The real truth is abolitionists included nearly all our Founders, even Virginians like Washington, Jefferson, Madison & Patrick Henry.
These "abolitionists" never abolished their own slave ownership. The "powerful" abolitionists never abolished slave trading in Washington, D.C. down the road from the White House until 1862. D.C. was under the sole legislation of the federal Congress.
the right of Northern states to declare visiting slaves freed, if their masters stayed too long (i.e., Dred Scott).
Dred Scott involved a slave in the slave state of Missouri. He was determined to be a slave in the Supreme Court of Missouri. In the Supreme Court of the United States, his case was dismissed for want of jurisdiction, and remanded to the lower court with instructions to dismiss for want of jurisdiction in that court.
A slave taken to a free state, while in that free state, might successfully sue for his freedom, but should he return to a slave state, as did Etheldred Scott, he resumed his status as a slave. This was upheld in English as well as American law. There is ample precedent to support the holdings of the Court. See, e.g., Somerset v Steward, 1 Lofft 1 (1772); The Slave, Grace,, 2 Hagg. Adm. 94 (1827); Amy (a woman of colour) v. Smith, 11 Ky. 326 (1822); Lemmon v. The People, 20 NY 562 (1860), Strader v. Graham, 51 U.S. 82 (1851).
woodpusher:
"These "abolitionists" never abolished their own slave ownership.
The "powerful" abolitionists never abolished slave trading in Washington, D.C. down the road from the White House until 1862.
D.C. was under the sole legislation of the federal Congress." Sure, but Founders did support abolition of international slave imports and abolition in the Northwest Territories.
Similar Republican anti-slavery views were used by 1860 Democrat Fire Eaters to argue for secession from the "anti-slavery" United States.
woodpusher: "A slave taken to a free state, while in that free state, might successfully sue for his freedom, but should he return to a slave state, as did Etheldred Scott, he resumed his status as a slave.
This was upheld in English as well as American law. "
Missouri courts before Dred Scott were known to have recognized claims of freedom by slaves kept too long in free-states.
"It was expected that the Scotts would win their freedom with relative ease since Missouri courts had heard more than ten other cases in which they had freed slaves who had been taken into free territory.[14]
Furthermore, the case had been assigned to Judge Alexander Hamilton, who was known to be sympathetic to slave freedom suits.[13]"
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