, but no political parties. Jefferson, Madison and Hamilton all favored the Constitution. The Democratic-Republican Party was founded by Jefferson and Madison in the 1790s. This split into the Democratic Party (1828-) and the Whig Party (b. 1833 d. 1856). The Republican Party was founded in 1854, replacing the Whig Party.

The leaders attempting to destroy or mutilate the Constitution shortly after ratification were primarily of the New England school of constitutional interpretation. While Hamilton favored ratification, it was the Hamiltonians who won out at using the courts to change the Constitution by creative interpretation. The post civil war radical republicans changed the relationship of the Federal government to the States with the 14th Amendment.

The Civil War was an important campaign in Democrats' centuries' long war, a war which seems now to be nearing it's climactic conclusion & victory by Democrats over our Founders' Constitution.

Although there is crossover, the Constitution is by the Framers rather than the Founders.

The victory of the Framers' Constitution is a done deal. The Federal government does not resemble what the Framers created. The post Civil War amendments converted the Framers' Constitution into something new. The 14th, 16th, and 17th Amendments change the relationship of the Federal and State governments, change the permissible methods of taxation, and eliminate the Senate as a body representing the State legislatures. The Supreme Court has interpreted things into the Constitution that the Framers never knew were there. The interstate commerce clause hardly knows any limits at all, although the Obama administration did find one when it tried to use the commerce clause to penalize those who did not purchase private health insurance. But do not grow too much wheat.

As best I can tell, and to his credit, at least woodpusher does not argue, as does DiogenesLamp, that Crazy Roger Taney's Dred Scott opinions were correct!
He "merely" argues they were unimportant.

Taney's opinion is historically important. Legally, almost the entirety of said garnered no majority support, making it dicta, not holding of the Court, not an opinion of the court. The dicta of Chief Justice Taney establish only his own opinion on some matter.

Etheldred "Dred" Scott was clearly a slave, having been so held by the Missouri Supreme Court. Traveling to a free state, and returning to a slave state, did not change his status as a slave. See R v. Knowles, ex parte Somersett, 20 State Tr 1 (1772) (aka Somersett's Case, British); The Slave Grace, 2 Hagg Admin 94 (GB) 1827, The Lemmon Case 20 NY 562 (1860), and Strader v. Graham 10 U.S. 82 (1850).

In Somersett and The Lemmon Case, a slave was in a free country or state and there petitioned for freedom. Somersett established that in GB, the slave could not be forced by master to leave GB and return to slave territory. In Lemmon, similar slaves in transit by ship from a slave state to a slave state stopped in NY. While in NY, they petitioned for freedom. They won in the New York Court of Appeals (the highest court in that state). In Grace, the slave had returned to a slave colony before petitioning for freedom for having been in a free country. Court found the slave law prevailed upon her return to the slave jurisdiction in Antigua. Strader held the status of fugitive slaves found in the North was governed by Article 4, Sec 2 of the Constitution and not by state law.

But one result of Dred Scott was to bring a country lawyer in Illinois back into the public arena because, as he said at the time:
"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."
House Divided, June 16, 1858

One problem with quoting Lincoln is that there is always an equal and opposite quote of Lincoln. Especially while he was in Illinois, he said one thing in Northern Illinois and another in Southern Illinois.

As for the Lincoln divisive fear mongering here, what free state ever woke up as a slave state? Could they wake up to find someone surreptitously changed their state constitution? If the Court could turn free states into slave states, why, under Lincoln, was the Court not used to turn the Union slave states into free states? That awaited a constitutional amendment, even though Lincoln had appointed five of the ten justices.

In the Lincoln-Douglas Debate #4 at Charleston, Illinois, September 18, 1858, Douglas informed Lincoln about the quitclaim deed executed by Massachusetts abolitionist congressman Calvin Chaffee. The quitclaim deed did not emancipate Scott as claimed by Douglas, but enabled Taylor Blow to manumit (free) Dred Scott. Manumission of Scott in Missouri could only be done by a citizen of Missouri.

[Stephen Douglas] Dred Scott was owned at that time by the Rev. Dr. Chaffee, an Abolition member of Congress from Springfield, Massachusetts, and his wife, (immense laughter and applause,) and Mr. Lincoln ought to have known that Dred Scott was so owned, for the reason that as soon as the decision was announced by the court, Dr. Chaffee and his wife executed a deed emancipating him, and put that deed on record. (Cheers.) It was a matter of public record, therefore, that at the time the case was taken to the Supreme Court, Dred Scott was owned by an Abolition member of Congress, a friend of Lincoln's, and a leading man of his party, while the defence was conducted by Abolition lawyers—and thus the Abolitionists managed both sides of the case.

Also from the same debate,

I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, [applause]—that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will for ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race. I say upon this occasion I do not perceive that because the white man is to have the superior position the negro should be denied everything. I do not understand that because I do not want a negro woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. [Cheers and laughter.] My understanding is that I can just let her alone. I am now in my fiftieth year, and I certainly never have had a black woman for either a slave or a wife. So it seems to me quite possible for us to get along without making either slaves or wives of negroes. I will add to this that I have never seen to my knowledge a man, woman or child who was in favor of producing a perfect equality, social and political, between negroes and white men.

This last is what Lerone Bennett, Jr., editor of Ebony magazine for about a half century, called Lincoln's Charleston confession.

[HandyDandy #406] For a decision that ruled that Dred Scott had no jurisdiction....
[woodpusher #411] The Court in Scott did not rule that Dred Scott had no jurisdiction, and did not mention standing. Taney opined that the Circuit Court had no jurisdiction. The Mandate remanded the case to the Circuit Court with instructions for that court to dismiss for want of jurisdiction.
[HandyDandy #412] Surely you know I meant the case had no standing.

Plaintiffs have, or lack, standing to bring a case. The Circuit Court of Appeals may have or lack jurisdiction to hear a case on appeal from a lower court. At the Circuit Court, Scott was the Appellee. The Appellant who brought that action was Sanford. The case had already been heard and ruled upon at the trial court, when brought to the Circuit Court on appeal. The Supreme Court found that the Circuit Court had no jurisdiction and lacked authority to hear the Appeal. The Appeal should not have been heard by the Circuit Court, but should have been dismissed for want of jurisdiction.

In Scott, the Court determined that the Circuit Court below had no jurisdiction, and issued a Mandate to that court to dismiss for want of jurisdiction.

The Supreme Court did NOT rule that Scott lacked Standing. See my #303 to you wherein I quoted the Mandate that was issued to the Circuit Court:

No. 7
Ptff. in Er.
Dred Scott
vs.
John F.A. Sandford
In error to the Circuit Court of the United Stated for the District of Missouri.
This cause came on to be heard on the transcript of the record from the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of Missouri and was argued by counsel. On consideration whereof, it is now here ordered and adjudged by this court that the judgment of the said Circuit Court in this cause be and the same is hereby reversed for the want of jurisdiction in that court and that this cause be and the same is hereby remanded to the said Circuit Court with directions to dismiss the case for the want of jurisdiction in that court.
Ch. Jus. Taney
6th March 1857

It was the COURT that lacked jurisdiction.

On this we can agree. That is why my initial instinct was to avoid engaging in an analysis of the case. It is the most controversial case in US history. But that is a very good quote by Erlich. Thank you for sharing. It supports both our sides.
What had become most important is not what the Court decided, but what contemporaries thought it had decided.”
That’s what I’ve been trying to get across to you. You’re getting there.......

You have repeatedly claimed the Court decided things that it did not determine. What you or others thought was determined is not supported by the actual opinions. You have been claiming the popular fiction over fact. That is what I have been trying to get across. It does not seem to be penetrating.

However historically important what contemporaries thought had been decided may be, as were their actions based on misbeliefs, the opinions in Scott did not decide much of anything.

”That the nascent Republican party used race as a wedge issue to divide the people, and concocted a fraudulent and moot case and took it before the Supreme Court is acknowledged.”
By whom? Don’t you have that backwards? Don’t you really mean to say the Republican Party came into being due to Slavery? You said race.

I should have said slavery as more accurate and important. However, race was also incorporated into the nascent GOP wedge issues. Lincoln was clear and explicit when he stated that he wanted the territories to be for free white people, with no black face among them. When he referred to Mexicans as a race of "mongrels, it was not a slavery issue. When he opined that Illinois could refuse to accept freed blacks, that was a racial issue.

The Republican Party came into being because of the collapse of the Whig Party brand. They needed an issue. They made one up and ran with it. They got power. They even got Blacks elected to congress as Republicans. And then there was The Fraud of the Century: : Rutherford B. Hayes, Samuel Tilden, and the Stolen Election of 1876. Hayes and Republicans got the Whte House and Democrats got the end to reconstruction. And Democrats were the beneficiaries of all those Black Republicans switching parties.

“Scott could not legitimately invoke the jurisdiction of the Court.......”
I guess it’s ok when you say it.

No, not dot, dot, dot. "Scott could not legitimately invoke the jurisdiction of the Court with a claim of diversity of state citizenship which depended on his own (non-existent) Missouri state citizenship."

Nice try. Scott was not a citizen of the State of Missouri. The Supreme Court of Missouri so held, and its ruling on state law was binding on the Federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court.

It's just ok when I say it, but when the U.S. Supreme Court says it, that makes it supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

"Dred Scott ... probably helped to promote the Civil War, as it certainly required the Civil War to bury its dicta."
That quote is not bad. In a cutesy, playful, spinny kind of way. Although in reality we can always count on you for the dicta. Right?

The quote is not of me, but of Dr. Walter Erlich.

Obviously, I do not deliver dicta, and you should probably refrain from using words whose meaning you do not know, as long as you remain too lazy to use a dictionary. You are a victim of dictum. There's cutesy.

”The issue of slavery was used to split the nation for political gain. It got a little out of hand.”
Here you turn a big wide corner. Did you know that President Jefferson Davis said on several occasions the he would not give up until the very last confederate soldier was killed?

As for what Jefferson Davis may have said, you have provided no source indicating that he actually said it.

The issue of slavery splitting the nation for political gain back then is analagous to using race to split the nation for political gain today. It refers to dividing them politically, not states seceding. Back then it enabled the election of Lincoln with less than 40% of the vote.

The political split certainly did not depend on any apocryphal statement of Jefferson Davis.

Did you know what Lincoln said to start his speech at Carlinville, Illinois on August 31, 1858? It is in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, available online at The University of Michigan. See Volume 3, page 77.

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