Abraham Lincoln Quotes
We think the Dred Scott decision is erroneous. We know the court that made it, has often over-ruled its own decisions, and we shall do what we can to have it to over-rule this. We offer no resistance to it.
Abraham Lincoln, 1809-1865, 16th President of the United States (Republican, IL), Statement on the Dred Scott v. Sanford Decision of the Supreme Court, June 1857
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This was a terrible Supreme Court decision which placed slave owning whites against whites who opposed slavery in conflict over runaway slaves and free blacks throughout the country. It held that Blacks—even free Blacks had no Constitutional rights and was one of the major causes of the Civil War. See {623426}.
In the entire history of the Supreme Court there have been relatively few times where the personal opinions and interests of the Supreme Court justices tended to warp the decision making process of the court. Perhaps the worst of these was the Dred Scott Decision where the court ruled that the laws of non-slave states could not protect escaped slaves no longer living in the South or their children for that matter. The slave owning court majority completely reversed their traditional support of states’ rights and voted that the Northern legal establishment could must not protect ex-slaves and must return them to their “rightful owners.” This decision made the Civil War inevitable. The slave owning justices were under great pressure, economic and social. Slaves, at the time constituted the greatest economic asset of the Southern states in dollar value. Further, at the time, there was no way to farm most Southern land without slaves, and even real estate values depended on slavery.
She was always an American optimist. Most of the Southern States did everything possible to try and defy the Supreme Court’s decisions on school segregation and other matters regarding their “traditional rights” to discriminate racially. Entire public school systems closed rather than desegregate. The Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act in 1964 made it much more difficult, But change took place inexorably over the next years as the older generation gave way to the new—one that was more educated and better informed as a result of television. Mississippi had more Black elected public officials than white. By the 21st century, there were relatively few areas where the Southern States still tried to evade the Supreme Court.
What makes this quotation so historically interesting is that the abiding by the Supreme Court’s decisions on constitutionality was even an issue. It was because of the terrible Dred Scott decision which required Northern States to return fugitive slaves to their owners despite the constitutions of those states which stated that all men were free. A substantial part of the Democratic Party was the “solid South” and the return of fugitive slaves was one of the major issues of the 1860 Presidential Election. Ironically, the Southern States were arguing AGAINST states’ rights when the Northern States’ laws and Constitutions made fugitive slaves free the minute they set foot in the state.
The reason for secession was the threat to slavery, which was a great threat to the slave-owners of the South. However, the non slave-owners had a very strong vested interest in maintaining slavery in that most Southerners had been brought up with such a negative view of Blacks that they were paranoid of Black equality or even worse some Blacks in positions of authority over whites. At the time, it was the Republican Party that was the advocate for minority equality and the Democratic Party embraced the racists. The parties would flip flop after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 ending legal segregation was passed by a Democratic President and a Democratic Majority Congress.
In 1832 the Supreme Court held that the state of Georgia could not remove Creek and Cherokee Indians from lands that had been guaranteed to them by a federal treaty. The president disagreed with the court, then headed by John Marshall:. Marshall could not do so without the executive. The Indians were illegally removed to Western lands.
Referring to issues regarding slavery:
The Mystery was for many years the only Black Newspaper in America.
The king was making his judgment that the English whites did not have the “gut” to kill the number of people and perpetuate the other cruelties to forcibly convert Black Africans to Christianity, and even if they did, it would be inconsistent with the moral tenets of the religion. He was not familiar with the Reformation persecutions of previous generations, nor did he anticipate the effect of colonialism by which large parts of Africa were culturally and religiously converted.
Many free Negroes of the day did not have the paperwork, education, , sophistication, or access to attorneys that could prove that they were free. Scheming Southerner slave owners would go north find poor ignorant free blacks and swear that they ran away from their plantation. If the victim could not prove the contrary, he was enslaved, transported South and usually sold.
This quotation is very interesting historically. Despite the fact that Washington DC was a thoroughly racially segregated city, and the Southern racists controlled much of Congress, Blacks as well as whites were welcome in the Congressional galleries, and they attended many debates. Slavery and equality were not just debated in the 1850s but the issue was in constant friction from the earliest Congress.
Brown was the richest man in Rhode Island and made much of his money in the slave trade. This quotation shows that slavery was not completely a North verses South split. Northerners like Brown for whose family Brown University was named, was as virulent supporter of slavery as the most ardent Southerner.
Incredibly enough, until this Supreme Court Decision, bigots would sell a home on the open market and write into the deed that the house may never be sold to a Black, a Jew, a Mormon, or any other person one of the owners did not like. This was actually enforced by American courts trying to preserve segregation in housing until 1948 and the 1956 decision stopped the practice but housing segregation persisted by other means.
See {625675}, {625686}, {625683}, {625682}, {625676} for additional quotations arguing for Black emigration.
Phelps was a Copperhead Democrat who was a virulent racist, an enemy of Lincoln and supported McClellan against Lincoln in 1864. His extreme disrespect for the President and his racism was not appreciated in Vermont, and Phelps not only failed to help McClellan but destroyed his own credibility in his home state of Vermont. Phelps had been practicing law in New York City where there was a large Copperhead, racist and anti-Lincoln part of the population there.
Abraham Lincoln was an American politician and lawyer who served as the 16th President of the United States from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. Lincoln led the United States through its Civil War—its bloodiest war and its greatest moral, constitutional, and political crisis. In doing so, he preserved the Union, abolished slavery, strengthened the federal government, and modernized the economy.
