Until Every Drop of Blood Is Paid: A More Radical American Civil War
- Thread starter Red_Galiray
- Start date
Making it illegal for any any person who was born in the south to serve in the union army. There was several southern citizens who served in the union army including George Henry Thomas Who served as a major general in the western theater of the war
Because they become convinced that every seven years a slave holding supporter and they cannot trust them? Frankly the Civil War is not my area of expertise I’m just giving what I think could happen.
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Chapter 5: A House Divided
Chapter 5: A House Divided
“The Supreme Court kept me from my Freedom”, Dred Scott would say after the dust settled. This dust rose as a result of the decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford, a notorious judicial case that shook his life and the entire nation.
Dred Scott was the slave of an army surgeon named John Emerson, who took him to territories made free by the Missouri Compromise, and even Illinois. Scott married and had children in these free lands, before he was returned to Missouri in 1846. There his friends advised him to sue for his freedom. Freedom suits after residency in free territories and states were often presented, and often won. But the feverish atmosphere of sectional tension transformed this common process into a dramatic saga. Eventually, the decision reached the Supreme Court after eleven years of appeals and deliberation. By then Dred Scott the man had been forgotten in favor of Dred Scott, the ideal of freedom and the chance of ending the slavery question once and for all.
This was Chief Justice Roger B. Taney’s main objective. A Jacksonian Democrat who had once been a wealthy lawyer and planter, the old jurist was now eighty years old, and alone, for he had lost his wife and friends. He had liberated his slaves, and privately believed that the total power masters exercised over their slaves was morally wrong. But the Marylander’s love for the South and his hate of Yankee arrogance and meddling superseded these concerns. He and many Democrats believed that the Supreme Court could easily settle this explosive issue. “Judicial statesmanship” would finally put the question to rest under terms favorable to the South. Or at least this was what influential people such as Alexander Stephens expected and hoped. The Court, after all, had a Democratic majority of 7, and a Southern majority of 5.
Buchanan also hoped to answer the slavery question before it could cripple his administration, like it had crippled Pierce’s. At first, it seemed that the Court would not do so though. The Justices favored upholding a previous decision, Strader v. Graham, which upheld that slaves taken to Free States weren’t freed. This would bypass all the other issues, such as Black citizenship, and Congress’ power to prohibit slavery in the territories. This last one was especially problematic to southerners, and the Court’s weren’t the exception. Aside from the Virginian Peter Daniel, a fiery defender of the institution that threatened secession, the Justices had liberated their slaves or left them to their own devices on a state of pseudo freedom. Alabama’s Campbell committed heresy by pushing for recognition of Black marriage and limiting a master’s control over his property, while Georgia’s Wayne promoted colonization efforts. But they, too, hated Yankee interference. If slavery was to be abolished, it had to be abolished slowly and by the South, not by the Black Republicans in Congress.
Roger B. Taney
Still, engaging these questions was dangerous. Thus, they were contented with writing only a limited ruling. The author would be the Democrat Samuel Nelson from New York. But eventually they decided that the questions had to be engaged and tamed, especially after the only non-Democratic justices, two Whig appointees, one of whom had converted to Republicanism and other who would do so in the future, decided to write a dissent. This dissent would be the Court’s only statement, and that statement would uphold Black citizenship and Congress’ power. Taney would not stand by this. Consequently, he wrote his own opinion representing the Southern majority of the Court. But this movement could easily backfire. Republicans, including influential ones such as Senators Lincoln and Seward, already charged that a slave conspiracy existed. These cries would only grow louder if the decision was only backed by Southern Justices. One of the two Northern Democrats, Grier or Nelson, had to be convinced to concur with the majority. Nelson refused, but Grier was more promising. Enter the President-elect, James Buchanan.
The anxious future Head of State wrote his fellow Pennsylvania Democrat, telling him that an opinion about slavery in the territories would be desirable. Grier at first seemed willing to go along with Taney. But events in Kansas changed his opinion. Grier was no free thinker, and he felt compelled to follow his future president. Nonetheless, he was troubled by Kansas and the action of the Lecompton Legislature, especially the dramatic persecution and flight of Geary after Osawatomie. Justice Grier remained inert during weeks, despite Justice Carron and Buchanan’s pressure. Inauguration day came, and suspicious onlookers such as Seward witnessed “whisperings” between Buchanan and Taney, and then between Buchanan and Grier.
Grier finally cracked under the pressure, but not in the way his Southern compatriots hoped he would. Instead of joining them, he simply stayed out of the whole affair, omitting no opinion at all. He originally had believed that in the face of Buchanan’s intervention, the President would take the blame if the decision proved unpopular. But events in Kansas convinced Grier that he would be the one that took the blame as the only Northerner who agreed with the decision, and that the negative reaction would be overwhelming. As a result, the majority decision was emitted by five Southern Justices, with two Republicans dissenting, the Northern Democrat Nelson upholding Strader, and Grier not writing an opinion at all.
Taney wrote the opinion of the majority. He wasn’t the best option for doing this. Taney was respected as an old jurist, but he was not loved. Most Whigs and Republicans saw him as a relic of a bygone era, a fossil in body and mind who presented the greatest challenge to their platform of internal improvements and “national freedom”. The Chief Justice first tackled whether Dred Scott was a citizen, and whether he could sue in national courts at all. He devoted a great amount of ink to this issue, concluding that Blacks had not been included in the “We the people” that formed the US government, and neither were they part of the “all men” that Jefferson declared equal. McLean and Curtis, the Northern dissenters, argued that Black people had voted and taken part in the electoral process that chose the delegates that drafted the Constitution and the state conventions that approved them. Taney in turn asserted that that was a matter of state citizenship, and the question at hand was national citizenship. Directly contradicting Article IV, Section 2 of the Constitution, he also stated that citizens of one state may not have the same rights in other states.
Robert C. Grier
Taney found greater support in the next part of his ruling: that residency in free territories and states did not make Scott free. Nelson joined him this time, and the six Justices claimed that the Constitution did not give Congress the power to ban or limit slavery in the territories. Doing this would be seizure of property without due process. The clauses about “needful rules and regulations” were inconsequential, for rules and regulations were not laws. And precedent was also ignored, including the Northwest Ordinance that made the old Northwest free, an ordinance passed while the great majority of the Founders were alive, and often with their blessing. Furthermore, if Congress could not ban slavery, neither could a Territorial Legislature, which was after all just a creation of Congress. This part of the ruling treated with an especially sore subject for Southerners, who saw Northern attempts to limit slavery as a haughty assertion of superiority that told the South that she was inferior and that her right of property didn’t need to be respected. Now with his ruling Taney had enforced this right, and given popular sovereignty a powerful coup de main. This, however, has often been considered obiter dictum, a ruling outside of the scope of the case.
Either way, the ruling had been issued and Southerners had cause for celebration. The decision was "the funeral sermon of Black Republicanism… crushing and annihilating... the anti-slavery platform... at a single blow." "Southern opinion upon the subject of Southern slavery... is now the supreme law of the land" gloated others. But the abolitionists weren’t crushed, and they weren’t willing to “cheerfully submit” to the decision, like Buchanan had wanted when he talked about the case in his inaugural address. William Cullen Bryant denounced it as legalizing slavery in the entire nation, transforming it into a common national shame and perverting Old Glory, making her the flag of slavery. Republican State Legislatures passed resolutions declaring that the ruling was not “binding in law and conscience”. It was but a “gross historical perversion” that rested on falsehood. It was entitled to as much recognition as any group of men sitting in a Washington bar, according to the New York Evening Post. The decision was nothing but obiter dictum, which explained Republican refusal to accept it. They promised to reconstitute the Court once they won the White House, so that “1860 will mark an era kindred with that of 1776”.
Senator Lincoln employed his gift of oratory to attack the decision. He called it a “burlesque upon judicial decisions”, so wrong that it could not be seen as “settled doctrine for the country”. He, much like he did in 1856, confronted his fellow Senator from Illinois Stephen A. Douglas, refuting his position that the Constitution was for white men. Though Republicans did not seek perfect equality as it was often charged, Black men had been part of the political body in 1776, and people who denied this such as Douglas and Taney were willfully misinterpreting the Constitution and leaving it “torn, till, if its framers could rise from their graves, they could not at all recognize it”. Here Lincoln introduced an important principle: all men were created equal, but they were not equal in all respects. There were differences in intellect and morality, but all men were still entitled to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. These natural rights should not and could not be negated. And though achieving a situation were all men enjoyed them was difficult at the present time if not impossible, the entire nation should always labor to accomplish this ideal. But, Southerners and their allies had worked tirelessly to prevent this, by creating a Slave Power conspiracy that sought to enlarge that injustice known as slavery. Maybe there wasn’t a conspiracy, "But when we see a lot of framed timbers… which we know have been gotten out at different times and places by different workmen—Stephen, Franklin, Roger and James, for instance—and when we see these timbers joined together, and see they exactly make the frame of a house… we find it impossible to not believe that Stephen and Franklin and Roger and James… all worked upon a common plan".
Senator Seward made a similar accusation, citing the whisperings he had seen. "the judges, without even exchanging their silken robes for courtiers' gowns, paid their salutations to the President, in the Executive palace. Doubtlessly the President received them as graciously as Charles I did the judges who had, at his instance, subverted the statutes of English liberty". Democrats denounced these accusations by the two “Northern doughfaces” as unfunded libel and slander. But it hit too close to home for Buchanan, who despite many letters had ultimately failed to convince Grier. He was now reaping the bitter fruit of the failure – the North was outraged by the decision, one made by Southerners, for Southerners. Some people said that Northern outrage was self-righteous and insulting, because Southern Judges had as much capacity and right to write opinion and make judgements as Northern Judges did. Nonetheless, it still was powerful fuel for the furious fire that engulfed their section of the country.
William Cullen Bryant
The electoral campaign of 1858 was starting, and Lincoln returned to his state to assume the leadership of the Republican party machine that set off to take Douglas’ Senate seat. By then the Kansas debacle had added more fuel to the fire. In one of his first speeches of the season, Lincoln reminded his audience of the Slavocracy’s designs: "We shall lie down pleasantly dreaming that the people of Missouri are on the verge of making their State free; and we shall awake to the reality, instead, that the Supreme Court has made Illinois a slave State". Now was the time for action, the time to give the coup de grace to the weakened Northern Democracy. “A House divided against itself cannot stand”, said Lincoln, "I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free”. If the proponents of slavery were fighting with more vigor every day to ensure slavery becomes a national shame, it was time to stand like men and “place it in the course of ultimate extinction”.
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Grier didn't sit it out OTL.
Originally it was a 7-2, with Grier being essential in not appearing to be a slave based conspiricy. With him sitting out though....
It goes to a 6-2-1 split, most of the majority are from Slave states, and the Chief Justice is regarded as well, a relic at best. As it was, getting the North to accept it would've taken a miracle. Instead, they got Taney.
In meridie est destrui!
There already were some debates, but the future ones will be much more important.
An important note: Nelson only agreed that residency in a free state hadn't made Scott free. He didn't agree with Taney's ruling about Congress' powers. So, the decision to legalize slavery on all territories was made exclusively by the five southern justices.
Down with the slavers, burn the plantations, shave their moustaches and and dye their white suits black!
With a more radical civil war will this lead to a collapse of the democrats? Were they not a southern party and half of them supported slavery?
hahaha OK so he basically tried to invalidate part of the Constitution, I'm frankly surprised he wasn't tarred and feathered over that little stunt.
I like the cut of this guy's jib.
The South has basically traded what little long-term stability their position in the country had for a temporary cheap shot and reassertion of their unfair advantage that's largely ceased to exist, and they did this to an even greater and more obvious degree than OTL. Northerners are going to be killing mad.
hahaha so basically the North is going to be even more POed at Southern tyranny and subversion of democracy than OTL. That's going to end spectacularly.
Sort of? They were basically the Jacksonian party for a while in the North, before the slavery issue hit the national attention. Those northern Dems started to bleed off as the Republicans forged a more cohesive identity than the Whigs had had, while pro-slavery Whigs went over to the Dems. The Whigs being basically the guys who said that Andrew Jackson was an asshole and didn't really have much other political agreement among themselves.
yah no kidding this destroy and legitimacy he made and actually that insane and what about which states don’t have the same right please elaborate
Well, this just keeps adding proof in the eyes of the Republicans of this "slave conspiracy." I'd hate to be a young man during this time.
John Brown was John the Baptist of the Christ we are to see,
Christ who of the bondmen shall the Liberator be,
And soon throughout the Sunny South the slaves shall all be free,
For his soul is marching on.
With a larger force even McClellan could inadvertently do horrendous damage to Lee's Army, it was that close IOTL.