Vol. 30, No.
7 -- July 2010
CHRIST LUTHERAN CHURCH OF THE DEAF
9545 Georgia Avenue, Silver Spring, MD 20910
CHRIST LUTHERAN CHURCH OF THE DEAF
9545 Georgia Avenue, Silver Spring, MD 20910
Independence for whom?
(Part 5)
Every year on July 4 our nation celebrates the signing of the Declaration of Independence by representatives of thirteen British colonies who declared themselves to be "free and independent states."
Every year in the July issue of this newsletter, we have looked at the struggle to make the second sentence of the Declaration of Independence a reality: "We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness." Sadly, there were many who felt that "all Men" should not include slave laborers.
As the nation grew, our people divided bitterly on this issue. Southern states' economy depended on slavery. Northern states made slavery illegal. In order to avoid direct confrontation, the Southern states claimed "States' Rights." To some extent, our system of government allows citizens of each State and community to manage their own affairs, without interference from the Federal government. Southern states, claiming "States' Rights," said that neither Northern states nor the Federal government could interfere with any Southern state's policies regarding slavery. However, as a slave named Dred Scott discovered, in the matter of slavery, only Southern states had rights. Northern states did not.
Dred Scott was born into
slavery in 1799. In the 1830's, his owners sold him to an Army
doctor, John Emerson. Emerson's military service took him and his
slaves (Scott and his wife, Harriet) into the Wisconsin territories and then to
the State of Illinois, where slavery was illegal. Apparently Dred
Scott was not aware of his rights in a free state, because he never
petitioned for his freedom.In 1842 Dr. Emerson returned with his slaves to Missouri. He died the following year. Dred Scott offered Dr. Emerson's widow $300 for his freedom. She refused. So Dred Scott sued for his freedom in court, on the basis that he had lived in a free state and in a Federal territory, where it was illegal for Dr. Emerson to hold him in slavery.
The case worked its way through the Missouri State courts, then into Federal courts. On March 6, 1857, Chief Justice Roger Taney delivered the US Supreme Court's 7-2 ruling against Scott. The Court said:
(1) Slaves are "property." They "are not persons" protected by the US Constitution.
(2) People of African descent cannot be citizens of the United States, so they cannot use the US courts.
(3) Anti-slavery provisions in both the Northwest Ordinance and the Missouri Compromise (which made the Mason-Dixon line the boundary between free and slave States) were unconstitutional.
Through an interesting turn of events, two and half months after the Supreme Court's ruling against Scott, he and his wife won their freedom anyway. (Dr. Emerson's widow married an abolitionist who convinced her to return the Scotts to their original owner, who then gave them their freedom.) A year and a half later Scott died of tuberculosis. Harriet lived in freedom for another 18 years.
Does the US Supreme Court ever make a mistake? It sure did in the dreadful Dred Scott decision. Sadly, the Court repeated its awful mistake in 1973, when again the Court ruled in defiance of our Creator that babies in the womb "are not persons" protected by our laws, so they also have no rights to life and liberty which we celebrate in the Declaration of Independence.
~~Pastor Ron