J. Robert Osborne
The Dred Scott Case reached the Supreme Court docket in late 1854 and for some reason the case wasn't argued before the Court until 1856. It was now 22 years since Scott had first lived in a free territory and his case hadn't been resolved. There was a Presidential election that year and the Democratic candidate James Buchanan became the fifteenth President of the United States. Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854 and now "Popular Sovereignty" was the means for a territory to have its voters decide if they would apply for admission to the Union as a slave or free state. "Bloody Kansas" was suffering from a bitter controversy over the prospect of slavery and John Brown and his sons were fighting for the cause to end slavery there.
In 1856, Roger Taney of Maryland (a slave state) was the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court having succeeded Chief Justice John Marshall in that position when Marshall died in 1835. He was part of a majority of Justices from the South on the Court at that time. As the Attorney General in the early 1830s under President Andrew Jackson he had been dismissive towards the rights of negroes in his writings. Dred Scott, a slave, was having his case decided by judges from the part of the country where slavery was part of the fabric of life.
There are many rumors and speculations to this day about the conduct of the Justices and the President during the deliberations and many possible compromises failed before Chief Justice Roger Taney issued the majority opinion of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott v. Sandford case. There were five legal questions to be decided in the case:
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1) Did Dred Scott have the right as a citizen to sue in Federal Court?
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2) If the Scotts were granted legal standing, were they citizens?
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3) Did the Supreme Court acknowledge the Missouri Supreme Court decision?
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4) If not, had the Scott's proven they were free under Missouri statute?
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5) Was the Missouri Compromise that had Congress set the limits on where slavery was allowed valid under the United States Constitution? (2)
Somehow this relatively simple legal request for freedom had acquired legal and political importance far in excess of its humble beginnings.
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The Majority Opinion as Expressed by Chief Justice Roger Taney
On March 6, 1857 almost eleven years after the Scotts had filed their case for the granting of freedom the Supreme Court issued its decision. Chief Justice Roger Taney read his decision to the Court, the Scotts and the attorneys and general public present. It was a crushing legal blow to Dred Scott himself and to the lives of African Americans, slave or free, in America and to all those that supported equality in the granting of civil rights and the end of slavery.
The Chief Justice asked this question:
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"The question is simply this: Can a negro, whose ancestors were imported into this
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country, and sold as slaves, become a member of the political community formed
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and brought into existence by the Constitution of the United States and as such
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become entitled to all the rights, and privileges, and immunities, guaranteed by
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that instrument to the citizen? One of which rights is the privilege of suing in a
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court of the United States in the cases specified in the Constitution." (3)
He answered this question and another when he stated:
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"The question before us is, whether the class of persons described in abatement
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compose a portion of this people (citizens), and are constituent members of this
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sovereignty? We think they are not, and that they are not included, and were not
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intended to be included, under the word "citizens" in the Constitution, and can
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therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides
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for and secures to citizens of the United States. On the contrary, they were at that
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time considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings, who had been
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subjugated by the dominant race, and, whether emancipated or not, yet remain
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subject to their authority, and had no rights or privileges but such as those who
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held the power and the Government might choose to grant them." (4)
In the opinion of the Supreme Court, negroes, "emancipated or not", were not citizens, they had not been included under the sovereignty of the Constitution and they could not claim any of the rights and privileges of citizens. The opinion also prohibits any rights granted by a particular State from governing the rights granted by another State. Taney then seeks to refer to the Declaration of Independence and its omission of any mention of negroes as further proof that when the Declaration, and later, the Constitution, did not acknowledge negro persons as part of the people then they were not considered as citizens at the nation's founding.
Taney's claim of disconnection from sovereignty as granted by the Constitution for all negroes was supported by the lines quoted below to attempt to explain why the Founding Fathers had not considered them worthy of any specific reference but as persons:
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"They had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior
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order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or
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political relations, and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man
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was bound to respect, and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to
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slavery for his benefit. He was bought and sold, and treated as an ordinary article
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of merchandise and traffic, whenever a profit could be made by it. This opinion
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was at the time fixed and universal in the civilized portion of the white race." (5)
Taney's words, and some of the words expressed in other opinions supporting the decision are clearly dismissive of any possibility of change in status for negroes because the Constitution, as written, is the law of the land and that in the Court's opinion is the primary reason that their status will not change. His reasoning seems to be that if the negro is not specifically mentioned in either the Declaration of Independence or United States Constitution and that the negro was held as inferior at the time by the white man than there is no reason to think that the negro was not excluded by omission intentionally.
The dissent of Justice John Curtis carefully refutes Taney's arguments for exclusion and argues that the Constitution actually is the very instrument that grants the rights of citizenship to negroes. He cites the five states that had extended citizenship to negroes as proof that it was legal under the Constitution to do so. He then goes one step farther, and examines the question of citizenship itself and the rights of the States.
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"One may confine the right of suffrage to white male citizens, another may extend
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it to colored persons and females, one may allow all persons above a prescribed
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age to convey property and transact business, another may exclude married
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women. But whether native-born women, or persons under age, under guardianship
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because insane or spendthrifts, be excluded from voting or holding office, or
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allowed to do so, I apprehend no one will deny that they are citizens of the United
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States. Besides, this clause of the Constitution does not confer on the citizens of
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one State, in all other States, specific and enumerated privileges and immunities."
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(6)
Curtis is saying that States can include or exclude whoever the may decide to, but that doesn't mean that if two or more States are not in concurrence on that question, that citizens in either State have any more, or less right, to retain their citizenship. That State power, granted under the Constitution, therefore protects the citizenship and rights of the negroes in the five states he mentions and that is proof that negroes have been granted the rights of citizen under the Constitution. His opinion is a strong one in refuting Taney's opinion, that there are two distinct forms of citizenship, Federal and State, but it was one of only two dissenting opinions.
As to the denial of the status of citizen to negroes, the prevailing argument was that it was not the intent of the United States Constitution to grant sovereignty and the rights of citizenship to negroes and that precludes Dred Scott, or any other negro, from being granted the right to sue in Federal Court. Negroes did not have the legal status of citizen, it was unclear what their status was, and they did not have the protection of the privileges and immunities of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Then Taney offered an even longer opinion on the conclusion that the limiting of slavery's expansion by Congress in the Missouri Compromise of 1820 was unconstitutional. The combination of these two conclusions from the United States Supreme Court in the Dred Scott decision in March of 1857 caused a storm of controversy and a further exacerbation of sectional tension. The South felt that slavery was vindicated and the North and African Americans were angry because they resented that fact and the accompanying further denigration of the rights of slaves and emancipated people. Both camps were forced to look to the Constitution as the vehicle for retaining the institution of slavery or abolishing it. Many people that wanted to end slavery stated to conclude that the amending of the Constitution was the only way to end slavery and protect the rights of those that were no longer enslaved and free.
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