Civil War History - Secession and PoliticsWas it Slavery, or was it States Rights? Perhaps it was the election of Lincoln? What were the real reasons for Southern Secession and what were the political issues in this time of war? Find your answers here in the Secession and Politics Disussion.
The peace, interests, security and honor that were at stake were directly due to a potential loss of $4 billion dollars worth of private property and the overturning of a philosophy which celebrated enslaving an inferior race. He was not fearing a runaway tariff, as you contend. He is clear to name the danger they must escape - Lincoln and the Black Republicans, whose leading and pubicly avowed object is the destruction of their institution of slavery.
Leading and pubicly avowed object. Moore makes no mistake what he believes northern elected Black Republicans will mean to his state.
Cedar
I believe you are mistaken that I claimed Governor Moore feared a runaway tariff. I really don't know that he did or didn't.
You, also, seem to believe the Southern states had no iterests outside of slavery. You read slavery into every statement and exaggerate it by using terms like "celebrate enslaving an inferior race". That's unfortunate, but, I really don't think there is anymore I can say. Your mind seems set.
Regards,
Rose
__________________ "Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names".--J.F.K.
The War Between the States established... This principle that the Federal Government is, through its courts, this final judge of its own powers.
-- Woodrow Wilson
I believe you are mistaken that I claimed Governor Moore feared a runaway tariff. I really don't know that he did or didn't.
I'll stand corrected. I was under the impression that you considered escaping Republican controlled tariffs a major reason for secession and that slavery was safe under the Union.
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You, also, seem to believe the Southern states had no iterests outside of slavery. You read slavery into every statement and exaggerate it by using terms like "celebrate enslaving an inferior race". That's unfortunate, but, I really don't think there is anymore I can say. Your mind seems set.
I'll defend my statement as not exaggerated at all. While the founders may have thought of slavery in terms of a necessary evil that will hopefully whither away, by 1860 it had evolved into something enthusiastically championed across the South as the natural and righteous result of a God-sanctioned white supremecy. I think "celebrating enslaving an inferior race" is exactly what was the gist of speeches such as Stephen's Cornerstone speech. The days of apologizing for slavery were over. It was profoundly celebrated.
Clause 1: "The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States."
Clause 18: "[Congress shall have Power] To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof."
I'm sorry, I don't know what you are pointing out here. I understand the clauses, but what are you relating them to?
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Originally Posted by cash
I'm afraid you are laboring under a misconception. The "Northern states" were not abolishing slavery in southern states.
It's not my misconception. It's what the Southern people of the antebellum South believed, not that Northern states actually could abolish slavery, but that they endeavored for that end.
Quote:
Originally Posted by cash
Taney said blacks, even free blacks, cannot be citizens of the United States, even if a state should grant them state citizenship, meaning that the US Constitution would not apply to them at all, and that the Bill of Rights would not apply to them at all. How can that be legally right?
Taney's words:
"The only two provisions which point to them and include them, treat them as property, and make it the duty of the government to protect it; no other power, in relation to this race, is to be found in the constitution; and as it is a government of special, delegated powers, no authority beyond these two provisions can be constitutionally exercised. The government of the United States had no right to interfere for any other purpose but that of protecting the rights of the owner, leaving it altogether with the several States to deal with this race, whether emancipated or not, as each State may think justice, humanity, and the interests and safety of society, require. The States evidently intended to reserve this power exclusively to themselves..."
I really hate this. I don't want to argue for Taney, but I see the logic regarding slave status. What I don't see logic in is the emancipated slave part. A free person should have citizenship status regardless of his race or where he immigrated from and most especially if he was born in the U.S..
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Originally Posted by cash
Taney said that Congress had no right to restrict slavery from any territory, yet the Founding Fathers themselves believed Congress had that right and you yourself agreed that Congress had that right. So how can Taney be legally right there?
Regards,
Cash
As I've said, I, personally, disagree with Taney on that point. But, does it make Scott free just because his owner took him to a free territory? Maybe it would depend on residency status, if it were temporary or permenant.
If a marriage took place between same sex partners in a state that recognized such marriages and the couple moved to a state that didn't legalize same sex marriages, would that make them not married? I'm not clear on this.
Regards,
Rose
__________________ "Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names".--J.F.K.
The War Between the States established... This principle that the Federal Government is, through its courts, this final judge of its own powers.
-- Woodrow Wilson
I'd have to brush up on the Dred Scott case, but I know there were other points that lead to Taney's ruling beside the legality of slavery in the territories. According to the law regarding slaves, Dred Scott didn't even have the right to file suit. IMO, Judge Taney should have refused to hear the case, but he did. He explained that under the fifth amendment the U.S. did not have the right to free the property of his master (or in this case the master's estate) just because the master had brought the slave into the territories.
Yes, yet another point that Taney argued was that blacks -- slave or free -- were not and never could be "citizens" who could sue in federal court pursuant to Article III, Section 2. He reached this remarkable conclusion by asserting that, as a historical matter, no blacks, slave or free, were citizens in any State at the time the Constitution was formed, and that therefore the Founders never envisioned that any black, slave or free, could ever be a "citizen".
As Fehrenbacher shows, Taney's historical argument was flat-out wrong. Free blacks were considered citizens in a number of States before and at the time of the enactment of the Constitution.
You're also correct that Taney did refer to the Fifth Amendment Due Process Clause and argued briefly that the failure to permit slavery in the territories violated slaveowners' rights to property. I've already explained at length why this argument was specious.
What I find most remarkable is that you seem to be struggling to justify Taney's unjust result when a fair reading of the Constitution avoids the dilemma altogether.
If a marriage took place between same sex partners in a state that recognized such marriages and the couple moved to a state that didn't legalize same sex marriages, would that make them not married? I'm not clear on this.
This truly does seem to open a large and interesting can of worms. If a same sex marriage exists legally in a particular state, can the federal government fail to recognize it? If the federal government recognizes the same sex marriage and pays benefits etc. to a SSM couple from Massachusetts but not to a same sex couple in Texas, isn't the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment violated?
We already have been through a similar situation. Were states with miscegeny laws compelled to recognize inter-racial marriages that had moved there from states without miscegeny laws?
What I find most remarkable is that you seem to be struggling to justify Taney's unjust result when a fair reading of the Constitution avoids the dilemma altogether.
What I'm struggling with is to understand the ruling without prejudice. I'm trying to consider the legal points without allowing humanity to cloud my understanding of what happened. One thing that should be remembered is that Taney was only one out of the seven out of nine Justices that reached this decision.
On a human note, of course, I think Scott and his family should have been made free. From a legal point, I have reservations. For instance, one site I've read put a very simple question forth, it asked:
"It is difficult to understand today, but under the law in 1846 whether or not the Scotts were entitled to their freedom was not as important as the consideration of property rights. If slaves were indeed valuable property, like a car or an expensive home today, could they be taken away from their owners because of where the owner had taken them? In other words, if you drove your car from Missouri to Illinois, and the State of Illinois said that it was illegal to own a car in Illinois, could the authorities take the car away from you when you returned to Missouri? These were the questions being discussed in the Dred Scott case, with one major difference: your car is not human, and cannot sue you. Although few whites considered the human factor in Dred Scott's slave suit, today we acknowledge that it is wrong to hold people against their will and force them to work as people did in the days of slavery."
I'm still researching. Unfortunately, I don't have access to the book you mentioned.
Regards,
Rose
__________________ "Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names".--J.F.K.
The War Between the States established... This principle that the Federal Government is, through its courts, this final judge of its own powers.
-- Woodrow Wilson
I have never looked into the issue whether the Full Faith and Credit Clause requires other States to recognize single-sex marriages duly entered into in a State that authorizes them. My initial assumption would have been that the answer was "yes".
I was therefore surprised when a quick Google search turned up at least one article that suggests the answer is "no":
"But most thoughtful observers believe that full faith and credit notions ordinarily would not require each state to recognize same-sex marriages from other states. (Clearly, states have some control over which out-of-state marriages they respect; each state today would not have to recognize a marriage between 12-year-olds even if that marriage were valid in the state where it was formed.)
"If a "full faith and credit" gay marriage case were to present itself, conflicts of law scholars tend to suggest that each state's interests in defining marriage consistent with its own values would trump the national interest in permitting the interstate mobility of married persons that underlies the full faith and credit norm. For this reason, the full faith and credit clause, scholarly opinion indicates, probably would not force a state to recognize marriages that it found inappropriate."
The author of the article, Vikram Amar, is a Law Professor at UC-Hastings, so his opinion has some weight. (He is also the brother of Akhil Amar.)
The real problem with Dred Scott is not the result per se but the legal reasoning and rulings that Taney made in order to reach that result. If Taney had merely said that Scott remained a slave because he and his owner had been mere "sojourners" in free territory (as opposed to residents there), I would not like it, but I would have no quarrel with the legal reasoning.
Taney did not do so. Instead, he went out of way to argue broad constitutional propositions that were utterly without merit.
I won't beat a dead horse on the Due Process property issue, except to point out that the problem with the article you quote is precisely that everyone recognized -- at least until the years immediately preceding the War -- that slaves were not property identical to cars or wagons. Yes, there may have been property aspects to slavery, but at the same time slaves were people. Therefore, the law -- as interpreted both by Northern and Southern courts (again, until shortly before the War) -- treated them differently.
There are three references in the original Constitution to slaves. In each one, the Constitution refers to slaves as "Persons". Article I, Section 2; Article I, Section 9; Article IV, Section 2. Nowhere does the Constitution refer to slaves as "property" or the like.
Do you have the cite to the article you quote from?
Gentlemen of the Union: I'm most grateful for the direction this and other threads have taken since Wild Rose joined CWT. She is most certainly more thoughtful than opinionated and expresses those thoughts clearly and eloquently. Am I alone in raising at least three Yankee huzzahs for her contributions? Ole
__________________ I never knew a man who wished to be himself a slave. Consider if you know any good thing that no man desires for himself. A. Lincoln
A few quotes to convince you on Dred Scott. All quotes are from "The Heritage Guide to the Constitution." You should find them particularly convincing since The Heritage Guide is published by The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank that endorses "original understanding" interpretation of the Constitution. The Chairman of the Editorial Advisory Board that oversaw the creation of The Heritage Guide is former Attorney General Edwin Meese.
Discussing the Slave Trade Clause (Article I, Section 9, Clause 1) (p. 151):
"In Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), Chief Justice Roger B. Taney pointed to this clause, along with the Fugitive Slave Clause (Article IV, Section 2, Clause 2), as evidence that slaves were not citizens but were to be considered property according to the Constitution. Observers are virtually unanimous that those clauses did not address the question of citizenship at all. . . . As the dissent in Dred Scott points out, there were freed balcks who were citizens in a number of Northern states and who had voted to ratify the new Constitution.
"It is significant that the words 'slave' and 'slavery' are not used in the Constitution of 1787, and that the Framers used the word 'person' rather than 'property'. This would assure, as Madison explained in The Federalist No. 54, that a slave would be regarded 'as a moral person, not as a mere article of property.'"
Discussing the Fugitive Slave Clause (Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3) (pp. 275-76):
"The section also leaves the clear impression, contrary to the holding in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), that the slave owner's property claim did not apply in federal territories, if Congress chose to prohibit slavery there."
Discussing the Territories Clause (Article IV, Section 3, Clause 2) (p. 280):
"With [Dred Scott] the Court went further, holding that the [Territories] Clause does not permit the exercise of police powers by the federal government in territory acquired after the Founding, and in particular that it does not permit the federal government to prohibit slavery in such territory. Dred Scott v. Sandford. Because the Northwest Ordinance had included a similar prohibition, and the [Territories] Clause was designed to constitutionalize the Northwest Ordinance, Dred Scott is contrary to the original understanding in this respect."
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