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.
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:
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.