Lincoln and Taney

[L Verge]

(02-04-2015 10:03 PM)STS Lincolnite Wrote:  

(02-04-2015 08:23 PM)L Verge Wrote:  Despite his long service to his country, I don't believe that Lincoln recognized his death. I know he did not attend his funeral. Only Attorney General Bates attended.

True, Lincoln made no public statement regarding Taney's death. However, it has been documented that Lincoln along with Seward, Bates and Postmaster General Dennison attended a memorial/funeral service for Taney at his home on Indiana Avenue in Washington, DC at about 6 a.m. on the morning of 15 October 1865. Lincoln was among those who participated in a procession accompanying the deceased Taney from his Indiana Avenue home to the railroad station. Only Bates attended the funeral and burial held in Frederick, MD. An excerpt from Bates' diary: “The Prest. Sec.y Seward and the P.M. Genl. Gov Denison, attended the body, from the dwelling to the cars.” He added about the Frederick funeral and burial: “Mass was sung in the Jesuits’ church at Fredk. And I saw his body placed in the grave (beside his mother, as he had ordered) in the old church yard there.”

Thanks for the correction regarding Lincoln accompanying the body to the rail cars. I'll give him an extra point for at least that.

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(02-05-2015 09:05 AM)Wild Bill Wrote:  Laurie, Dred Scott was not fugitive slave. He has nothing to do with the fugitive slave law or its constitutionality. His case ruled on on the extraterritoriality of slavery, that Missouri slave law followed Scott no matter where he lived and that slavery could not be denied in the treaties until after that territory became a state. It was a 7-2 ruling, but irrelevant to this argument. One can argue, as did Lincoln, that this was stretching the fugitive clause of the Constitution. But Scott remained a slave nom matter whee he went until his owner freed him, which Mrs. Emerson did after the case decision.

The relevant case here is Sherman Booth v. US Marshal Ableman and was decided 2 years after Dred Scott and did concern a runaway slave or a fugitive slave, if you prefer, under the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law. Here the court ruled that the fugitive clause applied 9-0, and that Booth (no relation to JWB) violated the law by aiding the slave in question too escape to Canada, for which Ableman arrested him. Lincoln never argued that this case was a misapplication of the Constitution, just that it was unfair in its effects.

Taney is a very complicated man. We emphasize his 1850 cases on slavery but he was really best known for his insertion of Jacksonian Democracy into the cases decided earlier by Federalist John Marshall. This opened up the democratic notion of economic freedom to the general populace that the more elitist Federalists had stifled.

I'm apologizing to you also, Bill. I just realized that I overlooked the fact that you were discussing a case totally separate from Dred Scott's when you mentioned the 9-0 decision. Mea culpa. I never want to get into a spitting contest with you in the history field. I know I'll get drenched, no matter how far back I stand.