On this date in 1857

[Bull Snipe]

Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Roger Tanney issues the verdict in the case Scott V. Sanford, aka the "Dred Scott Decision" The court finds that Scott cannot sue in Fedreal court for his freedom because, as a slave, he is not a citizen of the United States and therefore lacks standing to sue. That addresses the specific issue before the Court. However Tanney goes further in his decision. -Not only is Scott not a U.S. Citizen, there is no Constitutionally legal path for Scott or any slave to become a U.S. Citizen. -The Federal Government has no Constitutional authority to interfere with slavery in any state where slavery is legal. -The Federal Government must enforce the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act. -The Missouri Compromise is Unconstitutional.

Some consider the Dred Scott Decision to be the worst decision ever rendered by the Supreme Court

[Bull Snipe]

Believe Lincoln was dead when the majority of Reconstruction legislation was enacted

[Bull Snipe]

The Taney Court id split the hair. An ex slave could be a citizen of say Pennsylvania, but that did not entitle him to United States citizenship. That is one of the reasons some call the Scott Decision, the court ever made.

[DiogenesLamp]

The Taney Court id split the hair. An ex slave could be a citizen of say Pennsylvania, but that did not entitle him to United States citizenship. That is one of the reasons some call the Scott Decision, the court ever made.

I think he is legally correct about every matter other than this one. The constitution itself says that the privileges of the citizen of any state will be respected by all the states, and therefore they must also be respected by the Federal government which is merely the representation of all the states.

I think most people (was it really most people, or did the media then do what the media now does? Manipulate public opinion.) saw it as worst decision because it rebuked what had become official policy in a lot of states. It was like the outrage which would be provoked in California if people told them their "sanctuary cities" or their "legalized pot" were not in fact legal.

People had gotten accustomed to believing they could do certain things, and then they had suddenly been told "no."

[Bull Snipe]

Don’t disagree. But his court did make the distinction. There was no way that a slave could become a citizen of the United States, regardless if a state recognized that person as a citizen. That’s why the 13th amendment was necessary to make ex slaves citizens after the war was over.

[DiogenesLamp]

That’s why the 13th amendment was necessary to make ex slaves citizens after the war was over.

14th. The 13th freed them, the 14th made them into citizens.

[DoodleDawg]

Repeating propaganda isn't correct. Secession is not rebellion. So says the Union Supreme Court justice.

Repeating opinion does not make it fact. But as I have said, several times, secession is not rebellion. Rebellion is rebellion, and the South started theirs when they fired on Sumter.

The Union launched the first attack, but their defenders have written the history books, most of which leave out this salient point.

Probably because your opinion is pure nonsense, and most reputable historians like to stick to fact.

[DoodleDawg]

Four million people are not traitors unless you are a lunatic.

Or a Southerner in 1861. They waged armed rebellion, they waged war, against the government of the United States. That falls under the Article III definition of treason.

According to the Declaration of Independence, and also according to Abraham Lincoln before he gained power, people have a right to be independent if they so wish.

If they are going to launch a rebellion then it helps if they win.

[rockrr]

I see you are back to being your usual charming self. :)

[x]

If one actually reads the decision and understands the Constitution of the United States at the time of the decision, it is a legally solid decision.

Well, no. It depends on how long you can live in another state without becoming a resident or citizen of that state.

[Bull Snipe]

Thanks for the correction. one to many dinner martinis.

[BroJoeK]

DoodleDawg: "Two points.
First point, the Southern states were not readmitted to the Union because they were never out of the Union."

DiogenesLamp: "Well if that is true, how did Lincoln revoke Article IV, section 2?
If they were always part of the Union, the constitution required him to return their slaves, and it doesn't mention any exceptions to this rule."

Regions in rebellion were covered by the 1807 Insurrection Act:

"Whenever the President considers that unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any State or Territory by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, he may call into Federal service such of the militia of any State, and use such of the armed forces, as he considers necessary to enforce those laws or to suppress the rebellion."

Lincoln certainly did not "revoke" Article IV, section 2 for states & regions which remained loyal.
But regions in rebellion were subject to the words, "as he considers necessary", including, for examples, blockade and contraband.

DiogenesLamp: "The only argument on behalf of the legitimacy of his act is that they were no longer under the law of the US constitution."

The Constitution recognizes that rebellion is a different status, for example, in Article 1, section 9:

"The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it."

DiogenesLamp: "So which is it?
Either US Constitutional law didn't apply to them, or Lincoln violated Constitutional law."

Rubbish, the Constitution does not require people in rebellion to be treated the same as normal citizens.

DiogenesLamp: "The puppet government's put in place by the military forces occupying those lands voted in the way the puppets were told to vote.
This does not represent an actual consent, it was deliberate coercion that people pretended was a legitimate expression of the will of the people of those states."

"Puppet government" is incorrect.
Those state governments were elected by voters in good standing at the time, meaning rebels were not allowed to vote.
So there was no coercion regarding the 13th Amendment, since the authorized voters were more than eager to see it ratified.

But the key point regarding ratification of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments is that, in the end, every state which could did ratify them and no state ever revoked its previous ratifications on grounds they were "coerced" or in any other way illegitimate.

So the amendments stand as ratified, according to the original intents of their authors, though not necessarily some later fanciful judicial reinterpretations.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp to DoodleDawg: "I would like nothing better than to pin you down on this point, but when it suits you, you will have the Confederacy out of the Union, and when it doesn't suit you, you will have them never having left."

Of course, DiogenesLamp knows perfectly well the answers to his alleged conundrum.
Regions in rebellion are covered by the 1807 Insurrection Act and later laws such as the 1861 Confiscation Act.
States and regions which remained loyal were treated accordingly, including when the war was over, reparations for war-damages they suffered.

DiogenesLamp: "You play this game pretending both conditions are true at the same time, and you ignore my efforts to solicit from you a response that acknowledges your position contradicts the actual facts of the situation. "

The only "game playing" done on these threads is by DiogenesLamp and his pro-Confederate comrades in arms who stay up late thinking of new ways to twist the truth and distort actual history.

DiogenesLamp"If the South never left the Union, how did Lincoln get around Article IV, section 2 which requires him to return freed slaves?
It sounds like Lincoln is the one who left the union, doesn't it?"

Which is of course the ultimate pro-Confederate delusion: the South didn't secede, Lincoln did.
And anyone who would buy into such nonsense should be spending more time with their fellow Democrats and less trying to corrupt other FReepers.

The answer to much such nonsense is the 1807 Insurrection Act and others similar, such as the 1861 Confiscation Act, all directed at people in rebellion against the United States, as constitutionally recognized in Article 1 sections 8 & 9 and Article 3, section 3.

[TexasKamaAina]

Yes, he was. I was just stating the principle he used to justify the war. I don’t know how the radical Republicans reconciled Reconstruction with that principle.

[Bull Snipe]

They didn’t even give it a thought. Their goal was to punish the Southern States, that had seceded, as much as possible. IMO

[BroJoeK]

taxcontrol on Dred-Scott: "If one actually reads the decision and understands the Constitution of the United States at the time of the decision, it is a legally solid decision."

DoodleDawg: "What part of the Constitution said blacks were not and could never be citizens?
Or that Congress did not have the power to restrict slavery in the territories?"

2harddrive: "Good point you made about the decision’s validity, under the law then existing."

katgana: "Sound reasoning perhaps..."

SoConPubbie: "There are a lot of 'legally solid' immoral issues in today’s World.
However, just as now, if the issue immoral, even if it is Legal, it is wrongly decided."

x: "Well, no.
It depends on how long you can live in another state without becoming a resident or citizen of that state."

A number of posters on these threads have claimed that the SCOTUS Dred-Scott decision was constitutionally valid, even necessary, and that's total bunk.
It was not.
In fact, Dred-Scott was the most, ahem, dreadful SCOTUS ruling of all time, with even more activist and novel interpretations than, say, 1973's Roe v Wade.

And the proof of it is simply this: no Founder, not one, ever said what Chief Justice Taney claimed in Dred-Scott.
So Taney made it all up out of thin air, even more than the 1973 Burger court in Roe v Wade.

In fact, our Founders never intended to prevent states from abolishing slavery within their own territories and placing whatever restrictions on temporary residence they thought appropriate.
And such restrictions were acknowledged by courts before Dred-Scott.

"Scott based his legal argument on precedents such as Somersett v. Stewart, Winny v. Whitesides,[14] and Rachel v. Walker,[15] claiming his presence and residence in free territories required his emancipation.
Scott's lawyers argued the same for Scott's wife, and further claimed that Eliza Scott's birth on a steamboat between a free state and a free territory had made her free upon birth.
It was expected that the Scotts would win their freedom with relative ease, since Missouri courts had previously heard more than ten other cases in which they had freed slaves who had been taken into free territory.[5]
Furthermore, the case had been assigned to Judge Alexander Hamilton, who was known to be sympathetic to slave freedom suits...[12]

The first trial was dismissed on a technicality.

"In the 1850 [re-]trial... The jury found in favor of Scott and his family..."

So up to this point, the Dred Scott case is totally according to long-standing precedents and understandings of Founders' Intent.

But on appeal to the Missouri supreme court the trial verdict was overturned using very dark language that fully explains how things had recently changed.

Missouri's supreme court said:
"Times are not now as they were when the former decisions on this subject were made.
Since then not only individuals but States have been possessed with a dark and fell spirit in relation to slavery, whose gratification is sought in the pursuit of measures, whose inevitable consequences must be the overthrow and destruction of our government.
Under such circumstances it does not behoove the State of Missouri to show the least countenance to any measure which might gratify this spirit. "

In other words, the Missouri supreme court acted for "dark and fell" political reasons in overturning decades of precedent regarding when & how slaves taken to free-states or territories were declared emancipated.

It had nothing whatever to do with "Founders Original Intent", but rather with a new political situation from which the court felt compelled to change past practice & rulings.
And at the US Supreme Court level, Chief Justice Taney insanely carried this new thinking to its utterly absurd conclusion: that slaves could never be citizens regardless of state laws to the contrary.

So the posters here defending Dred Scott as some kind of "logical necessity" are just blowing more smoke of the kind we see too often used in defense of the Confederate Lost Cause myth.

By they way, if you check out my link above, you'll see a favorable mention of Free Republic's own LS about the connection between Dred Scott and the panic of 1857.
Point is: it was a big deal at the time, rocking the foundations of the republic and changing citizens perceptions about the nature and fate of their futures.

There was nothing -- zero, zip, nada -- originalist about Taney's Dred Scott ruling.

[LS]

Thanks for the mention. This is still, I think, the best analysis of Dred Scott as a legal case:

Don Federer, “The Dred Scott Case.”

https://www.amazon.com/Dred-Scott-Case-Significance-American/dp/0195145887/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1520443708&sr=1-1&keywords=Dred+Scott

As I recall, the most heinous abuse in the case came in denying slaves’ BASIC HUMANITY, that they not only were not entitled to freedom because they were slaves (which as you point out, was blown out of the water by EXISTING laws in slave states of MO and MD under “freedom laws”) but because they were Negroes. Taney denied that blacks were even “persons,” unfree or otherwise.

That alone made it the worst piece of judicial crap that ever existed, but Taney FURTHER made idiotically horrible judgments about Congress’s powers and the people’ powers to prevent slavery. Taney said Congress lacked authority over the territories (an absurd position, given that Congress’s power over the territories PRE-DATED the Constitution itself with the Land Ordinance and the Northwest Ordinance, which prohibited slavery in the Old Northwest). He said the people of a state lacked the power to govern themselves-—and equally idiotic position given that JEFFERSON said in the Declaration that it was the the people of the colonies who determined independence and that the Constitution begins with the phrase “We the PEOPLE.”

In short, outside of Obamacare and Plessey v Ferguson, you have to look long and hard for ANY decision that even remotely comes close to this piece of garbage.

[DiogenesLamp]

You keep leaving out the part where Lincoln launched that fleet assault against them. Lincoln attacked first.

[DiogenesLamp]

You can keep repeating that. I know it makes you feel better, because you have no comfort without it.

[DiogenesLamp]

Thanks for the correction. one to many dinner martinis.

No problem. Sometimes the details just run together for me as well.

[DiogenesLamp]

Regions in rebellion were covered by the 1807 Insurrection Act:

Acts of congress do not overturn Natural Law rights which were the entire foundation of the USA's existence.

Look up "Declaration of Independence" for a refresher course on what "Natural rights" mean.

And it wasn't a "rebellion" it was a divorce, but some people refused to stay on their side of the border.