Posted on 10/10/2004 12:15:34 AM PDT by Stoat
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In reality, the liberal media and their slobbering readers/listeners comprise the vast preponderance of the intellectual lightweights in the world. They are convinced of their "oh-so intelligent" status that they cannot see their own mental nakedness!
No, Susan Esterich is a Morlock after a hard night drinking and no bath!
During most of American history, women’s lives in most states were circumscribed by common law brought to North America by English colonists. These marriage and property laws, or "coverture," stipulated that a married woman did not have a separate legal existence from her husband. A married woman or feme covert was a dependent, like an underage child or a slave, and could not own property in her own name or control her own earnings, except under very specific circumstances. When a husband died, his wife could not be the guardian to their under-age children. Widows did have the right of "dower," a right to property they brought into the marriage as well as to life usage of one-third of their husbands’ estate. Though a married woman was not able to sue or sign contracts on her own, her husband often did have to obtain her consent before he sold any property his wife had inherited.Apart from such generally applicable laws, many women were in a position of legal dependence as a result of their particular situation, be it youth, poverty, or enslavement. Since coverture, and with it the right to dower, started to erode in the first half of the nineteenth century, wealthy fathers and husbands often left their daughters’ estates in a trust. The assumption was that women would be better off with the fruits of the estate than with power over money or property that could be taken from them through marriage before their sons were old enough to take charge of the estate.
Outside of the legitimizing context of property ownership or family identity, women might effectively be rendered non-persons. Since they had limited means of economic survival outside marriage, some indigent women ended up real or virtual wards of the state or town in which they lived. In British-Colonial America, where institutionalization of the poor was not the norm, a woman’s appearance on town poverty roles probably meant not much more than that the town took financial responsibility, however minimal, for one who could not do so herself. By the nineteenth century, however, poverty came to be seen as a personal flaw, though poor women were less stigmatized than poor men until the late nineteenth century. Nonetheless, women were subject to labor impressment and loss of independence of decision once they crossed the threshold of the poorhouse.
Like marriage, slavery denied women a separate legal existence. Female slaves became part of the legal identity of the men who were in theory responsible for their maintenance and answered for their behavior. This is why eighteenth-century newspapers carried advertisements where a man publicly renounced his responsibility for his estranged wife’s debts and renounced debts for runaway slaves. But whereas married women might have recourse to certain rights and traditions, slave women had none whatsoever. They were owned, traded, and sometimes forced to have children, entirely dependent on the good or bad intentions of their owners.
Implementation of and conflict about these various legal, and perhaps extra-legal but customary, strictures produced a rich source of records for women’s history and for the history of women’s role in economic practice.
Deed showing the transfer of property from Benjamin Hall to Richard Hall, 1774. Benjamin’s wife, Hepeziah Hall, also signed the document.
During the colonial period and well into the nineteenth century, married women did not control their own earnings, nor could they legally own property in their own name. Under the law of baron et feme, an area of common law that persisted after American independence, all property brought into marriage by a woman belonged to her husband. However, women did have some control over property. At the death of her husband, a widow was entitled to one third of his property as her dower. Because of this entitlement, a husband could not sell or transfer property without his wife’s consent. If he did so, after his death she could claim that the sale was illegal and demand the return of the property. For this reason, wives usually signed deeds of sale to show their consent. Often a statement that a woman was signing of her own free will and was not being coerced by her husband accompanied the signature.
In the nineteenth century, state laws such as the 1839 Mississippi, 1848 New York, and 1869 Illinois Married Women’s Property Acts gave women greater control over property they brought into marriage, property they inherited during their marriage, and their own earnings.
He's bad for a host of other things....but we have "beat that horse" to death more times than I care to count......
Interestingly, you still see these.
You do not, however, claim that women were not citizens, do you?
The minimal restrictions on women, historically speaking and in comparison with women elsewhere, on American women were progressively removed throughout the 19th century. By the end of the century, almost the only right still kept from (most) American women was the franchise.
Interestingly, frontier states, which were heavily male, tended to bid bid for female immigrants by granting women more freedom.
You do not, however, claim that women were not citizens, do you?
The minimal restrictions on women, historically speaking and in comparison with women elsewhere, on American women were progressively removed throughout the 19th century. By the end of the century, almost the only right still kept from (most) American women was the franchise.
Interestingly, frontier states, which were heavily male, tended to bid bid for female immigrants by granting women more freedom.
Well, I've read Taney's decision for the Court. I haven't tried to wade through all the partially dissenting and partially concurring opinions by the other justices. :)
I find it perfectly obvious that this decision was made on purely political grounds, which the Chief Justice then attempted to justify under the law. There is also considerable historical evidence that the President and various southern politicians were improperly involved in the decision.
Giving Justice Taney the benefit of the doubt, he may have been trying to put to rest an extraordinarily divisive issue in order to allow the country to heal its wounds.
The parallel to Roe v. Wade is quite amazing. The political system prescribed by the Constitution had, in the opinion of a large segment of the elite, broken down and was unable to legislate a solution. So the Court attempted to deal with it and put it beyond debate. Didn't work then or now. Merely inflamed what had previous been a comparatively minor issue.
The major difference is that abortion appears to be slowly disappearing as an issue, whereas slavery became more and more critical till it erupted in war. IMHO, this is due to sheer exhaustion on the part of the prolife forces. After all, it was less than ten years from Dred to the WBTS. We've lived with Roe for a lot longer than that.
I should have stated that Dred removed the right of Congress to legislate on slavery in the territories. Everyone except insane abolitionists was at the time in agreement that Congress had no power to legislate about slavery in a state.
No. That does not work any better. The Court said: "The Territory being a part of the United States, the Government and the citizen both enter it under the authority of the Constitution, with their respective rights defined and marked out; and the Federal Government [60 U.S. 393, 450] can exercise no power over his person or property, beyond what that instrument confers, nor lawfully deny any right which it has reserved."
The Congress never had the power to legislate on slavery in a state or a territory. The determination of whether, or not, to have legal slavery was not delegated by the people to the Federal government. It was reserved to the States or the people. The Federal government had no more delegated authority to prohibit slavery in the territories than it had a right to abridge free speech or a free press or to establish a religion or an income tax.
The problem here is not with Taney but with the Constitution. It recognized and protected the institution of slavery. However wrong or immoral that was, the Court was required to acknowledge that and rule in accordance with the law as it was, not as they thought it should be. When the law is wrong, the law must be changed.
After enumerating various Constitutional rights or restraints upon the Federal government, the Court said: "The powers over person and property of which we speak are not only not granted to Congress, but are in express terms denied, and they are forbidden to exercise them. And this prohibition is not confined to the States, but the words are general, and extend to the whole territory over which the Constitution gives it power to legislate, including those portions of it remaining under Territorial Government, as well as that covered by States. It is a total absence of power everywhere within the dominion of the United States, and places the citizens of a Territory, so far as these rights are [60 U.S. 393, 451] concerned, on the same footing with citizens of the States, and guards them as firmly and plainly against any inroads which the General Government might attempt, under the plea of implied or incidental powers. And if Congress itself cannot do this -- if it is beyond the powers conferred on the Federal Government -- it will be admitted, we presume, that it could not authorize a Territorial Government to exercise them."
Everyone except insane abolitionists may have agreed that Congress had no power to legislate the legality of slavery in a state. This is because the people never delegated any such authority to the Federal government, and what was not delegated was retained by the States, or the people. Neither did the people delegate any power to the Federal government to legislate the legality of slavery in a territory. If it was not delegated, it was just as reserved as the power over States.
Women were citizens, however, I dissented from your assertion that, "They had absolutely equal rights to life, liberty and property."
Not all women, or men, were qualified to become citizens.
In the wacky naturalization process established by our contemplative Federal government of the time, Burmese, Filipinos, Japanese, Koreans, Malayans, polynesians, Samoans, and Siamese were held to be racially ineligible.
However, Afghans, Arabs, Armenians, Egyptians, Kalmuks of Southeast European Russia, Persians, Syrians, Tartars of East Russia, and Turks were deemed qualified in the racial sense.
No matter how black an Egyptian may have been, he was white enough for the naturalization laws.
The whole process seems antithetical to a proclamation that all men were created equal.
bttt
Other than Lincoln's unsupported conspiracy theory for which he admitted he had no evidence, I am unaware of any considerable or lesser amount of historical evidence to support this seemingly absurd notion.
The case was (unlawfully) manufactured by abolitionists for abolitionists and was foisted upon the Supreme Court with a deliberately falsified statement of facts agreed to by the supposedly contending parties. As a case under appellate review, the facts of the case were whatever was established by the Missouri court and not subject to appellate review.
Likewise contributing to the rehabilitation of Taney was the publication in 1910 of the Catron and Grier letters informing Buchanan that the two dissenting justices had forced the Court majority to undertake a broad decision instead of the narrow one originally planned. As a consequence, much of the blame for the resulting judicial disaster could be shifted from Taney to Curtis and McLean. Frank H. Hodder thought that Curtis was the worst offender of the three, but McLean's notorious presidential ambitions made him the more obvious culprit. In 1927, Beveridge confided to Hodder: "Justice Holmes told me (but this is confidential, and you cannot use it unless you find it out some other way) that the tradition in the Court is that McLean stirred up the whole mess and that Curtis probably would not have peeped if McLean had not ripped and torn around so much and blew off so loudly."
Source: Don E. Fehrenbacher, The Dred Scott Case, 1978, p. 590
The conspiracy theory was thrown out by Lincoln during the Lincoln-Douglas debates.
Now my friends I wish you to attend for a little while to one or two other things in that Springfield speech. My main object was to show, so far as my humble ability was capable of showing to the people of this country, what I believed was the truth -- that there was a tendency, if not a conspiracy among those who have engineered this slavery question for the last four or five years, to make slavery perpetual and universal in this nation. Having made that speech principally for that object, after arranging the evidences that I thought tended to prove my proposition, I concluded with this bit of comment:We cannot absolutely know that these exact adaptations are the result of pre-concert, but when we see a lot of framed timbers, different portions of which we know have been gotten out at different times and places, and by different workmen -- Stephen, Franklin, Roger and James, for instance -- and when we see these timbers joined together, and see they exactly make the frame of a house or a mill, all the tenons and mortices exactly fitting and all the lengths and proportions of the different pieces exactly adapted to their respective places and not a piece too many or too few -- not omitting even the scaffolding -- or if a single piece be lacking we see the place in the frame exactly fitted and prepared yet to bring such piece in -- in such a case we fell it impossible not to believe that Stephen and Franklin, and Roger and James, all understood one another from the beginning, and all worked upon a common plan or draft drawn before the first blow was struck. [Great cheers.]
-- Abraham Lincoln, August 21, 1858, Ottawa, Illinois, Lincoln-Douglas debate
Fehrenbacher gives this short shrift.
The idea of a slave-power conspiracy to nationalize slavery had originated with abolitionists many years earlier. Gaining strength from the Dred Scott decision, it would be exploited by hundreds of Republican editors and speakers over a period of fifteen months before Abraham Lincoln, on a warm June evening in 1858, made it the central theme of his opening speech in the senatorial campaign. this "absurd bogey," as Allan Nevins has called it, aptly serves to exemplify the "paranoid style" in American politics. Unless one defines "conspiracy" so loosely as to mean little more than "tendency," evidence of an antebellum conspiracy to legalize slavery throughout the United states is virtually nonexistent. There were no conferences held, no organizationsformed, no plots laid for the achievement of such a purpose.
Source: Don E. Fehrenbacher, The Dred Scott Case, 1978, p. 451.
Yes, in addition to introducing legislation to re-implement the draft, Rep. Charley Rangle will also be introducing legislation to bring back slavery.
In that period, public sympathies were turning against slavery and the slave trade, an enterprise the North was involved in as well as the South. The case itself was indeed politically motivated and crafted, albeit to open the US to citizenship of nationalities not ordinarily accepted under the immigration laws of the time, not just Negroes.
The case was an attempt to actually judicially legislate from the bench, and the SC of that period did not play the game. The justices decided the case along strict constitutional lines, whereas, Roe v Wade was judicial legislation.
In the intervening years, much effort has been made to demonize this case. Methinks you haven't read it, or if you have, it was a cursory once over.
Slavery was and should have been dead, as it was in England by the efforts of William Wilberforce. To kill it here required constitutional amendments, and it is well said of the court that it did not let political pressure force them to usurp legislative functions, as latter courts were suborned.
Then he must know how Harry Jaffa feels.
Fellow countrymen--Americans south, as well as north, shall we make no effort to arrest this? Already the liberal party throughout the world, express the apprehension "that the one retrograde institution in America, is undermining the principles of progress, and fatally violating the noblest political system the world ever saw." This is not the taunt of enemies, but the warning of friends. Is it quite safe to disregard it--to despise it? Is there no danger to liberty itself, in discarding the earliest practice, and first precept of our ancient faith? In our greedy chase to make profit of the negro, let us beware, lest we "cancel and tear to pieces" even the white man’s charter of freedom.
You just picked the wrong instantiation.
And that is from what?
OK, let's look at the right 'instantiation'.
"I particularly object to the NEW position which the avowed principle of this Nebraska law gives to slavery in the body politic. I object to it because it assumes that there CAN be MORAL RIGHT in the enslaving of one man by another. I object to it as a dangerous dalliance for a few [free?] people---a sad evidence that, feeling prosperity we forget right---that liberty, as a principle, we have ceased to revere. I object to it because the fathers of the republic eschewed, and rejected it. The argument of ``Necessity'' was the only argument they ever admitted in favor of slavery; and so far, and so far only as it carried them, did they ever go. They found the institution existing among us, which they could not help; and they cast blame upon the British King for having permitted its introduction. BEFORE the constitution, they prohibited its introduction into the north-western Territory---the only country we owned, then free from it. AT the framing and adoption of the constitution, they forbore to so much as mention the word ``slave'' or ``slavery'' in the whole instrument. In the provision for the recovery of fugitives, the slave is spoken of as a ``PERSON HELD TO SERVICE OR LABOR.'' In that prohibiting the abolition of the African slave trade for twenty years, that trade is spoken of as ``The migration or importation of such persons as any of the States NOW EXISTING, shall think proper to admit,'' &c. These are the only provisions alluding to slavery. Thus, the thing is hid away, in the constitution, just as an afflicted man hides away a wen or a cancer, which he dares not cut out at once, lest he bleed to death; with the promise, nevertheless, that the cutting may begin at the end of a given time. Less than this our fathers COULD not do; and NOW [MORE?] they WOULD not do. Necessity drove them so far, and farther, they would not go. But this is not all. The earliest Congress, under the constitution, took the same view of slavery. They hedged and hemmed it in to the narrowest limits of necessity.
"In 1794, they prohibited an out-going slave-trade---that is, the taking of slaves FROM the United States to sell.
"In 1798, they prohibited the bringing of slaves from Africa, INTO the Mississippi Territory---this territory then comprising what are now the States of Mississippi and Alabama. This was TEN YEARS before they had the authority to do the same thing as to the States existing at the adoption of the constitution.
"In 1800 they prohibited AMERICAN CITIZENS from trading in slaves between foreign countries---as, for instance, from Africa to Brazil.
"In 1803 they passed a law in aid of one or two State laws, in restraint of the internal slave trade.
"In 1807, in apparent hot haste, they passed the law, nearly a year in advance to take effect the first day of 1808---the very first day the constitution would permit---prohibiting the African slave trade by heavy pecuniary and corporal penalties.
"In 1820, finding these provisions ineffectual, they declared the trade piracy, and annexed to it, the extreme penalty of death. While all this was passing in the general government, five or six of the original slave States had adopted systems of gradual emancipation; and by which the institution was rapidly becoming extinct within these limits.
"Thus we see, the plain unmistakable spirit of that age, towards slavery, was hostility to the PRINCIPLE, and toleration, ONLY BY NECESSITY.
"But NOW it is to be transformed into a ``sacred right.'' Nebraska brings it forth, places it on the high road to extension and perpetuity; and, with a pat on its back, says to it, ``Go, and God speed you.'' Henceforth it is to be the chief jewel of the nation---the very figure-head of the ship of State. Little by little, but steadily as man's march to the grave, we have been giving up the OLD for the NEW faith. Near eighty years ago we began by declaring that all men are created equal; but now from that beginning we have run down to the other declaration, that for SOME men to enslave OTHERS is a ``sacred right of self-government.'' These principles can not stand together. They are as opposite as God and mammon; and whoever holds to the one, must despise the other. When Pettit, in connection with his support of the Nebraska bill, called the Declaration of Independence ``a self-evident lie'' he only did what consistency and candor require all other Nebraska men to do. Of the forty odd Nebraska Senators who sat present and heard him, no one rebuked him. Nor am I apprized that any Nebraska newspaper, or any Nebraska orator, in the whole nation, has ever yet rebuked him. If this had been said among Marion's men, Southerners though they were, what would have become of the man who said it? If this had been said to the men who captured Andre, the man who said it, would probably have been hung sooner than Andre was. If it had been said in old Independence Hall, seventy-eight years ago, the very door-keeper would have throttled the man, and thrust him into the street.
"Let no one be deceived. The spirit of seventy-six and the spirit of Nebraska, are utter antagonisms; and the former is being rapidly displaced by the latter.
"Fellow countrymen---Americans south, as well as north, shall we make no effort to arrest this? Already the liberal party throughout the world, express the apprehension ``that the one retrograde institution in America, is undermining the principles of progress, and fatally violating the noblest political system the world ever saw.'' This is not the taunt of enemies, but the warning of friends. Is it quite safe to disregard it---to despise it? Is there no danger to liberty itself, in discarding the earliest practice, and first precept of our ancient faith? In our greedy chase to make profit of the negro, let us beware, lest we ``cancel and tear to pieces'' even the white man's charter of freedom.
"Our republican robe is soiled, and trailed in the dust. Let us repurify it. Let us turn and wash it white, in the spirit, if not the blood, of the Revolution. Let us turn slavery from its claims of ``moral right,'' back upon its existing legal rights, and its arguments of ``necessity.'' Let us return it to the position our fathers gave it; and there let it rest in peace. Let us re-adopt the Declaration of Independence, and with it, the practices, and policy, which harmonize with it. Let north and south---let all Americans---let all lovers of liberty everywhere---join in the great and good work. If we do this, we shall not only have saved the Union; but we shall have so saved it, as to make, and to keep it, forever worthy of the saving. We shall have so saved it, that the succeeding millions of free happy people, the world over, shall rise up, and call us blessed, to the latest generations." -- Abraham Lincoln, October 16, 1854
Now, just what the hell was the point you were trying to make with your out-of-context quote?
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