Republicans did not generally adopt the argument that there was a danger of slavery spreading into the North until after the Dred Scott decision of 1857....for it declared that slavery must be protected by the national government in the territories. "It is now demonstrated," announced the moderate Cinncinati Commercial, "that there is such a thing as the Slave Power," and Republicans who had not already seen the wisdom of Chase's constitutional arguments quickly adopted them...But many Republicans went even further, and claimed that according to the logic of the Dred Scott decision slavery could not be barred from a state any more than from a territory. If slavery were protected by the Constitution, they asked, how could a state, without violating the Constitution, exclude it? "Does the Constitution make slaves property?" asked one Republican speaker. "If so, slavery exists in Ohio today, for the Constitution extends over Ohio, doesn't it?"
-Eric Foner. Free Soil, Free
Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil
War. page 97
uuuuuuuuuuuuuh. Seriously, I've been suspending judgment throughout the civil war class. Using "TB" as initials for Lincoln is more out of habit than as a judgment based on any actual research I've done any farther than reading blogs and Di Lorenzo's The Real Lincoln. Also when I'm writing notes down, I can't spell Lincoln. I don't know why, but I can't do the "l" and then the "n,"it always gets made into an "h" with an extra bump, and then I cross it out. And mess it up again. I don't _really_ care, and even if I did, I'm not from the South, so I don't "get" anything out of having an ungoodthink opinion. Nor am I from 'the North.'
The stats I've heard "oh well only 10% of the Southern soldiers actually owned slaves so it wasn't about slavery"...ummm. How many head of households were soldiers? How many young men who ended up fighting were in a position to have the kind of wealth where they could choose to own slaves or not? If I have 7 literate kids under the age of say, 15, and I vote socialist, then yeah, only 12.5% of my household voted socialist. OBVIOUSLY, my home is not a socialist-leaning home. Oh wait. But that can wait for another time, as I don't have the answer to how many of the soldiers in the CSA were actual head of households or not.
The subject of Texas overrides that of Clay's System. After the face stomping he and Nicholas Biddle receive from Jackson in the early thirties, that subject kinda dies out and, as I understand it (which is probably an oxymoron) "internal improvements" isn't dusted off as super brand new innovation until the New Cripple in 1933.
Part of my suspension kinda hangs on the issue of slavery. Oh yeah I know. The War of Northern Aggression was not about the issue of slavery. I get it. That doesn't mean slavery was not an issue, does it? Douglas and Lincoln were not debating tariffs. No, I don't know how Douglas really did stand in the Democratic Party, so he very well may have been more northerner than Democrat. If slavery was only an issue because the North was bitching and moaning...why did slaves run away? Frederick Douglass, anyone?
But then I run into the above posted section from my reading last night. Oh good God, people. If a southern state is violating the Constitution when it excludes slavery...then grow a pair and nullify the damn part of it that does that. Declare that aspect of the Supreme Court decision null and void. Did they overstep in that decision, or in that court opinion? Then defy it. Declare your state to be one that will not will never tolerate slavery, that any slave, as soon as they step foot in this state, are free. You bring your slaves through this state for whatever reason? All of your slaves have the power to sue for their freedom and we'll be damn sure to pack our courts full of people that'll love to free them.
South Carolina nullified federal laws, under Jackson, of all Presidents. That, cupcake, takes balls.
Douglass said that if federal agents went kicking in his door to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law, that those federal agents would have to fight for their lives.
But but...Kansas all over again! Oh no! Anarchy!
Well gosh, sounds like the peaceful thing to do would be for the Northern states to just secede from the union that the Constitution binds them to. The Slave Power is entrenched throughout the Executive, Judicial, and Legislative branch? Everyone in the restaurant you eat at regularly smokes? Get the hell out and don't let the door hit your ass on the way out.
Buncha damn babies.
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