The Northwest ordinance preceded the adoption of the Constitution. It is a conundrum as to why Taney would uphold it's ability to emancipate slaves in 1851, and then rebuke the same ability for a state in 1858.
Okay, I went and looked at the case. It was dismissed because of want of jurisdiction. It also points out that the North West ordinance required the return of escaped slaves.
Congress could reduce the incentives for hunting down slaves and the punishments for hiding them. While there was an obligation to return fugitives "held to service or labour" to the state they came from Congress and the states didn't have to make that easy. And that was what secessionists feared.
You mean they could just renege by making the enforcement of the law null and void. Yes they could have done so, and states did in fact start doing this with "Prigg v Pennsylvania." It's still reneging on the agreement.
Taney was the liberal judge who overturned state laws with a sweeping interpretation of the Constitution that nobody accepted before him.
It isn't a liberal interpretation. It states clearly what was the intent of the congress and the ratifying states when they created the constitution.
More responsible judges could be appointed who wouldn't try to overturn decades of laws made by the free states.
The free states were exceeding their authority. They could prohibit the creation of slaves in their own states, but they could not emancipate slaves created by the laws of other states. They had just got so used to doing what they wanted that they were outraged when someone finally told them "no."
That's what Taney's interpretation was. Creative and flexible.
In what way was it creative? The Constitution required slaves to be returned to their owners, and it specifies that such must be done in spite of any laws in any other states. What was creative was believing this was a clause that didn't mean exactly what it said.
More BS about slavery going to unravel anyway. People didn't know that at the time, and if they did, why not let it unravel? Why work so hard to keep it in place?
I dunno, maybe because they had about 5 billion dollars (In 1860 dollars) invested in it? Who wants to see most of their net worth evaporate?
D-uh. It's about political and cultural power. You buy the slaves from the poorer slave owners and free them. This weakens the political basis for slavery and the culture of slave-owning.
That is actually a good strategy. You do it enough to make it acceptable and inevitable, and it will build momentum.
Just what would happen with the slaves afterwards would be difficult for Americans of the time to work out, but reducing the number of slaves and slave owners would really help to unravel slavery.
I think it would have definitely accelerated it.
And that was what slave owners were afraid of.
I am sure they were afraid of anything that questioned the legitimacy of their wealth, the bulk of which was tied up in slaves.
Always? Slave owners were riding high for decades. They wrote the laws.
And so they were all the less interested in letting other people call the shots, especially if it cost them money and damaged their societal acceptance. Nobody wants to lose power and lose "face."
Even after Lincoln was elected, it was a matter of arguing well and using their power wisely to preserve some of their privileges.
They weren't going to wheedle people into reducing their costs, not so long as it was to the benefit of the majority to keep getting money from them.
They didn't want to do that. They wanted independence and a monopoly on power in their own country.
They definitely wanted independence, and they probably wanted to remain the elite in their own society. So?
So it was all about slavery.
How did you get that from what I said? I didn't say anything remotely like that. Slavery was an indirect factor for the war, because slaves created the export revenue from the European trade, over which they were really fighting. It was all about MONEY, and it was all about the POWER to keep getting the MONEY.
Nobody in power in the North or South gave a sh*t about the welfare of the slaves.
Of course Dred Scott was a liberal, activist interpretation. What was the idea that “The negro has no rights which the white man is bound to respect” but a stunning act of judicial overreach.
To use that old secessionist argument, if states thought ratifying the Constitution would mean that slave owners could come and live permanently in free states and still own and keep slaves, they would never have ratified it.
While slaveowners were allowed to bring their slaves to free states for short periods, if they moved for a longer period to a free state or territory they became residents and citizens of that or territory and subject to the laws of that free state or territory. Nobody questioned that until Taney and his court stuck their oar in.
How did you get that from what I said? I didn't say anything remotely like that. Slavery was an indirect factor for the war, because slaves created the export revenue from the European trade, over which they were really fighting. It was all about MONEY, and it was all about the POWER to keep getting the MONEY.
Angry, angry Diogenes. We've been talking about slavery. I cited documents largely about slavery. You've been talking about law cases that deal with slavery. Now you're saying we weren't talking about that at all.
You just said "they were afraid of anything that questioned the legitimacy of their wealth, the bulk of which was tied up in slaves." Slavery was about the money and the money was about slavery. You can't easily separate the two.
And you also admitted that "losing face" -- more a mental/ideological thing than something crudely material -- was a factor. Cultural power, remaining an elite: these are things that aren't simply reduced to dollars and cents.
But now, as soon as I draw the logical conclusion, you draw back in capitalized anger and rage.
Nobody in power in the North or South gave a sh*t about the welfare of the slaves.
You've demonstrated over and over again that if you'd been around back then you probably wouldn't have, but you can't speak for everybody in 19th century America.
Plus, caring about slavery can mean many different things. It could mean caring about the blot on the nation's conscience or fearing for the loss of liberty or worrying about competition from a slave economy.
Caring about slavery doesn't necessarily mean wanting to live among freed slaves and share their fate, but that doesn't mean that nobody in America felt ashamed or offended by what was going on. People can "care" about what's happening elsewhere in the world without wanting to live there or wanting the victims to move next door.