[4CJ]

You have never answered a question I posed. Do you believe that Taney was correct when he said, "The negro has no rights the white man is bound to respect"?

You never asked ME, but I'll answer it anyhow. Taney was not correct. He did not say that. You quote is not found in the text [*I'm shocked*] The correct citation is this:

But the public history of every European nation displays it in a manner too plain to be mistaken. They had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect."

Taey is NOT maintaining the position you attribute to him [*I'm shocked*], but noting that for the past century every European nation had done so.

[capitan_refugio]

"He did not say that." Taney embraced that rationale, which was his own misinterpretation of history, as part of his decision.

Taney's blatant racism had been known since at least 1832, when he wrote this opinion as Attorney General for Andrew Jackson:

"The African race in the United States even when free, are everywhere a degraded class, and exercise no political influence. The privileges they are allowed to enjoy, are accorded to them as a matter of kindness and benevolence rather than right. They are the only class of persons who can be held as mere property, as slaves."

That is not Constitutional doctrine. That is not world history. That is Taney's deep-seated prejudice. Taney meant and firmly believed exactly what he said: The negro had no rights a white man is bound to respect. Fehrenbacher terms it "harsh racial doctrine" - I call it southern racist BS.