Replies

DiogenesLamp: "You are focused on Taney, and *NOT* focused on the Massachussetts representative that deliberately launched this entire mess"

marktwain: "Why focus on the Massachusetts representative?
He did not chose to take the case.
He did not write the opinion.
He did not conspire with other justices and President Pierce about the case.
Pierce was a Democrat and a staunch anti-abolitionist.

"The case was somewhat unusual, and Taney had to stretch a bit to take it.

"Pierce was a drunk.
Many consider him one of the worst American presidents."

Thanks, this post bears repeating because our FRiend DiogenesLamp has peddled his Dred Scott conspiracy theory here for a long time now, and I've never before seen an effective response.

So, it turns out, there was a Dred Scott conspiracy, but it was not hatched in Massachusetts, rather by pro-slavery Southerners in Washington, DC.
They intended to end the slavery question by having SCOTUS declare abolition unconstitutional, and with Dred Scott, were just one small step away from their goal.

On Democrat Pres. Pierce, he was also a close personal friend of his Secretary of War, Jefferson Davis, a friendship which did not end in 1861.

So, it turns out, there was a Dred Scott conspiracy, but it was not hatched in Massachusetts...

Incorrect. The *OWNER* of that slave was that *LIBERAL* representative of trouble making Massachusetts. (Still making trouble today.)

Even Wikipedia tells a teeny bit of the truth on this matter.

"In 1850, Irene Emerson remarried and moved to Springfield, Massachusetts. Her new husband, Calvin C. Chaffee, was an abolitionist. He was elected to the U.S. Congress in 1854 and fiercely attacked by pro-slavery newspapers for his apparent hypocrisy in owning slaves. "

Chaffee could have freed him at any time, but chose not to do so because he expected the case to better serve as a propaganda tool, or a judicial activism tool.