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.
Maybe we are talking about two different things. I was referring to the statement by Ron above concerning the right of Congress to prohibit slavery in a territory (pertaining specifically to the Dred Scot case). The basis for Scot's case was that he had been in the Wisconsin Territory which Congress had ruled to be free.
The District of Columbia is a separate topic with a separate part of the Constitution giving Congress the right to make legislation for the District.
Again, I am amazed at all the effort and research that goes on at this site! I am so pumped over everything that I have learned since learning about this place! Ron & Rick, thank you for your debates and discussions on EVERY issue you have listed. It has been nothing but a real pleasure to see them all.
Ron, my dearest Rebel friend, thank you so much for your questioning every fact and every detail of every fact from every angle. I will never be able to repay you for all that I have learned. We may never agree ON ANYTHING about the War of Rebellion, but man this is fun!
Now to business. Seen any flying hippos lately?
Unionblue
__________________ "The American people and the Government at Washington may refuse to recognize it for a time but the inexorable logic of events will force it upon them in the end; that the war now being waged in this land is a war for and against slavery." Frederick Douglass
"Loyalty to our ancestors does not include loyalty to their mistakes." George Santayana
Thanks to Ron, I have spent a considerable amount of time perusing the NUMEROUS opinions that the Justices of the Supreme Court made concerning the case of Dred Scot. It seems that most of the Justices felt compelled to list their own reasons for either concurring or dissenting from the opinion of the court issued by Taney himself. I have already posted Jefferson's opinion on the argument by Taney that the founders didn't consider Africans to be MEN that the Constitution of the Declaration of Independence applied to. Below is Madison, who is widely considered to be the leading authority on the Constitution and the Convention which drafted it. In the excerpt from the Federalist paper below Madison goes into some detail on the question as to whether slaves were men or property:
Madison; from the Federalist #54
All this is admitted, it will perhaps be said; but does it follow, from an admission of numbers for the measure of representation, or of slaves combined with free citizens as a ratio of taxation, that slaves ought to be included in the numerical rule of representation? Slaves are considered as property, not as persons. They ought therefore to be comprehended in estimates of taxation which are founded on property, and to be excluded from representation which is regulated by a census of persons. This is the objection, as I understand it, stated in its full force. I shall be equally candid in stating the reasoning which may be offered on the opposite side.
``We subscribe to the doctrine,'' might one of our Southern brethren observe, ``that representation relates more immediately to persons, and taxation more immediately to property, and we join in the application of this distinction to the case of our slaves. But we must deny the fact, that slaves are considered merely as property, and in no respect whatever as persons. The true state of the case is, that they partake of both these qualities: being considered by our laws, in some respects, as persons, and in other respects as property. In being compelled to labor, not for himself, but for a master; in being vendible by one master to another master; and in being subject at all times to be restrained in his liberty and chastised in his body, by the capricious will of another, the slave may appear to be degraded from the human rank, and classed with those irrational animals which fall under the legal denomination of property. In being protected, on the other hand, in his life and in his limbs, against the violence of all others, even the master of his labor and his liberty; and in being punishable himself for all violence committed against others, the slave is no less evidently regarded by the law as a member of the society, not as a part of the irrational creation; as a moral person, not as a mere article of property. The federal Constitution, therefore, decides with great propriety on the case of our slaves, when it views them in the mixed character of persons and of property. This is in fact their true character. It is the character bestowed on them by the laws under which they live; and it will not be denied, that these are the proper criterion; because it is only under the pretext that the laws have transformed the Negroes into subjects of property, that a place is disputed them in the computation of numbers; and it is admitted, that if the laws were to restore the rights which have been taken away, the Negroes could no longer be refused an equal share of representation with the other inhabitants.
It does seem rather contradictary to take the position Taney did. On the one hand a slave was strictly property, on the other he was to be considered in deciding representation in the House of Representatives. As John Quincy Adams once stated in Congress, if slaves are strictly property then a goodly portion of the southern representatives seated there should return home.
OK - I got a question. This directly (at least in my mind) applies to Dred Scott.
Did you read in today's newspaper that England has now taken a softer stance on Pot (e.g., marijuana)? User's will no longer be arrested, but sellers will.
OK - that put out, let's consider England to be a territory that now has a law saying that while not legal, pot is not illegal. So, I go to England and buy a couple of sacks of whacky weed and come home to the US. I return to my home state. CAN I BE ARRESTED later in my home state for possession if someone turns me in? What if I had gone to Holland where it is neither illegal to possess or sell the stuff. Am I now illegal if I come back into the US With it?
YOU **** RIGHT I AM and I WOULD BE.
So, a man takes his property into a territory where that property is illegal. And then returns with that property to a state where it is legal to own that property. He then proceeds to sell that property to another. A few years later, on the advice of some well-doer, the new owner is sued (let's read this arrested to keep the analogy going) because at one time, this property was taken into a part of the country where it was voted illegal, but the vote was conducted by non-citizens, in a non-state. See, this is where it gets real tricky.
The Wisconsin territory at this time, was settled by citizens, but they were not living in a state of the United States, but in a territory. The vote by Congress on the Missouri Compromise, that even by your lights, should have been illegal. Article IV, Section III, Clause II reads: "Clause 2: The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to Prejudice any Claims of the United States, or of any particular State."
Needful rules and regulations ---? Laws? Nope, don't say laws. And to further curdle the milk, in the words of the Missouri Compromise, "In addition, an imaginary line was drawn at 36 degrees 30 minutes north latitude, and any portions of the Louisiana Territory lying north of the compromise line would be free; however, the act provided that fugitive slaves "escaping into any... state or territory of the United States...may be lawfully reclaimed and conveyed to the person claiming his or her labour or service" -- and even in the free territories, "slavery and involuntary servitude ... in the punishment of crimes" was not prohibited."
Now Scott did not escape into the Free territory of Wisconsin. He was taken there by his master. He was then returned to the United States, into a state that was admitted as a slave state. Hence, and forevermore, he would be slave, BUT HIS CHILDREN would be free (again, the words of the Missouri Compromise.)
Taney needed to keep the status quo, remember the Missouri compromise was done when the territory including Missouri applied for statehood in 1819. With the addition of another Slave state, the Slaves states would outnumber the free states. So, Congressman James Tallmadge of New York introduced an amendment that would prohibit any further growth of slavery in Missouri, and would eventually set the children of Missouri's slaves free.
Despite "the difficulties and the dangers of having free blacks intermingling with slaves," Tallmadge declared, "I know the will of my constituents, and regardless of consequences, I will avow it; as their representative, I will proclaim their hatred to slavery in every shape." The bill passed in the House but failed to pass the Senate.
The issue was resolved with a two-part compromise. The northern part of Massachusetts became Maine and was admitted to the Union as a free state at the same time that Missouri was admitted as a slave state, thereby maintaining a balance of 12 slave and 12 free states.
In addition, an imaginary line was drawn at 36 degrees 30 minutes north latitude, and any portions of the Louisiana Territory lying north of the compromise line would be free.
That's it. I believe the force of thinking that Taney's decision to rule that African-American's could never be MEN is a bit of word-smithing, and manipulation regardless of what it says. or Maybe that is why old deep-Southerners still call the African-American "boy"? Is that a result of Taney's decision too?
Sorry, got a headache like you would not believe.
While I do truly enjoy these little chats, my skull ends up feeling like it was run over by an 18-wheeler.
Nice analogy but you skipped right over the pertinent part. If you purchased something (say marijuana or a slave for instance) in a state where such property was legal and then carried said something into a state were such property was illegal, would you have a right to insist on keeping such property simply because it was legal in the state where you purchased it?
Is this not EXACTLY what the southern states were insisting on? Time and again efforts at compromise were struck down because of southern states insistence upon this very thing.
"Needful rules and regulations" are not laws?
"Clause 2: The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to Prejudice any Claims of the United States, or of any particular State."
It is hard for me to imagine a statement more inclusive of the right to pass legislation than "The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States." If these rules and regulations were not to be considered laws what were they? Suggestions?
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