Both of you are here defending the Lost Cause.
There goes your vivid imagination again.
I am defending accurate history and law. You are making things up. I am correcting your unseemly misrepresentations of history and the law.
That's a claim sometimes repeated by DiogenesLamp, except with the explicit charge that Northern slaves were sold in the South rather than set free where they lived.Here's the truth: in 1790 there were 32,000 freed-blacks in the South, mostly in Virginia & Maryland, plus 27,000 freed-blacks in the North, mostly in Pennsylvania, New York & Massachusetts.
By 1860 those numbers had grown to 251,000 freed-blacks in the South, still mostly in Virginia & Maryland and 226,000 in the North, now mostly in Pennsylvania, New York and Ohio.
Your 1860 figures are a false misrepresentation of what the Census of 1860 actually states.
Your response pertains to something unsaid, and ignores or seeks to change the impression of what I did say at my #422. I will repeat my statement regarding the Census of 1860.
it is astounding that the 1860 census found more free Blacks in the slave states than in the free states. It makes one wonder where al[l] the slaves freed by gradual emancipation went.
I made no comparison of states North and South. There were more free Blacks in the fifteen (15) slave states than in the free states. There were slave states North and South. There were fifteen (15) of them. Your Liberal interpretation of the 1860 Census ridiculously misidentifies the States attached to the statistics, and only proves that whatever you used for a source, it was not the actual Census Report.
The census recapitulates the “free colored population.” This is not a recapitulation of freed slaves. A slave who escaped from a slave state to a free state was not freed by anyone else, but by his own fast feet. Gradual emancipation only occurred in slave states. The statistics of 1860 identify what it identifies as “free colored people.” Free and freed are not synonymous. From what wackadoodle source did you get your misinformation about the 1860 Census?
The Census report of 1860 showed that there were 251,000 free colored persons in the fifteen slaveholding states, and only 237,283 free colored persons in the nineteen free states and the seven territories and the District of Columbia.
SOURCE: Population of the United States in 1860; Compiled from the Original Returns of the Eighth Census, under the Directgion of the Secretary of the Interior, by Joseph C. G. Kennedy, Superintendant of Census, Washington, Government Printing Office, 1864.
At vii:
Looking cursorily over the returns, it appears that the fifteen slaveholding States contain 12,240,000 inhabitants, of whom 8,039,000 are whites, 251,000 free colored persons, and 3,950,000 are slaves. The actual gain of the whole population in those States, from 1850 to 1860, was 2,627,000, equal to 27.33 per cent. The slaves advanced in numbers 749,931, or 23.44 per cent. This does not include the slaves of the District of Columbia, who decreased 502 in the course of the ten years. By a law of April 16, 1862, slavery has been abolished in the District of Columbia, the owners of slaves having been compensated out of the public treasury. The nineteen free States and seven Territories, together with the federal District, contained, according to the Eighth Census, 19,203,008 persons, of whom 18,920,771 were white, 237,283 free colored, and 41,725 civilized Indians.
It is historical fact that there were more free Blacks in the fifteen (15) slave states than in the free states.
At xv:
MANUMISSION OF SLAVES. With regard to manumission, it appears from the returns that during the census year, they numbered a little more than 3,000, being more than double the number who were liberated in 1850, or at the rate of one each to 1,388; whereas, during 1850, the manumissions were as one to every 2,181 slaves. Great irregularity, as might naturally be expected, appears to exist for the two periods whereof we have returns on this subject. By the Eighth Census, it appears that manumissions have greatly increased in number in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Tennessee, while they have decreased in Delaware and Florida, and varied but little in Kentucky, Missouri, South Carolina, and Virginia, and other slaveholding States not mentioned.
Preliminary Report on the Eighth Census.
Census Office, Department of the Interior,
Washington, May 20, 1862.
At 6:
Thus, in Boston during the five years ending with 1859, the city registrar observes: "The number of colored births was one less than the number of marriages, and the deaths exceeded the births in the proportion of nearly two to one." In Providence, where a very correct registry has been in operation under the superintendence of Dr. Snow, the deaths are one in twenty-four of the colored; and in Philadelphia during the last six months of the census year, the new city registration gives 148 births against 306 deaths among the free colored. [...]
Owing, among other causes, to the extremes of climate in the more northern States, and in other States to expulsive enactments of the legislatures, the free colored show a decrease of numbers during the past ten years according to the census, in the following ten States: Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Maine, Mississippi, New Hampshire, New York, Oregon, Texas, and Vermont.
The average life span of a free Black in one of the slave states exceeded that of a free Black in the free states.
[woodpusher #422] "That the abolitionist press lied and distorted, and people believed the lies and distortions then, and for political reasons, the lies and distortions continue to be propagated today. It is a problem, but not of my creation." [BroJoeK #425] Again I'd suggest you have a heart-to-heart with our own Lost Causer DiogenesLamp, who insists that not only was Crazy Roger Taney correct in his opinions, but so was Lincoln in saying that the Supreme Court could declare abolition "unconstitutional"!
However, before he denigrated the Mexican race on page 235, on page 231 Lincoln observed,
Nothing in the Constitution or laws of any State can destroy a right distinctly and expressly affirmed in the Constitution of the United States. The right of property in a slave is distinctly and expressly affirmed in the Constitution of the United States.
Therefore, nothing in Constitution or laws of any State can destroy the right of property in a slave.
The Constitution expressly recognized the right to hold slaves within the union. In Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3, the Constitution states, “Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several states which may be included within this union, according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.” Who were these “three-fifths of all other persons?”
The Constitution at Article 4, Section 2, Clause 3 states, “No person held to service or labor in one state, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.” It is known as the Fugitive Slave clause. Who do you think it pertained to, Whites who didn’t show up for work?
Article 5 provides, “no amendment which may be made prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any manner affect the first and fourth clauses in the ninth section of the first article....”
Whatever was in those protected clauses?
The Constitution at Article 1, Section 9, Clause 1, provided, “The migration or importation of such persons as any of the states now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a tax or duty may be imposed on such importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each person.”
The Constitution forbade prohibition of the African slave trade for 20 years.
No power was delegated by the People, via the Constitution, to the Federal government regarding the institution of slavery. The people reserved such power to themselves, except for what they may have delegated to their State government.
Every State could choose to be a slave or free State. The people of a State could decide the issue by stating their preference within their State constitution.
[woodpusher #422] "Taney opined that the Court had been, "greatly misunderstood and grossly misrepresented in publications in the newspaper." " [BroJoeK #425] The truth here is that it's very hard to exaggerate the insanity of Crazy Roger's opinions, any more than those concurring opinions of our own DiogenesLamp. In both cases they defy rational explanation.
The truth is that you have made self-evident that you have never read Taney’s opinion, or the other opinions in the Scott case. You have also made self-evident that your knowledge of the Constitution and U.S. law is dismal. You prefer your own fanciful projections of what Taney and the actual laws state. You can only shamefully run and hide in ignorance from the actual laws and the actual court opinions.
It is tough to take, but the Supreme Court actually remanded the case to the Circuit Court, with instructions for that Court to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction.
The status of free or slave was a matter of State law, and was decided according to Missouri state law. Scott was in Missouri, and the case was brought in Missouri. The ultimate interpretation of State law is rendered by the highest court of the State. Such interpretation is not subject to review by the Federal courts. The status of Dred Scott was determined by the Supreme court of Missouri in Scott v. Emerson, 15 Mo. 576 (1852). The opinion of the Court begins at 15 Mo. 582. I provide it here as you have obviously avoided reading it for the first time. The Missouri Supreme Court reversed the holding of a lower court and held the status of Scott to be that of a slave pursuant to Missouri law.
SCOTT J., delivered the opinion of the court. This was an action instituted by Dred Scott against Irene Emerson, the wife and administratrix of Dr. John Emerson, to try his right to freedom. His claim is based upon the fact that his late master held him in servitude in the State of Illinois, and also in that territory ceded by France to the United States, under the name of Louisiana, which lies north of 36 degrees 30 minutes, north latitude, not included within the limits of the State of Missouri.
It appears that his late master was a surgeon in the army of the United States, and during his continuance in the service, was stationed at Rock Island, a military post in the State of Illinois, and at Fort Snelling, also a military post in the territory of the United States, above described, at both of which places Scott was detained in servitude—at one place, from the year 1834, until April or May, 1836; at the other from the period last mentioned, until the year 1838. The jury was instructed, in effect, that if such were the facts, they would find for Scott. He, accordingly, obtained a verdict.
The defendant moved for a new trial on the ground of misdirection by the court, which being denied to her, she sued out this writ of error.
Cases of this kind are not strangers in our courts. Persons have been frequently here adjudged to be entitled to their freedom, on the ground that their masters held them in slavery in territories or States in which that institution was prohibited. From the first case decided in our courts, it might be inferred that this result was brought about by a presumed assent of the master, from the fact of having voluntarily taken his slave to a place where the relation of master and slave did not exist. But subsequent cases base the right “to exact the forfeiture of emancipation,” as they term it, on the ground, it would seem, that it is the duty of the courts of this State to carry into effect the constitution and laws of other States and territories, regardless of the rights, the policy or the institutions of the people of this State.
[*583] The States of this Union, although associated for some purposes of government, yet, in relation to their municipal concerns have always been regarded as foreign to each other. The law of descents of one State is not regarded in another, in the distribution of the estates of deceased persons. So of the law of wills, administrations, judicial proceedings, and all other matters of mere internal police. The courts of one State do not take judicial notice of the laws of other States. They, when it is necessary to be shown what they are, must be proved like other facts. So of the laws of the United States, enacted for the mere purpose of governing a territory. These laws have no force in the States of the Union, they are local, and relate to the municipal affairs of the territory. Their effect is confined within its limits, and beyond those limits they have no more effect, in any State, than the municipal laws of one State would have in any other State: State of Virginia acts; Cohen’s 6 Wheat. This doctrine is declared and maintained, not only with respect to nations strictly foreign to each other, but also to the several States of this Union. Every State has the right of determining how far, in a spirit of comity, it will respect the laws of other States. Those laws have no intrinsic right to be enforced beyond the limits of the State for which they were enacted. The respect allowed them will depend altogether on their conformity to the policy of our institutions. No State is bound to carry into effect enactments conceived in a spirit hostile to that which pervades her own laws. In the Conflict of Laws, sec. 86, it is said: “but of the nature, and, extent and utility of this recognition of foreign laws, respecting the state and condition of persons, every nation must judge for itself, and certainly, is not bound to recognize them, when they would be prejudicial to their own interests. It is, in the strictest sense a matter of the comity of nations, and not of any absolute paramount obligation, superseding all discretion on the subject.” So in sec. 32, it is said, “it is difficult to conceive, upon what ground a claim can be vested, to give any municipal laws an extra territorial effect, when those laws are prejudicial to the rights of other nations or to those of their subjects; it would at once annihilate the sovereignty and equality of every nation, which should be called upon to recognize and enforce them, or compel it to desert its own proper interests and duty to its own subjects in favor of strangers, who were regardless of both. A claim so naked of any principle or just authority to support it, is wholly inadmissible.”
Again, “the comity of nations is derived altogether from the voluntary consent of the state by which it is shown, and is inadmissible, when it is contrary to its known policy or prejudicial to its interests.
[*584] In the silence of the positive rule, affirming or denying or restraining the operation of foreign laws, courts of justice presume the tacit adoption of them by their own government, unless they are repugnant to its policy or prejudicial to its interest.” sec. 38. It is a humiliating spectacle, to see the courts of a State confiscating the property of her own citizens by the command of a foreign law. If Scott is freed, by what means will it be effected, but by the constitution of the State of Illinois, or the territorial laws of the United States? Now, what principle requires the interference of this court? Are not those governments capable of enforcing their own laws; and if they are not, are we concerned that such laws should be enforced, and that, too, at the cost of our own citizens?—States, in which an absolute prohibition of slavery prevails, maintain that if a slave, with the consent of his master, touch their soil he thereby becomes free. The prohibition in the act, commonly called the Missouri Compromise, is absolute. How is that to be interpreted? That act prevails along our entire western boundary; if our courts take upon themselves the task of enforcing the laws of other States, it is nothing but reasonable that they should take them as they are understood where they are promulgated. If a slave passes our western boundary, by the order of his master, and goes into the territory subject to the Missouri Compromise, does he thereby become free? Most of the courts of this Union would say that he does, if his freedom is sought to be recovered under the laws of that territory. If our courts undertake the task of enforcing that act, should they not take it as most of the other States would? Some of our old cases say, that a hiring for two days would be a violation of the constitution of Illinois and entitle the slave to his freedom. If two days would do, why not one? Is there any difference in principle or morality between holding a slave in a free territory two days more than one day? and if one day, why not six hours? The old cases say, the intent is nothing, the act is the thing.
Now are we prepared to say, that we shall suffer these laws to be enforced in our courts? On almost three sides the State of Missouri is surrounded by free soil. If one of our slaves touch that soil with his master’s assent, he becomes entitled to his freedom. Considering the numberless instances in which those living along an extreme frontier would have occasion to occupy their slaves beyond our boundary, how hard would it be if our courts should liberate all the slaves who should thus be employed. How unreasonable to ask it. If a master sends his slave to hunt his horses or cattle beyond the boundary, shall he thereby be liberated? But our courts, it is said, will not go so far. If not go the entire length, why go at all? Thy obligation to enforce to the proper [*585] degree, is as obligatory as to enforce to any degree. Slavery is introduced by a continuance in the territory for six hours as well as for twelve months, and so far as our laws are concerned, the offence is as great in the one case as in the other. Laws operate only within the territory of the State for which they are made, and by enforcing them here, we, contrary to all principle, give them an extra territorial effect. Chancellor Kent says: “A statute, though not in the nature of a judicial proceeding, is, however, a record of the highest nature. But if a statute, though a matter of record, was to have the same effect in one State as in another, then one State would be dictating laws for another, and a fearful collision of jurisdiction would instantly follow. That construction is utterly inadmissible, while it is conceded to be a principle of public law, requisite for the safe intercourse and commerce of mankind, that acts, valid by the law of the State where they arise, are valid everywhere, it is at the same time, to be understood, that this principle relates only to civil acts founded on the volition of the parties, and not to such as proceed from the sovereign power. The force of the latter cannot be permitted to operate beyond the limits of the territory, without affecting the necessary independence of nations.” 2 Kent, 117, 8.
This language is used when speaking in reference to the legislation of other States of the Union. It is conceived, that there is no ground to presume or to impute any volition to Dr. Emerson, that his slave should have his freedom. He was ordered by superior authority to the posts where his slave was detained in servitude, and in obedience to that authority, he repaired to them with his servant, as he very naturally supposed he had a right to do. To construe this into an assent to his slave’s freedom would be doing violence to his acts. Nothing but a persuasion, that it is a duty to enforce the foreign law as though it was one of our own, could ever induce a court to put such a construction on his conduct. The present atitude of the parties to this suit is conclusive, as to an actual consent, and nothing but the foreign law or the aid derived from it, can raise an implied one. If the State of Missouri had prohibited slavery within her limits, and our courts were called upon to execute that law, some zeal might be tolerated in our efforts to execute it; but while slavery obtains here, there is no consideration which would warrant us in going such lengths against our own citizens, for having permitted their slaves to remain in the territory of a State where slavery is prohibited.
In States and Kingdoms in which slavery is the least countenanced, and where there is a constant struggle against its existence, it is admitted law, that if a slave accompanies his master to a country in which [*586] slavery is prohibited, and remains there a length of time, if during his continuance in such country there is no act of manumission decreed by its courts, and he afterwards returns to his master’s domicil, where slavery prevails, he has no right to maintain a suit founded upon a claim of permanent freedom. This is the law of England, where it is said that her air is too pure for a slave to breathe in, and that no sooner does he touch her soil than his shackles fall from him. The case of slave, Grace, 2 Haggard Adm’rl’ty Rep. 94. Story, in his conflict of laws, says, “it has been solemnly decided that the law of England abhors and will not endure the existence of slavery within the nation, and consequently, so soon as a slave lands in England, he becomes ipso facto, a free man, and discharged from the state of servitude; and there is no doubt that the same principle pervades the common law of the non-slaveholding States in America: that is to say, foreign slaves would no longer be deemed such after their removal thither.” But he continues, “it is a very different question how far the original state of slavery might re-attach upon the party, if he should return to the country by whose laws he was declared to be and was held as a slave:” Sec. 95, 6. In the case of the commonwealth of Massachusetts vs. Ames, 18, Peck, Judge Shaw, although declining to give an express opinion upon this question, intimates very clearly that if the slave returns to his former country where slavery obtains, his condition would not be changed. In the case of Graham vs. Strader, 5 Mon. 183, the court of Appeals in Kentucky held, that the owner of a slave, who resides in Kentucky, and who permits his slave to go to Ohio in charge of an agent for a temporary purpose, does not forfeit his right of property in such slave.
An attempt has been made to show, that the comity extended to the laws of other States, is a matter of discretion, to be determined by the courts of that State in which the laws are proposed to be enforced. If it is a matter of discretion, that discretion must be controlled by circumstances. Times now are not as they were when the former decisions on this subject were made. Since then not only individuals but States have been possessed with a dark and fell spirit in relation to slavery, whose gratification is sought in the pursuit of measures, whose inevitable consequence must be the overthrow and destruction of our government. Under such circumstances it does not behoove the State of Missouri to show the least countenance to any measure which might gratify this spirit. She is willing to assume her full responsibility for the existence of slavery within her limits, nor does she seek to share or divide it with others. Although we may, for our own sakes, regret that the avarice and hard-heartedness of the progenitors of those who are [*587] now so sensitive on the subject, ever introduced the institution among us, yet we will not go to them to learn law, morality or religion on the subject.
As to the consequences of slavery, they are much more hurtful to the master than the slave. There is no comparison between the slave in the United States and the cruel, uncivilized negro in Africa. When the condition of our slaves is contrasted with the state of their miserable race in Africa; when their civilization, intelligence and instruction in religious truths are considered, and the means now employed to restore them to the country from which they have been torn, bearing with them the blessings of civilized life, we are almost persuaded, that the introduction of slavery amongst us was, in the providences of God, who makes the evil passions of men subservient to his own glory; a means of placing that unhappy race within the pale of civilized nations.
Judge Ryland concurring, the judgment will be reversed, nnd the cause remanded.