As I embark on a professional journey as an attorney, I want to ensure that I am conducting myself in a manner that is honorable and promotes justice. Obviously noone really seeks to be dishonorable or promote injustice, so it is always helpful to reflect and consider whether your actions are in-line with your motivations and underlying beliefs. I like the American system of justice because, in short, it is the best one available. That does not mean that it is perfect. Our system works best when we recognize the dignity of every person. In a short series of substack postings, I want to have a conversation about human dignity, what it means, and some shortcomings (and victories) that our nation has had in this realm. I hope that you think about these things, and maybe learn something.
Tales From a Time Not So Ancient
In the 1850s, as the boundaries of the United States stretched westward, it became clear that the dying institution of slavery would be at the forefront of political and economic battles. At the time, as is commonly known, the U.S. was essentially split into free territories and slave states. What is less commonly known, is just how much political strife slavery caused throughout the early decades of our country’s existence.
In the early days of the United States, slaves were considered personal property, similar to other forms of slavery and indentured servitude that had existed in nearly every culture. However, the slave economy of the South had developed an insidiously racialized view of the already abhorrent institution, and many proponents of slavery justified the institution by claiming that people from Africa where not deserving of the same rights as other Americans. In the early 1800s, there was a lot of political pressure to end the institution of slavery, mainly from New England, and after the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, it became clear that there was growing moral and political unrest on this very issue — the New Englanders did not want the western territories to allow slavery and slave-traders wanted to grow the territory of their practice. In 1820, the federal government attempted to assuage both slave and Free States by passing the Missouri Compromise, which essentially admitted Maine into the Union as a Free State, Missouri into the Union as a slave state, and attempted to split the new territory to the west into slave and free territories. Following this compromise, the political class in DC, did a lot of back-patting and offered many self-congratulatory speeches. The federal program to expand west essentially kept the country divided economically, legally, socially, and morally, and did not do much to fix growing division and animosity . . . if anything it made things worse — perhaps DC has not changed much.1
Although historians refer to the 1820s as the “Era of Good Feelings,” those good feelings likely did not extend much past the borders of the nation’s Capitol.2 Western expansion had begun, and the debate over what type of new world that America would become began to crescendo. Abolitionist rhetoric began to heat up, meanwhile the slave economy used every political and legal device at its disposal to ensure its survival. By 1850, tensions were high when Congress passed a series of laws that were aimed at protecting the slave economy of the South. Democrats, the party backed by slave-owners, controlled Congress, and the other major political party, the Whigs, were essentially divided on the issue of slavery. Thus, the legislature expanded Federal Fugitive Slave Laws that attempted to force Free States and their citizens to return runaway slaves to their “owners.”3 Additionally, in 1854, congress slightly amended the Missouri compromise to allow for each territory to choose for its own whether slavery would be allowed or not. Again, the Feds got it wrong, and tensions were inflamed. Political violence ran rampant throughout the new western territories as “Border-Ruffians” and “Free-Staters” attempted to exert their influence and abolitionists began sending runaway slaves to Canada rather than New England, lawlessness was rampant.4 The entire nation seemed to be at a tipping point in 1857, when the Supreme Court addressed the Constitutionality of slavery, and its expansion westward.
The Embarrassment Of A Nation
With the eyes of the nation upon it, the Supreme Court of the United States issued one of the worst pieces of legal analysis ever penned - Dred Scott v. Sandford.5 Dred Scott was a slave who was born in Virginia, but had made his way west, and spent extended periods in the Illinois and Wisconsin territories under a few different “owners.” Under the laws of those territories, slavery was illegal and any slave who spent an extended period of time in the territory was to be emancipated. So, in 1846, Dred Scott and his wife Harriet filed a lawsuit in St. Louis, Missouri. The case had to be tried twice, based in part on a technicality, but the result of the trial was that, in 1850 the Scotts were ruled to be free persons. However the success was short lived, because this ruling was overturned by the Missouri Supreme Court, who found that the Missouri state courts should not defer to the abolitionist laws of the western territories. The Scotts, however, were undeterred and filed a new case under Federal Law. The case eventually made its way to the Supreme Court where they considered whether Mr. Scott and his family had the right to sue for their freedom.
The infamous opinion of the Court, authored by Chief Justice Taney, held that, No, Mr. Scott did not have the ability to sue for his freedom. Furthermore, the Court held that descendants of Africans were not to be considered citizens under the laws of the United States, because their legal person-hood was limited. Justice Taney, infused the ideology of a racist slave-holder into his analysis of the founding documents and applied a revisionist history into the political events of the nation’s founding. In my view, his words essentially teed-up Confederate talking points and was a purely partisan decision. As you can read below from a portion of the decision, the interests of pro-slavery states were at the forefront of his analysis and he had particular concern over the possibility of black Americans having the ability to think for and protect themselves.
To say that the Dred Scott opinion was unpopular, would be an understatement. As historians John Nowak and Ronald Rotunda put it, the Court’s Dred Scott decision was "greeted with unmitigated wrath from every segment of the United States except the slave holding states." And future legal scholars including Chief Justice Rehnquist believed that "Scott v. Sandford was the result of Taney's effort to protect slaveholders from legislative interference."6 The ruling, however, had the opposite effect. Abolitionists grew more militant and the inhumane institution of American slavery was exposed for the hypocritical and morally diseased creature that it was. The fledgling Republican party, formed in 1854, became increasing abolitionist in platform and popular amongst voters. In 1859, abolitionist John Brown raided a federal armory in Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia) in an attempt to start a slave revolt, the same way that Nat Turner did in 1831.7 His plans were foiled, but news of the event spread throughout the entire nation. In 1860, the Republican Party won its first national election, Abraham Lincoln would be President; slave states seceded and the Civil War began shortly after Lincoln’s inauguration in 1861. A Union victory and the passage of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments strangled the last breathes from the institution of slavery. No future Supreme Court would ever be able to misconstrue the application of American rights and privileges to her citizens — at least that was the hope.
Food For Thought
It is easy as an outsider to point-out the cultural blind-spots and moral failings of societies that we are detached from. It is much more difficult to honestly assess the world that you currently live in. To the Christian, the American system of slavery and racism were so abhorrent because they denied a timeless and absolute Biblical truth. I will discuss this topic, this Biblical truth, in more depth in my next post titled Recognizing Human Dignity, Part II: The Imago Dei. Take care and God Bless.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missouri_Compromise
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Era_of_Good_Feelings
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugitive_Slave_Act_of_1850
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleeding_Kansas
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dred_Scott_v._Sandford
Id.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brown%27s_raid_on_Harpers_Ferry