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THE ISSUE FORCED UPON US.
(from the Albany, New York, Evening Journal, March 9, 1857)
The three hundred and forty-seven thousand five hundred and twenty-five Slaveholders in the Republic, accomplished day before yesterday a great success—as shallow men estimate success. They converted the Supreme Court of Law and Equity of the United States of America into a propagandist of human Slavery. Fatal day for a judiciary made reputable throughout the world, and reliable to all in this nation, by the learning and the virtues of Jay, Rutledge, Ellsworth, Marshall and Story!
The conspiracy is nearly completed. The Legislation of the Republic is in the hands of this handfull of Slaveholders. The United States Senate assures it to them. The Executive power of the Government is theirs. Buchanan took the oath of fealty to them on the steps of the Capitol last Wednesday. The body which gives the supreme law of the land, has just acceded to their demands, and dared to declare that under the charter of the Nation, men of African descent are not citizens of the United States and can not be—that the Ordinance of 1787 was void—that the Missouri Compromise was void—that human Slavery is not a local thing, but pursues its victims to free soil, clings to them wherever they go, and returns with them—that the American Congress has no power to prevent the enslavement of men in the National Territories—that the inhabitants themselves of the Territories have no power to exclude human bondage from their midst—and that men of color can not be suitors for justice in the Courts of the United States! The Lemmon Case is on its way to this corrupt fountain of law. Arrived there, a new shackle for the North will be handed to the servile Supreme Court, to rivet upon us. A decision of that case is expected which shall complete the disgraceful labors of the Federal Judiciary in behalf of Slavery—a decision that slaves can lawfully be held in free States, and Slavery be fully maintained here in New York through the sanctions of "property" contained in the Constitution. That decision will be rendered. The Slave breeders will celebrate it as the crowning success of a complete conquest. But how they will reckon without their hosts!
Beneath Courts and Congresses and Presidents is the great PEOPLE. They love liberty—they love justice—they love humanity. Till they affirm the decisions of Law embruting man's divine nature, and till they approve of legislation which defies God, and till they order Executives to execute iniquity, this conspiracy of the Oligarchy is wholly incomplete. That consent will forever and ever be wanting. But one thing will not be wanting—the resolute purpose of the humane, the just and the free men of the Free States, to meet the close issue forced upon them through the decision of the case of Dred, squarely and fairly, and never to abate their efforts to recover the entire administration of the Republic away from Slavery and back again to Freedom.
All who love Republican institutions and who hate Aristocracy, compact yourselves together for the struggle which threatens your liberty and will test your manhood!
UNTITLED EDITORIAL
(from the New York Daily Tribune, March 10, 1857)
The decision of the slaveholding majority of the United States Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case, an abstract of which we copied yesterday from The National Intelligencer, is stated to have been delivered in "a tone of voice almost inaudible." In this there was a high degree of adaptation. The utterance corresponded to the matter uttered. No wonder that the Chief Justice should have sunk his voice to a whisper, conscious, as he must have been, that the decision which he promulgated had been arrived at on grounds totally different from those indicated in the opinion—that opinion being but a mere collation of false statements and shallow sophistries, got together to sustain a forgone conclusion—knowing that he was engaged in a pitiful attempt to impose upon the public. However feeble his voice might have been, what he had to say was still feebler. There is not the slightest degree of adroitness, ingenuity or plausibility about it. Downright and bare-faced falsehood is its main staple. Any slave-driving editor or Virginia bar-room politician could have taken the Chief-Justice's place on the bench, and with the exception of a little bolder speaking up, nobody would have perceived the difference.
The only point which can properly be considered as decided in this case is that a negro cannot sue in the United States Courts. That being so, Dred Scott had no right to be heard. Of course the Court had no occasion, and, having no occasion, they had no right—at least, no right which would give their opinion any weight as authority—to pronounce any judgment on his case. The opinions expressed by them are, therefore, merely oviter dicta—indeed, they are hardly that. They are rather to be looked upon as a stump speech embodied into a judicial opinion, with the view of giving to it, by reason of the place of its delivery, a weight to which otherwise it would have no title.
The decision that no negro can sue in the Courts of the United States is based on the assumption that no negro can be a citizen of the United States. It is not pretended that the Constitution contains any direct exclusion of negroes from the rights of citizenship. That exclusion is merely a matter of inference. It is made to rest mainly upon an historical basis, made up of assumptions of pretended facts exterior to the Constitution—assumptions, too, which show, on the part of the Judges concurring in this opinion, an impudent recklessness of truth and of their own reputation, hardly to have been expected, even at the bar, from any advocate, however unprincipled, of any case, however desperate. By way of illustrating this point, we will take the following specimen:
"It is difficult at this day to realize the state of public opinion respecting that unfortunate class [negroes] with the civilized and enlightened portion of the world at the time of the Declaration of Independence and the adoption of the Constitution; but history shows they had, for more than a century, been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and unfit associates for the white race, either socially or politically, and had no rights which white men were bound to respect, and the black man might be reduced to Slavery, bought and sold, and treated as an ordinary article of merchandise. This opinion at that time was fixed and universal with the civilized portion of the white race. It was regarded as an axiom in morals, which no one thought of disputing, and every one habitually acted upon it, without doubting for a moment the correctness of the opinion. And in no nation was this opinion more fixed and generally acted upon than in England, the subjects of which Government not only seized them on the Coast of Africa, but took them, as ordinary merchandise, to where they could make a profit on them. The opinion thus entertained was universally impressed on the Colonists on this side of the Atlantic; accordingly, negroes of the African race were regarded by them as property, and held, and bought and sold as such in every one of the Thirteen Colonies which united in the Declaration of Independence, and afterward formed the Constitution. The doctrine of which we have spoken was strikingly enforced by the Declaration of Independence."
Such is the pretended historical basis for converting the Declaration of Independence into a declaration that negroes have no rights, set forth by a Court that cannot be supposed not to know that as early as 1705, Lord Holt had held that the law of England afforded no warrant for holding anybody in Slavery, and that as to this matter, negroes did not differ from other men—a doctrine solemnly reiterated and forever established in the famous case of Somerset, three years previous to the Declaration of Independence. Much as this opinion presumes on the ignorance of the public, its authors can hardly be supposed to be themselves ignorant that similar views as to the rights of man were, at about the same time, promulgated by the legal tribunals of Scotland, France and Germany.
So far, indeed, from it being received at the time of the Declaration of Independence as "an axiom" that negroes had no rights, and that anybody might lawfully reduce them to bondage, it was precisely at that period that Christendom fully woke up to the idea that all men had the same natural rights, and that negro Slavery was no less a usurpation and an abuse than white Slavery. Nor is there any room to doubt that it was this very idea which the authors of the Declaration of Independence intended to embody in that document. The Court admits that the phraseology used "would seem to embrace the whole human family, and if used in an instrument at this day would be so understood," and the only objection offered to this interpretation is the following:
"They who framed the Declaration of Independence were men of too much honor, education and intelligence, to say what they did not believe; and they knew that in no part of the civilized world were the negro race, by common consent, admitted to the rights of freemen. They spoke and acted according to the practices, doctrines and usages of the day. That unfortunate race was supposed to be separate from the whites and was never thought or spoken of except as property."
Admit this alleged conformity to "the practices, doctrines and usages of the day," and the negroes will not be the only sufferers. In what part of the civilized world, we should like to know, was the equality of white men a matter of fact? The "self-evident truths" with the enunciation of which the Declaration of Independence sets out, were not put forward in that document as truths which had been practiced upon—in which case no declaration of them would have been needed—but as truths that ought to be practiced upon. Understood according to the system of interpretation propounded by our slaveholders' Judges, and the whole Declaration means—nothing.
We come now to the second ground on which it is held that negroes cannot be citizens of the United States. The inhabitants of the United States, at the time they declared their Independence and assumed the powers of self-government, are represented by the Court as consisting of two classes—white persons who alone are held to be included within the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States, and negroes "supposed to be separate from the whites, and never thought of or spoken of except as property." Now it is undoubtedly true that at the time of the Declaration of Independence a large number of negroes were held as slaves—just as a large number of whites were held as bond-servants for terms of years; but it is no less true that beside these negro slaves there was a considerable class of free negroes in all the colonies, who possessed most or all of the rights of other free persons, including in many of the colonies the elective franchise. It is, then, a manifest falsehood to assert that at the time of the Declaration of Independence negroes, as negroes, were looked upon as "unfit associates for the white race socially or politically;" as "having no rights which white men were bound to respect," and as "never being thought of or spoken of except as property." In a community entertaining such ideas, the existence of a free negro would have been impossible. The first Chief Justice Taney, or puisne-Justice Nelson, who met an emancipated negro on the highway, would have seized upon him as a slave, treating him in that respect like a stray horse or ox; and in case no owner appeared, would have claimed to come into lawful possession by finding. The very fact that there were in all the Colonies not only enslaved negroes, but free negroes, and that those free negroes were capable of holding property, of making contracts, of suing and being sued, and even of voting, upsets the whole argument of the Court upon this point. Those free negroes had just the same reasons for joining in the Declaration of Independence that the free whites had; nor were they thought unworthy to join with the whites in its support. Their services as soldiers were eagerly accepted—by no State more eagerly than by Judge Taney's own State of Maryland—and to the maintenance by arms of that Declaration they contributed their full quota. At the time of the adoption of the Federal Constitution, free negroes enjoyed in several of the States the rights of citizenship under the State Constitutions. In common with the other citizens of those States they became citizens of the United States, nor is any pretense found for excluding them from that privilege except in studied misrepresentation and down-right falsehood.
But even these misrepresentations and falsehoods afford no basis sufficient to sustain this decision. Take the Court's elaborate falsehoods as truths; grant that when the Constitution was framed nobody in Europe or America regarded negroes as men, and that, therefore, they could not have been thought of as citizens of the United States; grant all this, and it by no means follows that free negroes cannot sue in the Courts of the United States, which is the point decided. For a distinction is admitted by the Chief-Justice between citizens of particular States and citizens of the United States. Upon this point, the Court expresses itself as follows:
"Previous to the adoption of the Constitution, every State might confer the character of a citizen, and endow a man with all the rights pertaining to it. This was confined to the boundaries of a State, and gave him no rights beyond its limits. Nor have the several States surrendered this power by the adoption of the Constitution. Every State may confer the right upon an alien or on any other class or description of persons who would, to all intents and purposes, be a citizen of the State."
So far so good; but when the Court proceed to add, "but not a citizen in the sense used in the Constitution of the United States": he could not "therefore sue in any Court of the United States," they make an assertion for which they produce no warrant. If a distinction exists, as the Court alleges, between citizens of the respective States and citizens of the United States, that distinction must be supposed to be known to, and to be recognized by, the Constitution of the United States. But that Constitution in establishing the jurisdiction of the Federal Courts makes no mention of citizens of the United States, it speaks only of citizens of the States. Those Courts are to have jurisdiction in "controversies between citizens of different States." What is there in this clause to prevent a negro citizen of Massachusetts or New-York from sueing in the Federal Courts?
So much for the points actually decided. As to the other points upon which the Court gives an opinion, we shall have something to say on a future occasion. We will only add to-day that the views of Mr. Justice Curtis, as appears by the abstract of his dissenting opinion which we publish to-day, as to the citizenship of Africans, and also as to the non-judicial character of the parts of the judgment of the majority involving other questions, are substantially those which we have above presented; while Mr. Justice M'Lean fully bears out our construction of the Constitution, that free negroes, citizens of any of the States, would have a right to sue in the Federal Courts, even though it were conceded that they are not and cannot be citizens of the United States.
THE SUPREME COURT AND SLAVERY—THE DUTY BEFORE US.
(from the Washington, D.C., National Era, March 12, 1857)
We have taken great pains to put our readers in possession of the views of the Supreme Court of the United States on the questions concerning Slavery, which have agitated the country so long. Although the opinions delivered ought not to be received as decisions, still they show clearly what would be the action of the majority of the Court, were these questions before it properly for its adjudication.
Those conservative people of the free States who have hitherto reposed their trust in the impartiality of the Court, and its supposed exemption from political bias, will feel their confidence rudely shaken. They will now perhaps acknowledge that the men who pointed to the sectional character of the Bench, and more than insinuated that it was the bulwark of Slavery, were not so uncharitable as they thought. When they learn that Chief Justice Taney and a majority of the Court concur in opinion on all the questions relating to Slavery, with the Disunion and Filibustering School of Pro-Slavery men—with Messrs.Calhoun, Atchison, Wise, Mason, Quitman, and Davis—that they ignore or controvert the doctrines entertained by Jefferson, Madison, Clay, and Webster, by the framers of the Federal Constitution, and hitherto by a majority of the most distinguished jurists of the slaveholding States—that they sanction a policy which is a gross innovation of that initiated by the Congress of the Confederation, expanded by the first Congress under the Constitution, and carried out to a greater or less extent by the action of the Federal Government, down to the organization of Oregon as a Territory in 1848, they will be apt to feel both indignant and alarmed. They will soon have an opportunity to read the opinions of the Court in detail. Meantime we call their attention to the abstract we present in the following article. They will there find that Chief Justice Taney and a majority of the Court hold that the Constitution recognises slaves as property; that such property differs in no respect from any other property; that the slaveholder may carry his slaves into any Territory of the United States—Kansas, Nebraska, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota—hold them there, use them there as property; that there is no power in the Territorial Government, and none in Congress, to interfere with his rights; but that, holding and using his human chattels there under the guaranties of the Federal Constitution, it is the duty of the Courts of the United States to protect and enforce his rights, should any obstruction be attempted to their exercise; that the Wilmot Proviso is unconstitutional, but not more so than what is called Squatter Sovereignty, or the right of the People to govern themselves; that the policy of General Cass and the Northern Democratic Party, is just as repugnant to the Constitution as that of Thomas Jefferson and his Democratic followers!
Remember, in this connection, that Mr. Buchanan, our new President, by his Inaugural, stands committed in advance to these opinions of the Court.
What is to be done? It is useless to rail and denounce; the crisis calls for action. The Slaveholding Oligarchy have the Administration, the majority in the Senate and in the House, and the Supreme Court. What is left to the People? The Ballot Box! If they would prevent the theory of this Oligarchy—that Slavery is the fundamental law of this Union—from becoming a fact, they must lay aside all differences of opinion on other questions, and rally, as one man, at the ballot-box, for the overthrow of the Oligarchy and its allies in the free States. They must make their fifty-four majority in the House a majority for Freedom:—their four majority in the Senate a majority for Freedom. They must by strict attention to the municipal and local elections secure ascendency in every free State, preparatory to national ascendency at Washington in 1860. This they can do; this they must do, or make up their minds to be the political slaves of the slaveholders, and to see this American Union dedicated to the spread and support of Slaveholding Institutions, as its great mission.
NEGROES ARE NOT CITIZENS.
(from the Greenville, South Carolina, Southern Enterprise, March 26, 1857)
The recent decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, that negroes are not citizens, seems to have produced a paroxysm of desperation among the treasonable fanatics who have no thought or higher aspiration than that of an equality with a nigger.
The followers of Wm. H. Seward, Thurlow Weed and Horace Greeley, are overwhelmed with vexation at this gigantic blow at their favorite dogma, that a negro is of more consequence than a white man. Their oracle, the New York Tribune, has no language bitter and ferocious enough, says the Philadelphia Argus, to express the violence of its impotent rage at the decision which has been made. In the same proportion as it is objectionable to the Abolition fanatics and disunionists, it will commend itself to the warm approval of the Democracy.
This is the most fatal blow which the fanatical Abolitionists have ever received, and their malignity and venom are proportioned to their desperation. The decision of the Supreme Court, and the previous decision of the Secretary of State, that niggers are not citizens, overwhelms the mischief makers with confusion. It blasts their nefarious schemes as with a lightning stroke. No marvel, is it then, that they manifest such unseemly opposition to the august tribunal which has visited them with such a crushing overthrow.
We regard the decision of the Judges of the Supreme Court in this case with the highest satisfaction. It meets with our hearty, cordial, unqualified approval. The highest judicial tribunal in the land has decided that the blackamoors, called, by the extreme of public courtesy, the colored population, are not citizens of the United States. This decision must be followed by other decisions and regulations in the individual States themselves. Negro suffrage must, of course, be abolished everywhere.
Negro nuisances, in the shape of occupying promiscuous seats in our rail cars and churches with those who are citizens, must be abated. Negro insolence and domineering arrogance must be rebuked; the whole tribe must be taught to fall back into their legitimate position in human society—the position that Divine Providence intended they should occupy. Not being citizens, they can claim none of the rights or privileges belonging to a citizen—they can neither vote, hold office, or occupy any other position in society than an inferior and subordinate one—the only one for which they are fitted, the only one for which they have the natural qualifications which entitle them to enjoy or possess.
We trust that the decision of the Supreme Court will have a tendency to cure the unrestrained impudence of our black population. The mischevious fanatics whose nefarious intermeddling with what is none of their business have impressed upon the negroes generally an idea of their paramount consequence and importance in society, and they have grown overbearing and insolent accordingly. Their impertinent and insulting behavior is daily becoming more and more repulsive, odious, and disgusting. It has already reached its culminating point, and must be sternly rebuked into something like decency and propriety on the part of those who live among us on sufferance. They must be taught that there is a point where long forbearance ceases to be a virtue.
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Copyrighted
by Hugh Dubrulle, 2002
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