Disunion Feed

"the barbarism of the blow which annihilates the citizenship of all the Free colored people in the United States, has fallen with a stunning force on all who have been taught that justice is obligatory on man, and that Christianity is the social law of Humanity. The half million of men and women paralysed by the atheistic logic of the decision of the case of Dred Scott, which disfranchises them on the soil on which they were born"

The part of the ruling least discussed at the time and least remembered since: the holding reached free Black Americans, not only the enslaved. The 1850 census counted about 434,000 free people of color in the United States.

Read it in the original — Albany Evening Journal, Mar 10, 1857 ↗

"this is the most important decision every made by any Court in this country, and that it fortifies as by a wall of brass the rights of the slaveholder in the States and in the common territories. [...] The idea of the abolitionists, that a slave is free as soon as he touches the soil of a free State, is again exploded"

The Standard numbers the holdings one through six off the telegraphic dispatch and warns its own readers the summary "may not be strictly accurate." "every made" is the printed text, for "ever made." A Southern paper drawing the conclusion Northern editors most feared: the free states' soil no longer frees anyone.

Read it in the original — Weekly North Carolina Standard, Mar 11, 1857 ↗