I was responding to your comment about slaves being people as a valid reason for apportionment.
Obviously, the federal courts didn't view them as people at all.
Taney didn’t go all the way to claiming blacks weren’t people.
He simply stated that at the Founding, “they had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit.”
IOW, he passed the buck to public opinion in 1776.
However, this middle position was logically untenable over the long haul. In fact, to maintain it even in the Dred Scott opinion he was forced to introduce multiple legal and historical untruths. As thoroughly documented in the dissents.
In the long run you have to agree it means what it say, and all men are created equal. Or you have to decide some unequal people aren’t really men. Or that the Declaration is simply wrong, and all men aren’t equal.