Article IV, Section 3 says that Congress can make "all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United States..." Which means they can outlaw slavery in the territories. As for Article IV, Section 2 slaves fleeing to non-slave states might be returned but moving with your slaves to a non-slave state would mean your slaves were emancipated. Under the Confederate constitution people could move to any state with their slaves and keep them.
If a slaveowner wants to settle in Massachusetts, how can you stop him from bringing his slaves which are held by the laws of the state he is from? How do you get around that constitutional stipulation that they must be returned to him?
If slavery is illegal in the state then you cannot move there with your slaves. Not hard at all to understand.
The Scott decision was a factually accurate interpretation of the constitutional law from 1787.
Crap.
I quoted Supreme Court Chief Justice (and Northerner) Salmon P. Chase earlier in the thread where he made it clear that the court would have ruled against Lincoln had he attempted to bring any of these charges against the leadership of the Confederacy.
And yet when the time came Chief Justice Chase did not dismiss the charges against Davis on the grounds that his actions were not illegal. He had to resort to a loophole using the 5th Amendment and double jeopardy.
It does not mean that. Article IV Section 2 had just preceded it, and that said they could not do that. If a majority of congress was all that was necessary to override this law, it could have been done decades earlier.
As for Article IV, Section 2 slaves fleeing to non-slave states might be returned but moving with your slaves to a non-slave state would mean your slaves were emancipated.
And how do you get that interpretation out of Constitutional clause specifically requiring them to be returned back to the service of to whomever their labor is due according to the laws of one of the states?
Where is this magical "they are emancipated!" clause?
Under the Confederate constitution people could move to any state with their slaves and keep them.
Under a correct interpretation of our constitution at the time, they could do so in the US as well. They just made certain that the law was much clearer in their version. It gives liberal judges less wiggle room to pretend the law means something else when you spell it out with such specificity.
If slavery is illegal in the state then you cannot move there with your slaves. Not hard at all to understand.
Are you going to throw the Slave owner in Jail? Because you still legally can't free his slave(s). The Constitution has no provision for you to do so. It doesn't allow it. You either have to break the constitution, or any such penalty has to be something other than freeing the slave(s).
George Washington kept moving his slaves in and out of Pennsylvania. He only moved them out of the state out of respect for their time limit on how long a slave could stay there, and I think he only respected their time limit because he wanted to avoid antagonizing people, but he did in fact show contempt for the idea of a state being a "free" state.
And yet when the time came Chief Justice Chase did not dismiss the charges against Davis on the grounds that his actions were not illegal. He had to resort to a loophole using the 5th Amendment and double jeopardy.
He was on Lincoln's side. He did not want to be placed in the position of being forced to try that case on it's merits, because he had already acknowledged that it would have condemned the actions of the North.
Johnson Amnestied Davis and the rest. Maybe Chase sent him word.
Dred Scott was the “Law of the Land.” It hits me real big (pointing to sensitive heart) when I hear a rebellious attitude directed toward any branch of our supreme federal government.
I don't know if this question has ever been asked: Did the anger generated by the Dred Scott decision send northern fundamentalists on the prod to chivvy the South into war in order to destroy Dred Scott by violence?