Front Cover Portraits of Dred Scott, His Wife, Harriet and Children Eliza & Lizzie!

Front Cover Portraits of Dred Scott, His Wife, Harriet and Children Eliza & Lizzie!. Multi-Column Details of His Life, Family and The Decision of The Supreme Court! An Original and Complete Issue of LESLIE'S WEEKLY dated June 27, 1857. Fine Illustrations with Reports Including: A Front Cover Series of Portraits with Indepth Report: "VISIT TO DRED SCOTT---HIS FAMILY--INCIDENTS OF HIS LIFE---DECISION OF THE SUPREME COURT---ELIZA AND LIZZIE, CHILDREN OF DRED SCOTT, HIS WIFE, HARRIET" Fine Descriptive Report!
-- The Eastern Argus, a very rare historical newspaper, printed in Portland, Maine on September 12, 1858 announcing: "The Death of Dred Scott."
BACKGROUND: Dred Scott (1799 - Sept. 17, 1858), was a slave in the USA who sued unsuccessfully for his freedom in the famous Dred Scott v. Sanford case of 1857. His case was based on the fact that he and his wife Harriet were slaves, but had lived in states and territories where slavery was illegal, including Illinois and Minnesota (which was then part of the Wisconsin Territory). The United States Supreme Court ruled seven to two against Scott, finding that neither he, nor any person of African ancestry, could claim citizenship in the United States, and that therefore Scott could not bring suit in federal court under diversity of citizenship rules. Moreover, Scott's temporary residence outside Missouri did not effect his emancipation under the Missouri  Compromise, since reaching that result would deprive Scott's owner of his property.

CHIEF JUSTICE TANEY: Taney wrote for the majority. In the first section of his opinion, he held that the case must be dismissed for lack of jurisdiction. Scott, being a Negro, could be a citizen of a state–that was a matter of state law –- but he could not be a citizen of the United States, within the meaning of the Constitution, so as to be able to bring a case in federal court. In the course of explaining why members of the black race could not be citizens, Taney argued that representatives of the slaveholding states would never have consented to a Constitution that had the potential to confer citizenship on Negroes. Imagine, he wrote, the consequences:

“It cannot be believed that the large slaveholding States regarded them as included in the word citizens, or would have consented to a Constitution which might compel them to receive them in that character from another State. For if they were so received, and entitled to the privileges and immunities of citizens, it would exempt them from the operation of the special laws and from the police regulations which they considered to be necessary for their own safety. It would give to persons of the negro race, who were recognized as citizens in any one State of the Union, the right to enter every other State whenever they pleased, singly or in companies, without pass or passport, and without obstruction, to sojourn there as long as they pleased, to go where they pleased at every hour of the day or night without molestation, unless they committed some violation of law for which a white man would be punished; and it would give them 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. And all of this would be done in the face of the subject race of the same color, both free and slaves, and inevitably producing discontent and insubordination among them, and endangering the peace and safety of the State.”

It is impossible, it would seem, to believe that the great men of the slaveholding States, who took so large a share in framing the Constitution of the United States and exercised so much influence in procuring its adoption, could have been so forgetful or regardless of their own safety and the safety of those who trusted and confided in them. It is noteworthy that Taney placed the right to “keep and carry arms wherever they went,” along with the rights of free speech and public assembly, as unquestionable privileges of citizenship.