Gadarene:
Excellent topic. I would like to agree with your OP. But I have 1 nagging question.
Why did the South start the war?
If they had stuck to their guns, then there was no legal recourse for the anti-slavery forces. No constitutional amendment would get past the Southern de facto veto. Instead they threw away their legal advantage and rolled the dice on the battlefield.
What am I missing?
-curtis
Lincoln showed that he was far more interested in preserving the integrity of the United States than in following constitutional minutiae, although it can certainly be argued that this was due to the exigencies of civil war. However, there was a considerable body of opinion that Lincoln, the president of the anti-slavery Republican party (which only four years earlier had seen fit to nominate the more radical Frémont), might well disregard such niceties as laws and courts; it had, after all, been less than thirty years since Andrew Jackson had proclaimed, “John Marshall [Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court] has made his decision, now let him enforce it”.
Whether Lincoln would have done such is a fact safely buried in some alternate timeline (my own opinion is that he could and would have been a more forceful – and less constitutional – president than any seen in some decades, but would not have openly flouted the law). Nonetheless, Southern leaders decided that there could be no better time for secession and defiance of the Union (that was certainly true; Lincoln’s predecessor, Buchanan, seems to have been an idiot rather than a sympathizer, but the effect was the same).
“I don’t just want you to feel envy. I want you to suffer, I want you to bleed, I want you to die a little bit each day. And I want you to thank me for it.” – What “Let’s just be friends” really means
Argh. Stupid Internet connection. Let me try again:
Akatsukami made a lot of great points. Basically, an abolitionist president could have gone a long way in eliminating the structural advantages the Southern way of life enjoyed. Remember that one of the tasks of a president is the nomination of Supreme Court Justices, and the Supreme Court could wield enormous power in determining the constitutionality of slavery. Had Dred Scott been decided differently four years earlier, the South might have seceded then; as it was, they believed the threat posed even by a putative abolitionist such as Lincoln justified separating themselves from a government which they saw as about to disregard their fundamental constitutional rights.
(Interestingly, though Dred Scott is now regarded as sui generis, one of the greatest missteps in Supreme Court jurisprudence, a case can be made that the decision reasonably interpreted the Constitution, applying the document as plausibly as possible to the issues of the day.)
Akatsukami:
Thanks for the answer. I can’t see any holes in it.
As a descendant of Natives I am unlikely to forget that quote.
BTW- You might want to be cautious about mentioning Jacksa Chula Harjo around me. I have been known to get off on violent rant at the slightest positive comment about him. 
Gadarene:
I had thought about the Supreme Court nominations. But these things take time.
As for Dred Scott, I agree. They made the correct, as opposed to the right, decision.
John Corrado:
I do not place much reliance on the L/D debates for insight into Lincoln’s personal beliefs.
The opinions stated by politicians in public speech tend to reflect what they think their audience believes, rather than what they actually believe.
People who think that politics has gotten uglier over the past few elections do not know their history. Politics in America is an ugly and deceitful profession. And it allways has been.
-curtis
A source:
http://www.historyplace.com/lincoln/dred.htm
http://www.tourolaw.edu/patch/Scott/
If Taney had wanted to be correct (with no consideration of being right), he would have stopped at the legalistic truism that a slave does not have full rights as a citizen, and thus does not have the right to sue.
What he definitely did not have to say was,
So if any state allows Joe Blow to own leaky casks full of active anthrax culture, it is perfectly legal for Mr. Blow to roll said casks into the District of Columbia, and there is nothing the Federal government can say about it. Thanks, Roger.
Furthermore, he says,
The transformation of a person from a slave into a free citizen would certainly constitute the introduction of “a new member into the political community”. Is he saying what I think he’s saying? I have always interpreted Dred Scott as the legalization, by judicial fiat, of slavery into the territories. Did this clause of the decision legalize slavery in the (previously) free states?
I agree that the founding father’s omission of a solution to slavery made conflict inevitable, but I fear that the title of this thread ‘Did the Constitution make the Civil War Inevitable’ oversimplifies the Civil War. The Civil War was not simply a reaction to fears that slavery would be abolished, but was a step taken after years of tensions, both social and economic. The great schism between the north and the south became wider and wider until the union broke in two. “But,” you say “the South was fighting for slavery, their economic safety.” Not so. How many of those confederate soldiers do you think had slaves? Probably very few. Sure, some of the officers and higher ranks did, but your dead average grunt soldier was one of the many subsistance farmers who had to do their own work because they couldn’t afford to hire out or buy slaves. The south was not an endless plantation, and not all southerners were powerful landowners. (I’m from Boston, so this isn’t pride in my land or anything btw…) This topic, of what the south was fighting for was addressed in the movie “Gettysburg.” When asked about slavery by the British diplomat, a confederate soldier delivers a reply describing how he is fighting for states rights. The south seceeded when Lincoln took office, and Lincoln himself declared that he had no intention of freeing the slaves. He also said in the Emancipation Proclomation, “If I could free no slaves and save the union I would do it.” He did however, believe that many of the rights that the states claimed as their own were detrimental to the efficient working of the strong federal government. Slavery was an important issue, but not the only one, and that is a fact that many people, and school textbooks seem to overlook.
Boris B wrote:
Weeeeeeeellllllll … not quite.
Article 1, section 8, clause 17 of the U.S. constitution gives Congress exclusive jurisdiction over the District of Columbia and all “Federal areas” within the physical boundaries of States (areas that have been voluntarily ceded by the States to the Federal government).
This kind of exclusive Federal jurisdiction is NOT explicitly given to Congress when it comes to U.S. Territories. Instead, article 1, section 3 says in part: “The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States”.
So Justice Roger Taney was not saying Joe Blow could roll his leaky casks of anthrax into D.C., he was saying Joe Blow could roll his leaky casks of anthrax into Puerto Rico. Big difference.
I think everyone is forgetting about the rest of the world. I think the Framers knew what they were likely getting into, but found the alternative worse: Without a Union of the States, they would not be strong enough to defend from outside aggressors. Lincoln followed the same logic: Those eyeing us from outside are too strong for us to stand against them divided.
At least by putting off the decision, the Framers allowed time for the nation to grow and become stronger so that the fight wouldn’t leave everyone to be easy pickings for European imperialists. And they allowed for the possibility, however remote, that the fight might become unnecessary.
So, yes, the Constitution, among other things, led directly to the Civil war. Then again, I don’t thing there was any viable alternative.
Damn shame, though.
-VM
Boris B.:
Thank you for the clarification.
( And thanks to tracer as well. )
bradysg
Please refer to my last post ( the portion addressed to John Corrado ) for the liabilities of relying on political speech to gauge a politician’s beliefs or intentions. I offer this counter-example from my favorite book, James Loewen’s Lies My Teacher Told Me.
You will note that this is also political speech.
I’ve read that book, its great, and your right that political speech can often be misleading. Obviously politicians (whether talking to unitarians or the nation as a whole) have to spread themselves thin to please everyone, or at least give that impression.
I wasn’t there. He could’ve had his fingers crossed…=)
bradysg
The principal effect of the Dred Scott decisionn as I was told was that it invalidated both the Missouri Compromise (the first act of Congress ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court since Marbury v. Madison threw part of the Judiciary Act of 1790(?) .
Since Congress could not decide whether or not slavery would legal in the territories, any attempts by Congress to make compromises to placate the North and South, such as the ill-fated Kansas-Nebraska Act, were no longer available.
Many Republicans at the time opined that Supreme Court opinions, were just opinions and had no binding legal authority. The Supreme Court wasn’t exactly held in high esteem by Lincoln after 1861. When Lincoln suspended hapeas corpus after Fort Sumter, Taney’s Court told him that he couldn’t do that. That didn’t faze Lincoln who proceeded with the suspension.
Ah bradysg, your words give me that warm fuzzy feeling.
I predict great things in your future here.
