The Boll Weevil infestation in an Independent CSA.

[Chris S]

The ruling also said that Blacks were "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.". Somehow that sounds to me that it wouldn't have made a difference if a White Abolishnist brought the suit. If Blacks have no rights then they have no rights for anyone to bring up.

Believe what you want. But if slaves were considered property and it is entirely possible for someone to abandon property or lose title to it and for such cases to be won in court, could you explain why it should be any different for slaves, if slaves were also considered property? You can go on and on about rights and what not, but in most cases emancipation in the northern states was not equated with giving blacks rights (as had been pointed out in the numerous examples of the black codes given earlier in the thread). I know blacks were not considered as citizens and not considered as having any rights (except in rare cases), but if this is the entire basis of the argument that any white man bringing a suit that Scott's owner no longer had a legal right to own Dred Scott then please explain how the slave trade was found to be illegal and upheld as such if the slave trade involved the same blacks who had the same rights (i.e. zero).

It also said a parade of horribles "It would give to persons of the negro race, ...the right to enter every other State whenever they pleased, ...to sojourn there as long as they pleased, to go where they pleased ...the full liberty of speech in public and in private upon all subjects upon which its own citizens might speak; to hold public meetings upon political affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went." if they ruled in favor of Scott. Bottom line there was NO way Scott was going to win his freedom while a rabid a pro-slavery Chief Justice of the Supreme Court like Taney sat on the bench.

This is the same Taney who presided over the Amistad case in 1841 right? The case where they didn't send those Africans on to slavery because...well..you know, the law said the slave trade was illegal and so on?

 

[Chris S]

It did not throw the case out,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dred_Scott_v._Sandford

Holding
Judgment reversed and suit dismissed for lack of jurisdiction.

The decision began by first concluding that the Court lacked jurisdiction in the matter because Dred Scott had no standing to sue in Court, as Scott, and all people of African descent for that matter, were found to not be citizens of the United States.

And again, if the USSC *before the war* claimed blacks were never citizens, a Confederacy dedicated to holding blacks as slaves *will* let them be citizens ? Why?

Good question. Here's another one: Where did I ever state that the CSA would let blacks (slave or otherwise) be citizens? Hmm??

 

[Snake Featherston]

If you don't dispute that it would never be citizens, and if you don't dispute that to an independent CSA slavery and the CS state are one and the same, what's all the fuss been about the last few posts?

 

[Chris S]

1) Yes, by the strict standard of the word. A standard the CS government had made clear its respect for by its flagrant use of government coercive force to batter down Northern liberty laws in the 1850s. In an all-slave-state union of states this is not going to be any *less* than in cases like Anthony Burns and if anything far more so.

When did I say it would come about peacefully? I said that the only scenario I could see where a CS state actually carries out abolition would be one in which that CS state government was formed by a party supported by working-class whites who would be against slavery (since it would be labour competition and would depress their wages). In the system of the time the only way such a government could form is if it got the majority of votes. Under that scenario such a government probably could declare abolition on its soil and it would have an interest in ensuring that no slave-owners from other states became permanently resident in their state and kept their slaves as slaves. Would such a government face violent resistance? Sure. Would such a government be racist? Absolutely. Would they consider black people as having rights? Absolutely not. Would they be interested in letting slavery be permanently re-established within the state as opposed to letting slave owners traverse the state with slaves or keep slaves as long as they didn't stay long enough to become residents of said state? Absolutely not. Would it faces challenges from the Confederate Government? Of course.

Is such a government likely to be formed? Hard to say. I think it would require a lot of favourable conditions (the boll weevil infestation being only one of them). For instance it would need for working-class whites to become the majority and to be politically active and more or less united.

2) You missed my point because that is precisely what I wrote.

That is not precisely what you wrote. Again, please point out to where in your original wording you say it wouldn't have mattered if an abolitionist had brought the suit. That may have been what you intended, but it was certainly not what you wrote (and thus I could not have been able to read a point that you didn't write out properly, even if you may thought it). I would challenge you to show that sentence to any stranger and ask him/her if he/she got the impression that you had said that had an abolitionist had brought the suit it wouldn't have mattered.

 

[Johnrankins]

Believe what you want. But if slaves were considered property and it is entirely possible for someone to abandon property or lose title to it and for such cases to be won in court, could you explain why it should be any different for slaves, if slaves were also considered property? You can go on and on about rights and what not, but in most cases emancipation in the northern states was not equated with giving blacks rights (as had been pointed out in the numerous examples of the black codes given earlier in the thread). I know blacks were not considered as citizens and not considered as having any rights (except in rare cases), but if this is the entire basis of the argument that any white man bringing a suit that Scott's owner no longer had a legal right to own Dred Scott then please explain how the slave trade was found to be illegal and upheld as such if the slave trade involved the same blacks who had the same rights (i.e. zero).





This is the same Taney who presided over the Amistad case in 1841 right? The case where they didn't send those Africans on to slavery because...well..you know, the law said the slave trade was illegal and so on?

Because you can have property and trade laws? Whether or not Blacks have any rights the US GOVERNMENT SURE DOES and one of those rights is the right to regulate interstate commerce and the international slave trade is by definition that. It had nothing to do with the rights of Blacks but the powers of the US government.

 

[Johnrankins]

When did I say it would come about peacefully? I said that the only scenario I could see where a CS state actually carries out abolition would be one in which that CS state government was formed by a party supported by working-class whites who would be against slavery (since it would be labour competition and would depress their wages). In the system of the time the only way such a government could form is if it got the majority of votes. Under that scenario such a government probably could declare abolition on its soil and it would have an interest in ensuring that no slave-owners from other states became permanently resident in their state and kept their slaves as slaves. Would such a government face violent resistance? Sure. Would such a government be racist? Absolutely. Would they consider black people as having rights? Absolutely not. Would they be interested in letting slavery be permanently re-established within the state as opposed to letting slave owners traverse the state with slaves or keep slaves as long as they didn't stay long enough to become residents of said state? Absolutely not. Would it faces challenges from the Confederate Government? Of course.

Is such a government likely to be formed? Hard to say. I think it would require a lot of favourable conditions (the boll weevil infestation being only one of them). For instance it would need for working-class whites to become the majority and to be politically active and more or less united.



That is not precisely what you wrote. Again, please point out to where in your original wording you say it wouldn't have mattered if an abolitionist had brought the suit. That may have been what you intended, but it was certainly not what you wrote (and thus I could not have been able to read a point that you didn't write out properly, even if you may thought it). I would challenge you to show that sentence to any stranger and ask him/her if he/she got the impression that you had said that had an abolitionist had brought the suit it wouldn't have mattered.

It wouldn't have mattered as the White Abolishnist isn't a slave owner. I guess he could buy one or more to be slaveowner on paper but then the court would have simply ruled he could free them if he follows the laborous procedures that the slaveowning legistlatures made it.

 

[Chris S]

If you don't dispute that it would never be citizens, and if you don't dispute that to an independent CSA slavery and the CS state are one and the same, what's all the fuss been about the last few posts?

You tell me. I've merely been saying that:

1. Under certain conditions it would be possible for a CS state to have abolition on it's soil provided that in so doing it didn't automatically declare that any slave outside the state who set foot on it's territory (i.e. slaves in transit or with a master who is temporarily resident) was also free

2. That using the Dred Scott case of OTL to argue that it couldn't have been won under any circumstances whatsoever is to oversimply the reality of the time. All of Dred Scott's cases went through the various outcomes from being upheld (a Missouri Court in 1850) to being overturned (in the Missouri Supreme Court in 1852) to being dismissed (US Supreme Court in 1857). To apply what the US Supreme Court of 1857 did to what a court in an independent CSA might do years later in a state in which a working-class white government opposed to slavery on selfish grounds of competition would do is stretching things quite a bit I would think. Even in Slavery by Another Name we find judges and lawyers from the South who were against slavery or peonage in the 1900s despite having been relatives of Confederate veterans or prominent Confederate personalities and living in a South made all the more toxic by the Civil War running its full course, followed by Reconstruction and Southern attempts to reverse the outcome.

 

[Snake Featherston]

1) Um, your assumption here once again is that the Confederacy really didn't mean anything racist it said or did and could scrap that at any sufficiently convenient time that it suited it to do so. A Confederate revolution in this sort will absolutely, in no cases whatsoever, propose scrapping slavery for anything approaching any kind of legal status for blacks whatsoever. CS abolition is impossible short of a full-fledged Russian Civil War-style revolution won by a regime committed enough to abolition to use totalitarian methods to achieve it. Democratically it will never happen in a CSA.

2) So, Chris, you are aware that this sojourn was never going to be temporary, and that any attempt to enforce that temporary part is extremely unlikely to work in a Confederacy whose fundamental underpinning, its cornerstone, is in the divinely-mandated right of 2/3 of the population to be idle from the labor of the other 1/3? And you completely and utterly missed my point: the Supreme Court's ruling was to declare blacks were not citizens and had no rights at all under the law, and an abolitionist bringing this won't matter. This will be a direct underpinning of any CSA's legal system thanks to one provision of CS law going to 1861. But then to expect people to realize the CSA really meant everything it said about keeping slavery and white supremacy in terms of how it would have worked as an actual society seems futile.

The words "an abolitionist bringing this won't matter" are right there in the bold for you to see.

 

[Snake Featherston]

You tell me. I've merely been saying that:

1. Under certain conditions it would be possible for a CS state to have abolition on it's soil provided that in so doing it didn't automatically declare that any slave outside the state who set foot on it's territory (i.e. slaves in transit or with a master who is temporarily resident) was also free

2. That using the Dred Scott case of OTL to argue that it couldn't have been won under any circumstances whatsoever is to oversimply the reality of the time. All of Dred Scott's cases went through the various outcomes from being upheld (a Missouri Court in 1850) to being overturned (in the Missouri Supreme Court in 1852) to being dismissed (US Supreme Court in 1857). To apply what the US Supreme Court of 1857 did to what a court in an independent CSA might do years later in a state in which a working-class white government opposed to slavery on selfish grounds of competition would do is stretching things quite a bit I would think. Even in Slavery by Another Name we find judges and lawyers from the South who were against slavery or peonage in the 1900s despite having been relatives of Confederate veterans or prominent Confederate personalities and living in a South made all the more toxic by the Civil War running its full course, followed by Reconstruction and Southern attempts to reverse the outcome.

1) If by certain conditions we mean an assured civil war in the Confederacy, then yes. If by certain conditions we mean government and political institutions intact, then no.

2) Actually it's not given the CSA declared all US laws and court rulings applicable to itself pending review. A Supreme Court ruling that ruled blacks were never citizens with rights will be declared applicable by CS law just as US law seamlessly integrated itself into British common law via a legal fiction. Again, if you're not claiming the CSA didn't have anything to do with slavery, what's all this nonsense about?

 

[Chris S]

Because you can have property and trade laws? Whether or not Blacks have any rights the US GOVERNMENT SURE DOES and one of those rights is the right to regulate interstate commerce and the international slave trade is by definition that. It had nothing to do with the rights of Blacks but the powers of the US government.

And when did I ever state that Dred Scott's case could be won on the rights of blacks? You see this is what I'm getting at. You seem to be thinking that I'm arguing that had a white abolitionist brought the case it would only be about black rights. I never, ever said such thing. Sure the abolitionist might bring those things up, but what would probably turn the case in the favour of the abolitionist is not what he or his lawyer said about rights, but what he and his lawyer(s) said about the relevant laws and upholding those laws has everything to do with the rights and powers of the US government.

 

[Snake Featherston]

And when did I ever state that Dred Scott's case could be won on the rights of blacks? You see this is what I'm getting at. You seem to be thinking that I'm arguing that had a white abolitionist brought the case it would only be about black rights. I never, ever said such thing. Sure the abolitionist might bring those things up, but what would probably turn the case in the favour of the abolitionist is not what he or his lawyer said about rights, but what he and his lawyer(s) said about the relevant laws and upholding those laws has everything to do with the rights and powers of the US government.

And then Roger B. Taney again decides to nip the Civil War in the bud by making the view of the Slave Power the view of the United States Supreme Court and nothing else changes. What's so hard to understand about this, precisely?

 

[Johnrankins]

You tell me. I've merely been saying that:

1. Under certain conditions it would be possible for a CS state to have abolition on it's soil provided that in so doing it didn't automatically declare that any slave outside the state who set foot on it's territory (i.e. slaves in transit or with a master who is temporarily resident) was also free

2. That using the Dred Scott case of OTL to argue that it couldn't have been won under any circumstances whatsoever is to oversimply the reality of the time. All of Dred Scott's cases went through the various outcomes from being upheld (a Missouri Court in 1850) to being overturned (in the Missouri Supreme Court in 1852) to being dismissed (US Supreme Court in 1857). To apply what the US Supreme Court of 1857 did to what a court in an independent CSA might do years later in a state in which a working-class white government opposed to slavery on selfish grounds of competition would do is stretching things quite a bit I would think. Even in Slavery by Another Name we find judges and lawyers from the South who were against slavery or peonage in the 1900s despite having been relatives of Confederate veterans or prominent Confederate personalities and living in a South made all the more toxic by the Civil War running its full course, followed by Reconstruction and Southern attempts to reverse the outcome.

What relatives of Confederate Veterans or even the veterans themselves did in 1900 in a TL such as ours where the CSA lost doesn't show how they would behave if they had won. By 1900 even most Southerners thought chattel slavery was probably a bad thing as they were a part of the US culture and would pick up US cultural attitudes. In a TL where they won there would be no such influence. Also you always find a few people with what would be considered odd beliefs in their own culture.

 

[Snake Featherston]

What relatives of Confederate Veterans or even the veterans themselves did in 1900 in a TL such as ours where the CSA lost doesn't show how they would behave if they had won. By 1900 even most Southerners thought chattel slavery was probably a bad thing as they were a part of the US culture and would pick up US cultural attitudes. In a TL where they won there would be no such influence. Also you always find a few people with what would be considered odd beliefs in their own culture.

Particularly considering that where the trend in Southern politics before and after the war was usually to obstruct the growth of an efficient, centralized government the Confederacy was making extremely rapid steps in that direction, including a far more efficiently run and widesweeping conscription act than its US counterpart and widespread willingness to use brutal, military means to police Confederate society. And in the case of Braxton Bragg ideas of military discipline that sound more like Soviet Commissars than what the USA's used to thinking of. This foundation in an independent CSA is rather unlikely to lead to a CSA that's the Jim Crow South but with more Rosewoods and and more lynch mobs with full, unrestrained government backing. It if anything portends a Confederacy that in its best case is Porofiriato Mexico, in its worst case Russian Civil War-era Ukraine.....

 

[Chris S]

1) Um, your assumption here once again is that the Confederacy really didn't mean anything racist it said or did and could scrap that at any sufficiently convenient time that it suited it to do so.

No. This is what you think my assumption is. I never said that.

A Confederate revolution in this sort will absolutely, in no cases whatsoever, propose scrapping slavery for anything approaching any kind of legal status for blacks whatsoever.

Here it is again. This assumption that "abolition" = "granting legal status to blacks".

Please, where did I say this? Because a theoretical government in a CS state backed by the working-class whites will almost surely be anti-slavery but by no means whatsoever will be about making blacks citizens at any time.

2) So, Chris, you are aware that this sojourn was never going to be temporary, and that any attempt to enforce that temporary part is extremely unlikely to work in a Confederacy whose fundamental underpinning, its cornerstone, is in the divinely-mandated right of 2/3 of the population to be idle from the labor of the other 1/3? And you completely and utterly missed my point: the Supreme Court's ruling was to declare blacks were not citizens and had no rights at all under the law, and an abolitionist bringing this won't matter. This will be a direct underpinning of any CSA's legal system thanks to one provision of CS law going to 1861. But then to expect people to realize the CSA really meant everything it said about keeping slavery and white supremacy in terms of how it would have worked as an actual society seems futile.

The words "an abolitionist bringing this won't matter" are right there in the bold for you to see.

The words are there in what you said at 7:21 pm, right after you claim I missed your point (so you basically clarified your intended point). See here:

So, Chris, you are aware that this sojourn was never going to be temporary, and that any attempt to enforce that temporary part is extremely unlikely to work in a Confederacy whose fundamental underpinning, its cornerstone, is in the divinely-mandated right of 2/3 of the population to be idle from the labor of the other 1/3? And you completely and utterly missed my point: the Supreme Court's ruling was to declare blacks were not citizens and had no rights at all under the law, and an abolitionist bringing this won't matter. This will be a direct underpinning of any CSA's legal system thanks to one provision of CS law going to 1861. But then to expect people to realize the CSA really meant everything it said about keeping slavery and white supremacy in terms of how it would have worked as an actual society seems futile.

You claim I am missing your point after I responded to words you wrote at 6:58 pm which never clearly indicated that an abolitionist bringing the case wouldn't matter:

Given the US Supreme Court in that decision claimed blacks were never citizens of the USA at any point in its history, there was never any chance it was ever going to rule in favor of Dred Scott at any point.

As I said before - bring your 6:58 post to a stranger and see if they think your words would mean an abolitionist bringing the case wouldn't matter.

Roll your eyes and be mad as much as it pleases you, but I'm sure even you would agree that in your claim that I was missing your point I couldn't possibly have read "and an abolitionist bringing this won't matter" before I read your claim that I "completely and utterly missed [your] point". What you wrote then was NOT what you wrote before and I don't see why seem to be expecting me to read your mind.

 

[Snake Featherston]

Sigh, for fuck's sake: I said that Roger B. Taney's decision was that blacks were never citizens of the USA, full-stop. A white abolitionist making that explicit case is going to get the same reaction that the historical case did. You've nothing to actually disprove this point beyond this weird derailing idea that the CSA was 1) going to have any kind of legitimate absolutism, which the pre-war South's complete censorship and banning of abolitionist writings, expulsions of homegrown abolitionists, and paranoid patrols on a regular basis all strongly indicate the exact opposite will be the case and 2) that the CSA will up and scrap the very system its legitimate, legal system has deliberately ensured cannot be abolished.

Do you have an actual point about any of this? Abolitionism, the idea that slaves, defined as black under US law, were to be freed and thus granted rights, is not going to work when the US Supreme Court declared blacks were never citizens. Again, I'm completely confused if there's any point to all of this at all, given that you're claiming something I still don't get precisely what the point is?

 

[Chris S]

What relatives of Confederate Veterans or even the veterans themselves did in 1900 in a TL such as ours where the CSA lost doesn't show how they would behave if they had won.

Interesting hypothesis. Now how does that square with the idea that this same set of persons would act the same way towards a person they considered to be a non-citizen and little more than cattle as they would towards a white person who would have been considered a citizen and not chattel? Because you are essentially arguing that they would act the same way under different circumstances even though you are at the same time claiming that the same people would act differently under different circumstances.

By 1900 even most Southerners thought chattel slavery was probably a bad thing as they were a part of the US culture and would pick up US cultural attitudes.

Really? I certainly don't get that impression in Slavery by Another Name where in the 1900s speakers can be described in newspapers as getting "rapturous" applause for saying that slavery had never been illegal or immoral.

The impression I get is that views were quite mixed which is as one would expect.

 

[Chris S]

Sigh, for fuck's sake: I said that Roger B. Taney's decision was that blacks were never citizens of the USA, full-stop. A white abolitionist making that explicit case is going to get the same reaction that the historical case did. You've nothing to actually disprove this point beyond

..the fact that:

1. Taney is one man on the Supreme Court

2. The same Taney presided in the Amistad case which was not brought by slaves but by white abolitionist.

Do you have an actual point about any of this?

There's no need to be rude.

Abolitionism, the idea that slaves, defined as black under US law, were to be freed and thus granted rights, is not going to work when the US Supreme Court declared blacks were never citizens. Again, I'm completely confused if there's any point to all of this at all, given that you're claiming something I still don't get precisely what the point is?

Now I can understand that there might be some confusion of the terms "abolition" and "abolitionism" and "abolitionist". So since it seems you are referring to Abolition, Abolitionist and Abolitionism (which would refer to ending slavery and granting rights) and I'm referring to abolition, abolitionist and abolitionism (which would refer to simply abolishing slavery; note the capitalization or lack thereof), maybe I should use another term to avoid confusion, like manumission?

Do you not agree though that working-class whites in the South would have an interest in the end of slavery while at the same time denying blacks any rights (and indeed in removing them from the landscape altogether). And that under certain conditions they could end up forming a government in a CS state which would be met with hostility for its advocacy in manumission and deportation (all to pander to its constituents)? And would you also not agree that if such a government were formed then conditions in said state would have changed to the point where officialdom would actually prevent slave-owners from settling without free their slaves (so allow the right of transit and sojourn)?

 

[Chris S]

Sigh, for fuck's sake: I said that Roger B. Taney's decision was that blacks were never citizens of the USA, full-stop. A white abolitionist making that explicit case is going to get the same reaction that the historical case did.

By the way, why the assumption that a white abolitionist making the case would only make the case that Scott was a citizen? I would have thought he would have made the case over the fact that according to the law in the states Scott's owner had resided in, Scott's owners no longer had any possession of him and Scott was free.

The fact that Scott was not considered a citizen, shouldn't make any more difference than if a case was being brought to the Supreme Court over land or cattle (as sad as that is, but that was the horrible way of the US back in those days).

 

[Johnrankins]

Interesting hypothesis. Now how does that square with the idea that this same set of persons would act the same way towards a person they considered to be a non-citizen and little more than cattle as they would towards a white person who would have been considered a citizen and not chattel? Because you are essentially arguing that they would act the same way under different circumstances even though you are at the same time claiming that the same people would act differently under different circumstances.




Really? I certainly don't get that impression in Slavery by Another Name where in the 1900s speakers can be described in newspapers as getting "rapturous" applause for saying that slavery had never been illegal or immoral.

The impression I get is that views were quite mixed which is as one would expect.

There is a BIG difference in being part of a small society where most people consider it acceptable and being part of a larger society which says its not. When I said most I meant most not all. Also slavery by another name is somewhat of an exageration. Blacks were 2nd class citizens in 1900 but not slaves. They no longer could be legally tortured, raped, have family members sold or be prevented from moving . They could and did own property in 1900 but not in 1864. Things were FAR from perfect but they were still MUCH better than before.

 

[Snake Featherston]

..the fact that:

1. Taney is one man on the Supreme Court

2. The same Taney presided in the Amistad case which was not brought by slaves but by white abolitionist.

The man who just so happened IOTL to come up with the reason, rationale, phrasing, and purpose of the Dred Scott decision, and the whole idea to settle the slavery issue once and for all in favor of the Slave Power was fully his own. The Amistad case is a very different matter, affecting something that was unconstitutional and which only a small group of Slave Power activists wished to revive. You're again using a completely irrelevant aspect of things to argue a non-point. Taney was one man of a court where five of the nine were sympathetic to his idea of resolving slavery. Until you're willing to acknowledge and address this point I'm still not entirely clear what you're on about.

.
Now I can understand that there might be some confusion of the terms "abolition" and "abolitionism" and "abolitionist". So since it seems you are referring to Abolition, Abolitionist and Abolitionism (which would refer to ending slavery and granting rights) and I'm referring to abolition, abolitionist and abolitionism (which would refer to simply abolishing slavery; note the capitalization or lack thereof), maybe I should use another term to avoid confusion, like manumission?

Do you not agree though that working-class whites in the South would have an interest in the end of slavery while at the same time denying blacks any rights (and indeed in removing them from the landscape altogether). And that under certain conditions they could end up forming a government in a CS state which would be met with hostility for its advocacy in manumission and deportation (all to pander to its constituents)? And would you also not agree that if such a government were formed then conditions in said state would have changed to the point where officialdom would actually prevent slave-owners from settling without free their slaves (so allow the right of transit and sojourn)?

No, I do not agree with any of this and I'm waiting for an actual argument as opposed to sophistry to indicate that poor white Southerners are going to 1) want slavery abolished and 2) organize to bring this about. You keep willfully and deliberately ignoring everything I keep pointing out about the pre-war South's willingness to adopt increasingly totalitarian means to prop up slavery in the USA and the resulting policies an independent CSA would adopt. Kindly address these points or quit this sophistry over your inability to get that Taney's decision indicates in no means will the USSC in the late 1850s decide in favor of slaves or abolitionists in any matter. Taney was a very controlling Chief Justice, I repeat

By the way, why the assumption that a white abolitionist making the case would only make the case that Scott was a citizen? I would have thought he would have made the case over the fact that according to the law in the states Scott's owner had resided in, Scott's owners no longer had any possession of him and Scott was free.

The fact that Scott was not considered a citizen, shouldn't make any more difference than if a case was being brought to the Supreme Court over land or cattle (as sad as that is, but that was the horrible way of the US back in those days).

That was the case made IOTl and it was rejected in the one case and iis not going to be accepted in this one. And incidentally Dred Scott had white legal advisers IOTL and it didn't work out for him. I keep looking for the point in this tempest in a teakettle over my statement that the ruling slaves were not citizens meaning that the USSC was never going to rule for black rights in any means giving it declared they had no rights. I still don't get where the "but a white man would have won the case" argument either 1) invalidates what I said, or 2) has anything remotely relevant in even the loosest and most distorted sense to do with the actual discussion.

The actual discussion relying on the notion that the Confederacy had deliberately made abolition slavery impossible and refused to consider it even in the most desperate situations approaching its complete defeat and collapse IOTL, this indicating that in an independent state it somehow would have come up with this for a reason never actually specified, as you put it, and to me as impossible as a Soviet Union embracing Randian Objectivism in an ATL equivalent of the Stalinist era.