The Dred Scott Vs. Sandford is a landmark piece of legal precedent that effectively unpersoned all black people in America...
But what if it went the other way?
What if the court instead ruled that the constitution is egalitarian to all people and the man should be set free... but as a consequence, white men are now able to be taken into slavery.
How would this have changed the immediate history leading up to the American Civil War which, in this scenario, will still end with a Union victory that abolishes all slavery?
A very narrow timescale, as this ONLY applies to 1857 through 1865~1870 (or slightly more/less if applicable).
...
I start with the mass import of slaves from Ireland and Italty, which in turn crush the Fenian Brotherhood and well as prevent the Second Italian War of Independence as their belligerents were preemptively shipped to America
Also, what would the court giving him his freedom mean? Would this mean free blacks are counted as American citizens? Would this lead to a civil war sooner? Would nothing change? What do you guys think?
I've recently picked up on the fact that Sandford wasn't the idiot that took his slave into a state that had abolished slavery.
I've read some very dark things, as well as some occasional bright spots...
I've read Dred Scot Decision, and I realized that is wrong on so many levels, even the reasoning was wrong and so was the predicate/assumption of certain people were never intended to be people by the framers and that they were never allowed/intended to have rights (implied: and thus we should bound ourselves to them, and they aren't people). How did people in the know react to that? In fact, the more astute admitted that slaves were reduced in their condition because of slavery.
As to Prigg v Pennsylvania, am I correct to read that as the abolitionist won the battle but lost the war, in that the State's personal liberty laws (that basically allowed people to resist the fugitive slave act of 1850) were upheld and that State officials were not per se required one way or another, but that the federal government can/should enforce its own laws, but has lots of leeway in how it chooses to do so? This sorta seems a bit like anti-comandeering doctrine, proto version, but doesn't this run into problems with the Supremacy Clause? Also, with the Slaveholder's Rebellion killing the Compact Theory, doesn't that mean the precedent was sorta inapplicable/invalid?
A popular trope for the pro-life side is to evaluate the pinnings of the Roe decision with that of the Dred Scott decision. After all, both were landmark United States Supreme Court cases, both were decided by all white male members (except for Thurgood Marshall in Roe), and both were reached by a 7-2 majority margin. It's a convenient go-to for the pro-life position, not only considering all of the aforementioned, but also regarding how the Dred Scott decision has been universally condemned as the worst Supreme Court decision ever made and was eventually overturned. So, with that in mind, the pro-life side wants to undercut the credibility of the Roe decision by way of comparison to the Dred Scott decision strictly along the mere outcomes of the Dred Scott decision. After all, we are doomed to repeat history if we are not to learn from it, or something to that effect.
So far, this is a fair juxtaposition.
I ended up going down a rabbit hole to see if this conclusion drawn by the pro-life side actually holds water and isn't just a shallow understanding of how American Jurisprudence works. I read excerpts from the Dred Scott decision, professional opinions on said decision by legal scholars, and also pored through the history surrounding the decision itself.
The excerpts (opinion of the majority in the Supreme Court case) appeared to be highly politically motivated, considering there was collusion between the chief justice and president at the time regarding how the court was leaning before the decision was even made. The bulk of the legal maneuvering by way of the justices arriving at their conclusions were based the evaluation of a black person's citizenship in the US. After all, it was strictly interpreted that one's constitutional rights were granted on the premise one was a "born, naturalized citizen". Since Dred Scott's family was "imported" into the US from foreign lands (even though Scott himself was born in the US), compounded by the fact that the justices interpreted US citizenship strictly as a white privilege (perceiving the Document was founded on the notion of white liberty and had no historical context for ever applying to black people), they ended up siding with the Commonwealth of Missouri. Given the scope and time of this decision, it seemed fair enough. But what people forget is the court subsequently threw out the Missouri Compromise, labeling it as unconstitutional, thus granting more rights to slaveowners. For a decision that
... keep reading on reddit ➡
A popular trope for the pro-life side is to evaluate the pinnings of the Roe decision with that of the Dred Scot decision. After all, both were landmark United States Supreme Court cases, both were decided by an all white male members (except for Thurgood Marshall in Roe), and both were reached by a 7-2 majority margin. It's a convenient go-to for the pro-life position, not only considering all of the aforementioned, but also regarding how the Dred Scott decision has been universally condemned as the worst Supreme Court decision ever made and was eventually overturned. So, with that in mind, the pro-life side wants to undercut the credibility of the Roe decision by way of comparison to the Dred Scott decision strictly along the mere outcomes of the Dred Scott decision. After all, we are doomed to repeat history if we are not to learn from it, or something to that effect.
So far, this is a fair juxtaposition.
I ended up going down a rabbit hole to see if this conclusion drawn by the pro-life side actually holds water and isn't just a shallow understanding of how American Jurisprudence works. I read excerpts from the Dred Scott decision, professional opinions on said decision by legal scholars, and also pored through the history surrounding the decision itself.
The excerpts (opinion of the majority in the Supreme Court case) appeared to be highly motivated, considering there was collusion between the chief justice and president at the time regarding how the court was leaning before the decision was even made. The bulk of the legal maneuvering by way of the justices arriving at their conclusions were based the evaluation of a black person's citizenship in the US. After all, it was strictly interpreted that one's constitutional rights were granted on the premise one was a "born, naturalized citizen". Since Dred Scott's family was "imported" into the US from foreign lands (even though Scott himself was born in the US), compounded by the fact that the justices interpreted US citizenship strictly as a white privilege (perceiving the Document was founded on the notion of white liberty and had no historical context for ever applying to black people), they ended up siding with the Commonwealth of Missouri. Given the scope and time of this decision, it seemed fair enough. But what people forget is the court subsequently threw out the Missouri Compromise, labeling it as unconstitutional, thus granting more rights to slaveowners. For a decision that was "suppo
... keep reading on reddit ➡