PDA

View Full Version : Good Morning: Court Rules All Men Not Created Equal



Okla-homey
3/6/2008, 08:13 AM
however, 151 years later, a black man seems to be on the verge of wining his political nomination for the United States presidency.

March 6, 1857 Supreme Court rules in Dred Scott case

On this day 151 years ago, in a 7-2 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court hands down its decision on Sandford v. Scott, a case that intensified national divisions over the issue of slavery and precipitated the Civil War.

http://img80.imageshack.us/img80/88/zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz5.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
Chief Justice Roger Taney of Maryland (a slave state) wrote the opinion

Here's how the issue of whether or not a black man could ever be free if he had been born enslaved got all the way to the black robes who then held court in a little cubby hole in the US Capitol.

In 1834, Dred Scott, a slave, had been taken to Illinois, a free state, and then Wisconsin territory, where the Missouri Compromise of 1820 prohibited slavery. Scott lived in Wisconsin with his master, Dr. John Emerson, a US Army surgeon, for several years before returning to Missouri, a slave state.

http://img122.imageshack.us/img122/8339/zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz15.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
Dred Scott. He died in 1858 about a year after the historic decision which bears his name.

In 1846, after Emerson died, Scott sued Dr Emerson's widow for his freedom on the grounds that he had lived as a resident of a free state and territory. He won his suit in a lower court, but the Missouri supreme court reversed the decision.

Scott appealed the decision, and because his new "master" (to whom Scott had been leased by Mrs. Emerson,) John F.A. Sanford, was a resident of New York, a federal court decided to hear the case on the basis of the diversity of state citizenship represented. Note: The case went down in official Court records as Sandford v. Scott because a clerk misspelled appellee Sanford's name and the error was never corrected.

http://img80.imageshack.us/img80/3109/zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz6.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
From the National Archives

After a federal district court decided against Scott, the case came on appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, which was divided along slavery and antislavery lines; although the Southern justices had a majority.

http://img122.imageshack.us/img122/6973/zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz16.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
Map of pre-1860 US. Slave states in grey, free in pink. Organized territories in green.

During the trial, the antislavery justices used the case to defend the constitutionality of the Missouri Compromise, which had been repealed by the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. The Southern majority responded by ruling on this day precisely a century and a half ago, that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional and that Congress had no power to prohibit slavery in the territories, or anywhere else for that matter.

A plurality of the Southern justices also held that blacks who were slaves or whose ancestors were slaves were not entitled to the rights of a federal citizen and therefore had no standing to bring any case in federal court.

These rulings all confirmed that, in the view of the nation's highest court, under no condition did Dred Scott have the legal right to request his freedom. The Supreme Court's verdict further inflamed the irrepressible differences in America over the issue of slavery, which in 1861 erupted with the outbreak of the American Civil War.

Bottomline, the Court held three things:

1. No black, not even "free" blacks, could ever become citizens of the United States. They were "beings of an inferior order" not included in the phrase "all men" in the Declaration of Independence nor afforded any rights by the Constitution.

2. The exclusion of slavery from a U.S. territory in the Missouri Compromise was an unconstitutional deprivation of property (Negro slaves) without due process prohibited by the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. IOW, if the law could deprive a slave owner of his property without "due process" that would constitute a violation of the 5th amendment.

3. Dred Scott was not free, because Missouri law alone applied after he returned there.

Postscript

Dred Scott was born around 1800. His first master was a man named Peter Blow. Blow was the guy who sold him to Dr. Emerson. Blow's sons, childhood friends of Scott, had helped pay Scott's legal fees through the years. After the Supreme Court's decision, the former master's son Taylor Blow purchased Scott and his wife and set them free.

Dred Scott died nine months later

The matter was ultimately decided by ratification of the 13, 14 and 15th amendments to the Constitution in the wake of the Civil War which outlawed slavery, established citizenship of former slaves and bestowed upon them all the basic rights possessed by any other American citizen -- of course it was not until a hundred years later after the great civil rights struggles of the 1960's that these rights would become "real."

As an interesting and perhaps ironic aside, Dred Scott is buried in the same St. Louis cemetery and very near US General William T. Sherman, who played a pretty significant role in ending slavery in the United States.;)

http://aycu15.webshots.com/image/11814/2003823510104257864_rs.jpg (http://allyoucanupload.webshots.com/v/2003823510104257864)

http://img364.imageshack.us/img364/9050/insane7zo8ag.jpg

olevetonahill
3/6/2008, 08:24 AM
I Believe in the Freedom of Man.
But go back 10,000 yrs and Slavery was there . Not just Blacks But any one over come by a Superior force

olevetonahill
3/6/2008, 08:25 AM
Oh and Great Jorb Homey

47straight
3/6/2008, 08:41 AM
Wow, imagine that, Supreme Court gets it wrong and millions die and human dignity is denied. Oh yeah, and the decision is based on due process? Man, where I have heard that before...

I should make a site www.dueprocessisyournewbicycle.com

SoonerStormchaser
3/6/2008, 08:49 AM
Plessey vs. Ferguson wasn't too much better as far as Supreme Court stupidity!

TUSooner
3/6/2008, 09:23 AM
What's the scoop on the pennies on Scott's headstone? I head it's 'cuz pennies have Abe Lincoln on them, but maybe there's more to it?

TUSooner
3/6/2008, 09:24 AM
Oh yeah:
It was the Supremios
WORST.
DECISION.
EVER.

Okla-homey
3/6/2008, 09:26 AM
What's the scoop on the pennies on Scott's headstone? I head it's 'cuz pennies have Abe Lincoln on them, but maybe there's more to it?

opinions vary. One theory is the Lincoln connection you mention. Another theory is based on a west African custom of placing items of value on the grave of a revered person. As an aside, American Indians sometimes do the same thing.

Okla-homey
3/6/2008, 09:27 AM
Oh yeah:
It was the Supremios
WORST.
DECISION.
EVER.

There are those who beleive it was eclipsed in worseness by Bush v. Gore, but that's a stretch IMHO.;)

TUSooner
3/6/2008, 09:35 AM
opinions vary. One theory is the Lincoln connection you mention. Another theory is based on a west African custom of placing items of value on the grave of a revered person. As an aside, American Indians sometimes do the same thing.

Ah yes. That's the other thing I heard.
I suspect it's not really the Lincoln deal. The placing of items on the grave of a revered person would seem to translate across cutures pretty well.

olevetonahill
3/6/2008, 09:54 AM
Up and Untill Our Civil War . Slaves where a Trading Commodity !
The Blacks Can scream all they want But It was any one Captured In any kinda Fight !

12
3/6/2008, 09:58 AM
That's pretty neat. Here on campus, there is a statue of Sul Ross. Students place pennies at the statue's boots to have good luck during finals. One morning I passed the statue and saw a kid scooping what had to have been over $10 in quarters out of his pocket.

Not really related to your lesson, Homey, but I always wonder how that kid did in his finals.

http://reslife.tamu.edu/images/sulross.jpg

olevetonahill
3/6/2008, 10:01 AM
That's pretty neat. Here on campus, there is a statue of Sul Ross. Students place pennies at the statue's boots to have good luck during finals. One morning I passed the statue and saw a kid scooping what had to have been over $10 in quarters out of his pocket.

Not really related to your lesson, Homey, but I always wonder how that kid did in his finals.

http://reslife.tamu.edu/images/sulross.jpg

I bet he finished in the 1/4 :D

12
3/6/2008, 10:04 AM
I'm not sure, but I wonder if he knows he bought me lunch that day...;)

Miko
3/6/2008, 01:02 PM
Who said, "All men are created equal. But some are more equal than others." ??

Frozen Sooner
3/6/2008, 01:22 PM
Who said, "All men are created equal. But some are more equal than others." ??

George Orwell. Animal Farm.

BigRedJed
3/6/2008, 01:24 PM
Book nerd.

Jimminy Crimson
3/6/2008, 02:57 PM
opinions vary. One theory is the Lincoln connection you mention. Another theory is based on a west African custom of placing items of value on the grave of a revered person. As an aside, American Indians sometimes do the same thing.

See also: Jewish tradition of placing stones/pebbles on the grave as a sign of respect and that you have 'been there'. Also have heard it keeps the spirit in the grave, or the evil spirits out?

birddog
3/6/2008, 03:16 PM
heh. there was a guy named peter blow.