Disunion Feed

"They had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit."

The most quoted sentence in the history of the Court. Read it precisely: Taney is stating what he claims the framing generation believed, not announcing his own moral view. But he is not describing it in passing — he uses that claimed 1787 consensus as the ground for holding that people of African descent were never included in the word "citizen" and so cannot sue in a federal court. The decision went further: it struck down the Missouri Compromise and held that Congress could not bar slavery from any territory.

Read it in the original — Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1857) ↗

"At the time of the ratification of the Articles of Confederation, all free native-born inhabitants of the States of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and North Carolina, though descended from African slaves, were not only citizens of those States, but such of them as had the other necessary qualifications possessed the franchise of electors, on equal terms with other citizens. [...] when a strict interpretation of the Constitution, according to the fixed rules which govern the interpretation of laws, is abandoned, and the theoretical opinions of individuals are allowed to control its meaning, we have no longer a Constitution; we are under the government of individual men"

Curtis answers Taney with the record: Black men voted in five of the ratifying states, which is difficult to square with a claim that they were never meant to be citizens. He resigned from the Court within months — the only justice in its history to leave over a decision. The two fragments are from different parts of the dissent, joined with [...].

Read it in the original — Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1857), Curtis dissenting ↗