Give over with the Childish assertions. You saying "your opinions are based on facts" is a waste of both our times. You are substituting subjectivity for objectivity. I begin to think you don't understand the distinction.
Seem to say? They don't seem so to me, nor did they seem so to any Founder who left a record of it.
Another subjective statement. Let me show you how this works.
No the founders don't agree with you! They agree with ME!
Now did that impress you? It didn't? Well it doesn't impress me either, so stop doing it.
Show me in the words, and only in the words of that clause of the constitution how the founders agree with you. Don't assert it, Demonstrate it.
Of course they do -- the operative phrase is "escaping into another" state, in other words, a fugitive slave.
Now see there? That's actually a valid point. Usage of the word "escaping" does indeed imply that it is intended to apply to fugitives rather than in general. But does this mean that the clause only applies if a border is crossed? What if the escaping slave happens to be in a free state at the same time that he escapes? (Ala Dred Scott.)
I think the operative point is that he is held to service by the laws of another state, and the usage of the word "escape" in this context encompasses "escape" by legal means of state laws freeing him.
I don't see it as allowing one state to ignore the laws of another state, regardless of where someone escapes from. I can see a state passing a law that says no one born in their state can be a slave, but I don't see how they can apply such a law to people born in states where that is not the law.
What was never asserted before Dred-Scott is that slave-holders could take their slaves to abolition states without being subject to the laws of that state.
State laws in conflict with the US Constitution are rendered Null and Void. What good does it do you to pass a law that the constitution will instantly defeat?
No, by the time of the Constitutional Convention in 1787 all Northern states except New York and New Jersey had already passed laws to gradually abolish slavery.
Yet they still had it, and it was still legal. Presumably at this time Slave Owners could still travel those states without concern of those states freeing their slaves.
If this was accepted and acknowledged in 1787, then you can't very well argue that such activities can be banned by some future reading of the same Constitution that protected it in 1787.
Sorry, I’m on the road again, posting from allegedly “smart” phone, which really means: not so smart.
Two points: first, all my responses are calibrated to your comments.
In other words, where you make a serious remark involving both real facts and logic, my response will be on the same level.
Where you indulge in ridiculous assertions, my response will simply turn them back on you.
Clear?
Second, to repeat: it appears that you are trying to defend Roger Tanney’s Dred-Scott ruling, and I’m saying it’s just not defensible, on so many levels, that no serious scholar or historian since, to my knowledge, has done it.
And the key point about Dred-Scott is that in 1860 it outraged so many Northerners who believed slavery should he gradually abolished, they left the Whigs and even Democrats to vote for Lincoln ‘ s Republicans.
But, if you’re looking for a full legal disertation on “what’s wrong with Dred-Scott” you’ll need to spend time in a law library where they keep whole volumes on such questions.
Bottom line: several here have already expressed what what I think the Constitution ‘ s Fugitive Slave provision means, and I see no valid reason for you to attempt stretching it’s meaning to justify Tanney’s Dred-Scott ruling.
I should note to you that a search on Amazon Kindle produces over two dozen books on Dred-Scott and related issues, some very legalistic, others more intended for normal people.
And at least one does indeed defend Dred-Scott, based on both Constitution and historical context.
But I’m not sure why I should care enough about the subject to wish to relitigate it now, some 158 years later.
I think it should be plenty enough for everyone to “get” that Dred-Scott was a... well a *dredful* decision which shifted power in favor of slavery, thus causing a strong backlash in the North & West which elected Lincoln ‘ s Republicans and so drove Fire Eaters to declare secession, etc.
HandyDandy has blamed Dred-Scott for starting Civil War, and I agree it was certainly *dredful* enough to take much blame for the *dredful* war which followed.