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Posted on 10/21/2011 5:23:13 AM PDT by 1010RD
At the time of the Dred Scott decision, slaves were considered property and treated as such. The 14th amendment, not any court, made them citizens of the United States.
Oh, I agree with that. I just believe Taney was wrong in this belief.
It referred to those who were full citizens -- those who could vote, run for any office, and who owned land (rich, white, adult male citizens). This excluded women, children, slaves, foreigners, and visitors.
One of the numerous problems with Taney's theory is that "the people" changed quite significantly between the 1780s and the 1850s, as the states expanded the franchise to include all white males. This was apparently just dandy with him.
So, states can legitimately, accordingly to Taney, change the definition of a "full citizen of the United States" in some ways but not in other ways. There is absolutely no justification for this distinction in the Constitution or in statute or common law. But Taney finds one, apparently because he is offended by the prospect of Africans as citizens and equals.
A much greater mind than mine has addressed the issue is considerable detail. Let me refer you to the man who led the successful fight against this iniquitous decision.
http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?documentprint=52
Wonderful speech, but Lincoln too was a man of his time. In that time, per the very words of his speech, while he was fiercely opposed to slavery, and equally a proponent of equal rights of citizenship for blacks, for all men whatever origin, yet he was a segregationist.
The Founders were not, and Lincoln's own retelling of our founding history regarding black and white people and its comparison to that of his own time, is telling. Fully integrated communities existed in America and in the Americas in the colonial era and onward. But as America the nation approached the times of Lincoln and Douglas, such communities in it became rarer. What is the reason for that dynamic? Compare us say to Cuba of the same era -- a similarly developed place in that era. Yet in Cuba racial intermingling was far more common. The social structure of Cuba of that era was similar to our south, racial intermingling was socially discouraged and there came to be laws against intermarriage. Yet the races still mixed. The social situation in Puerto Rico was less stratified, almost half the population was of racially mixed parentage. The major difference was slavery.
It was the growth of plantation slavery in America which drove racial segregation, even in those states that had abolished slavery. Even Lincoln, the great man and great intellect he was, could not avoid being poisoned by it.
To expand and revise a part of that last:
It was the growth of plantation slavery in America which drove racial segregation. That growth of an enslaved, ill educated, people absent of well-formed family was not only toxic to those directly caught in it, it was hobbling to all.
There simply were not enough free blacks in the population to undo the damage the common perception of enslaved, broken, blacks caused. In Puerto Rico there were many free blacks, and the image of enslaved, ill-educated, broken blacks never took hold as the cultural image of any black.
This is why a man like Herman Cain is SO MUCH a necessity of our time, as an example, perhaps.
Interesting comments.
As far as Cuba goes, extensive black slavery didn’t really get going till about 1800, when the sugar industry began its development as a replacement for falling production in Haiti.
I don’t think you can blame the low status of blacks in America vs. Cuba on the plantation system, since this system was even more widespread in Cuba than in southern states. The state with demographics closest to that of Cuba was probably SC.
In a perverse sense, I wonder whether the Declaration of Independence may have had some perverse contribution to the decline in status of blacks after independence that you mention.
In Spanish Cuba whites were superior to blacks, but nobody was really free by American standards, and black/white and slave/free were just two of the many gradations of status from a field hand to the Viceroy. Nobody was equal.
In US, the Declaration says all men are equal, but black slaves obviously were not equal. This is the only significant status difference in the entire country, contrasting with the multiple legal status variables in Cuba.
There are two logical ways to deal with this contradiction.
One can decide that therefore slavery is wrong and should be eliminated, allowing all to be equal. The route chose by the abolitionists and (eventually) the North.
Or one can line up with Calhoun, Taney and Stephens and decide that since all men are equal and blacks aren’t equal they must not really be men. Or, in Taney’s terms, they aren’t “people.”
BTW, blacks (using US definition) are somewhere between 30% and 60% of the Cuban population, depending on which statistics you believe. Discrimination against blacks is a good deal more common than the Cuban government and US media will admit.
Dred Scott was decided before the slavery amendments (13th, 14th and 15th) were passed. At the time of the decision, slaves were property.
Now, a state which abolished slavery could make freed slaves citizens of that state, but states had no power to make them citizens of the United States -- that power was reserved to the federal government.
Consequently, a free slave who traveled out of his state had no rights. The 14th amendment was passed, making the slave a "citizen of the United states" with limited rights (defined in later court cases) which were applicable in all the states.
"http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?documentprint=52"
Your link contains the words of Abrahan Lincoln discussing the sacredness of the U.S. Constitution which he believed protected the rights of negros. This, coming from a man who a) suspended habeas corpus, b) did not believe in the constitutional right of the states to secede from the Union, and c) was against mixed-marriage (that's too much equality, I guess).
Neither were women and children -- and they were citizens! Even today we deny the right to vote and the right to bear arms to felons.
(And I believe the phrase is, "all men are created equal". The U.S. Constitution was created to define which, and whose, rights would be protected.)
That IS an interesting theory. The Constitution was not written to codify and systematize the exercise of the rights proclaimed in the Declaration. It was rather written to decide whose rights, as defined in the Declaration, would be limited or removed.
One of the many problems with this theory is that the Constitution did NOT say the rights it documented for "the people" did not include people of African ancestry. Taney's attempt to "read this into" the text notwithstanding, the Constitution is not a racist document.
Although, to be fair, it is likely every single one of those who signed it were racists by today's standards.
Well, no. It did not specifically exclude people of African ancestry. Nor did it specifically exclude women and children. But those groups were excluded.
For example, Article I, Section 2 reads (in part):
"The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States ..."
Chosen by "the people". Not "the inhabitants", not "the persons", not even "the citizens". The people.
Who voted in 1787? It varied a little from state to state but basically they were white, adult, male citizen landowners. Those were "the people" with full rights. They were the ones who had something to lose.
Granted, since that time and with the addition of several amendments, the definition of "the people" now includes women and all races. But this gives us an insight as to who the Founders were protecting.
True, in general. However, in at least 5 states blacks had the legal right to vote in 1787.
What Taney did was to go back in history and retroactively exclude those, admittedly few in number, voters from "the People" who established the Constitution. It was not an exercise of states' rights, it was a denial of those rights. He said that regardless of what individual states did, Africans were not and never could become citizens of the United States.
This was not only morally wrong, it was historically inaccurate. When Taney didn't like the facts, he just ignored them.
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He said the courts did not have the power to make them citizens of the United States. And he was right. It took a constitutional amendment.
You're shooting the messenger.
It appears we have a fundamental disagreement. You appear to believe Taney’s decision was correct. I completely disagree.
Y’all have a good day.
It may not have been politically correct but, yes, I believe it was constitutionally correct.
You have a good day, also.
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