A House-Divided

[Wild Bill]

"I do not expect the Union to be dissolved -- I do not expect
the house to fall -- but I do expect it will cease to be divided."

"...such decision is probably coming, and will soon be
upon us, unless the power of the present political dynasty
shall be met and overthrown."

"...and we shall awake to the reality, instead, that the Supreme Court has made Illinois a slave State.
"To meet and overthrow the power of that dynasty, is the work now before...This is what we have to do."

Lincoln did not falsely parody C.J.Taney. If one reads these three quotes Lincoln is right on the money. He was correct that the decision of the Court in Dred Scott DID in effect turn Illinois into a slave state. It turned all states into slave states. It was coming down the road in a new case coming up through the Federal court system, Lemmon v. the People of the State of New York.

This is the case which would end the notion of the nation being half slave and half free hinted at in Dred Scott by making all states slave states. So long as the slaveholder remained a citizen of his/her original slave state he/she could take and hold and exploit his/her slave property anywhere in the Union, in its states or territories. John C. Calhoun, ten to fifteen years before Dred Scott, while he was Secretary of State under President Tyler, even maintained that slavery could be exploited anywhere in the world, although he referred to the then Republic of Texas and the British West Indies.

The leading light in this notion was actually Secretary of War Abel Upshur of Virginia, but he was killed accidentally in the testing of the Dahlgren naval cannon in 1844. It was all based on the concept that slavery had a special place in the US Constitution because art 4, sect. 2, clause 2, gave it an extraterritorial character that meant slave law adhered to the back of a slave anywhere the slave went in the US and its territories, or indeed in the world, until the master to mistress freed the slave. This was the basis of Dred Scott and was ready to be expanded by the US Supreme Court that had the same make-up as the court that decided Dred Scott.

The South had won the Constitutional/legal argument. This is why so many other Southern states refused to secede after the first seven, until Lincoln fired on Ft Sumter. This is why there had to be a 13th Amendment beyond the Emancipation Proclamation--to get rid of extraterritoriality once and for all. This is also why Lincoln and the Republicans started the Civil War intentionally to achieve this end to slavery and all of its extraterritorial aspects.

Contrary to what historians usually say about Taney deciding wrongly in Dred Scott, Lincoln saw have he decided correctly and emancipation would have to be accomplished militarily by invading the South. He never really admitted to this until half-way through the war. Instead he said that it was fought for Union. The four border states believed him and they never seceded. West Virginia separated from Virginia under the same idea--the war was fought for Union.

Read Thomas DiLorenzo, The Real Lincoln (2002); Walter Williams, The Civil War Wasn't About Slavery, Jewish World Review, Dec 2 1998; James Oaks, Freedom National (2013), Arthur Brestor, State Sovereignty and Slavery, Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, 53 (1960), 117-80; William J Cooper, "The Critical Signpost on the Journey toward Secession," Journal of Southern History, 77 (2011), 16 ff. All of this is summarized in my The Assassinator (2015) and my upcoming book The Last Shot.