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Actually, I read something recently that suggested that, although on its face an outrage, the decision was, intentionally or not, a historically brilliant legal maneuver. By counting each slave as less than a full person, it kept the official population of the southern states from artificially ballooning, thereby inflating their representation in Congress and making the goal of freedom a slower and more difficult goal to achieve.

"...thereby inflating their representation in Congress and making the goal of freedom a slower and more difficult goal to achieve."

If you are insinuating that the US Congress was working on freedom for slaves in 1861, sadly you are mistaken. Perhaps you have not heard of the Corwin Amendment to the US Constitution.

The Corwin Amendment to the United States Constitution, Number 13, Would Legalize Slavery throughout the Country.

2/28/1861 Congress wrote and passed the Corwin Amendment, also known as the Slavery Amendment. In a remarkable attempt to keep Southern States from leaving the Union, a 13th Amendment to the Constitution, was whittled out of the Crittenden Compromise of the second session of the Thirty-sixth Congress.

It would legalize slavery everywhere in the Union.

It was submitted to both houses of Congress on February 28, later approved, and submitted to the states for ratification on March 9, 1861. It declared in part that:

“No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give Congress the power to abolish or interfere within any state, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor service by the laws of said State”.

Before being sent to the states, during the last hour of President Buchanan’s tenure, he affixed his signature to the document

The President’s signature was considered unnecessary because of the constitutional provision that on the concurrence of two-thirds of both Houses of Congress, the proposal would be submitted to the States for ratification.

Newly inaugurated President Lincoln later signed the document’s letter of introduction to the state governors, and asked for their approval.

It was quickly ratified by Maryland and Ohio. Its passage by other states was haulted by Lincoln's call for troops.

By counting each slave as less than a full person

I do not believe the Dred Scott Decision had anything to do with the three-fifths provision. The people in the North actually wanted to count slaves as zero and the people in the South wanted to count them as one, but this was only for the purposes of deciding the apportionment of representation in the House of Representatives.

ML/NJ

See number 17. It was the US Constitution, not the Scott decision, that defined slave apportionment at 3/5s.

Based on the Constitution, Taney declared that slaves could not be citizens.

Actually, I read something recently that suggested that, although on its face an outrage, the decision was, intentionally or not, a historically brilliant legal maneuver. By counting each slave as less than a full person, it kept the official population of the southern states from artificially ballooning, thereby inflating their representation in Congress and making the goal of freedom a slower and more difficult goal to achieve.

Dred Scott had nothing to do with that. The census status of slaves had already been established by Article I, Section 2, Clause 3. Dred Scott ruled that free blacks were not citizens and could never be citizens of the U.S. And there was nothing brilliant about the twisted, tangled legal reasoning that Chief Justice Taney applied in his decision. Quite the opposite.