XPost: law.court.federal, alt.politics.democrats.d, sac.politics   
   XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh   
   From: stupid@nignogs.org   
      
   On March 6, 1857 – 169 years ago today – the United States confronted   
   one of the most consequential and troubling Supreme Court rulings in its   
   history in Dred Scott v. Sandford. But while this decision was a dark   
   moment in America’s past, it nonetheless ultimately revealed America’s   
   exceptional character through the public reaction to it.   
      
   The court’s opinion in Dred Scott infamously stated that enslaved people   
   were not citizens and therefore possessed “no rights which the white man   
   is bound to respect” – including the right to sue in federal court. It   
   was authored by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney – a Democrat appointed by   
   Democrat President Andrew Jackson.   
      
   For pro-slavery advocates, Dred Scott was supposed to be the final   
   settlement of the slavery question. But instead, the ruling exposed the   
   deep moral and constitutional fissures threatening the nation’s future.   
   It awakened a broad swath of Americans to the urgent need to align the   
   nation’s laws with its founding promise that all are created equal with   
   intrinsic dignity.   
      
   By the mid-1850s, the country was reeling from the fallout of the   
   Kansas-Nebraska Act, the collapse of the Whig Party, and violent clashes   
   in “Bleeding Kansas.” Into this volatile moment stepped Dred Scott, an   
   enslaved man who had lived for years in the free territories of Illinois   
   and Wisconsin with his owner before returning to the slave state of   
   Missouri.   
      
   After Scott’s owner died in 1846, Scott sued for his freedom, appealing   
   to the long-standing doctrine of “once free, always free.” But Chief   
   Justice Taney’s opinion went far beyond Scott’s personal claim. It   
   struck down the Missouri Compromise, denied Congress the authority to   
   restrict slavery in the territories, and attempted to freeze the   
   Constitution in the 1780s. Even some who supported slavery were startled   
   by the breadth of the Court’s assertion of judicial power.   
      
   The ruling ignited a national outcry. Abolitionists condemned it as a   
   betrayal of the Declaration’s ideals. Frederick Douglass denounced the   
   decision as a “scandalous tissue of lies,” yet he also predicted that   
   its extremity would awaken the nation’s conscience.   
      
   Newspapers across the North warned that the Court had effectively   
   nationalized slavery, making freedom the exception rather than the norm.   
   The decision clarified the stakes for a young political movement   
   committed to halting slavery’s expansion and preserving the territories   
   as free soil.   
      
   Abraham Lincoln emerged as one of the most incisive critics of the   
   ruling. He argued that the founders had tolerated slavery as a temporary   
   evil, not a permanent national institution, and that Taney’s opinion   
   distorted both the Constitution and the nation’s moral compass. Lincoln   
   warned that if the Court’s logic were accepted, no state could remain   
   free. His debates with Stephen Douglas in 1858 brought these issues to   
   the forefront of national life and helped shape the election of 1860.   
      
   The Lincoln-Douglas debates remind us that the most consequential   
   human dignity is inherent or conditional.   
      
   In 1858, the nation argued openly about whether an entire class of   
   people could be reduced to utility – valued for labor, economics, or   
   political advantage. Today, our debates unfold not in three-hour public   
   arguments like the Lincoln-Douglas debates but in fragmented   
   social-media bursts that often obscure the deeper question of whether   
   any human life may be treated as contingent, negotiable, or disposable.   
   The particulars differ across the eras, but the underlying struggle is   
   the same. A society that forgets the intrinsic worth of the person   
   inevitably drifts toward treating people as instruments rather than   
   individuals created in the image of God.   
      
   The Dred Scott decision did more than inflame public opinion – it set   
   the stage for the constitutional transformation that followed the Civil   
   War. The very overreach of the Court in 1857 created the moral and   
   political momentum that empowered the Radical Republicans a decade   
   later. Their historic action on March 2, 1867, of overriding Andrew   
   Johnson’s veto of the First Reconstruction Act was the direct   
   constitutional answer to the injustice of Dred Scott.   
      
   Where Taney denied citizenship, the Radical Republicans would secure it   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
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