Disunion Feed

"I should have forfeited my own self-respect, and perhaps, the good opinion of my countrymen, if I had failed to resent such an injury, by calling the offender in question to a personal account. It was a personal affair, and in taking redress into my own hands, I meant no disrespect to the Senate of the United States, or to this House. [...] And now, Mr. Speaker, I announce to you and to this House, that I am no longer a member of the Thirty-fourth Congress."

The arc's coda, disclosed exception (July 14): the expulsion vote (121-95) fell short of two-thirds; Brooks resigned in defiance instead — and South Carolina's Fourth District re-elected him within weeks. Fragments joined with [...].

Read it in the original — 1856 pamphlet, Internet Archive ↗

"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) ↗