What Lincoln and Other Yankees Knew:
THE EVIDENCE THAT
PRE-CIVIL WAR U.S. SLAVERY
WAS ILLEGAL AND UNCONSTITUTIONAL:

Evidence from the English Common Law, Court Case Law Precedents,
The Declaration of Independence, State Constitutions, The U.S. Constitution,
The Bill of Rights, The Many Anti-Kidnaping Precedents
And Rescue Doctrine and Incidents

In Context of Who Did It, Why, States' Rights,
Expansionism, White Slavery, Politician Character,
The Dred Scott Case, Genocide, The Emancipation Proclamation,
Reparations, Why Secession, and Current Impact

Bibliography Below

The fact that slavery was unconstitutional was widely known. A number of law suits had been won against slavery. Abolitionists called attention to these precedents far and wide. So why don't 21st century Americans know this? Answer: Due to disproportionate post-Civil War "unreconstructed Southerner" influence on text-book writing, this type information (deemed 'offensive' to that section) is de-emphasized if not omitted altogether!

“After the war, former Confederates [had] wondered how to hold on to their . . . pride after [the] devastating defeat. . . . So they reverse-engineered a cause worthy of [their] heroics. They also sensed . . . that the end of slavery would confer a gloss of nobility, and bragging rights, on the North," says Donald von Drehle, "The Civil War, 1861-2011, The Way We Weren't" (Time, 18 April 2011), p 40. So they resolved on denial and disinformation, including pretending that slavery had been constitutional.
"Attitudes that provoked the Civil War and still cause much red state-blue state nastiness have never disappeared, whether the issue is race, religion, guns, states' rights, trade, central banks or immigration," a quote from the review by Prof. Geoffrey Wawro of the book by Simon Winchester, OBE, The Men Who United the States (Harper Collins Pub, 15 October 2013).
“The readiness with which Southern [slavers and accessories] prefer the most false and audacious claims . . . exhibits a state of society in which truth and honor are but little respected,” says Lewis Tappan, Address to the Non-slaveholders of the South: on The Social and Political Evils of Slavery (New York: S.W. Benedict, 1843), p 36. Of course they'd lie!

This site on the history of the information on slavery always having been unconstitutional, challenges the disinformation by revealing (as Abraham Lincoln and others did in their writings and speeches) the truth about slavery unconstitutionality that pre-1861 Americans knew. Now you can too!

To overcome the lack of information or disinformation, the references for this are thoroughly cited. In essence, this site is heavily foot-noted so you can, if you wish, verify any and all the source material.

1. First, Read The Law, Don't Assume That
Practice (Tradition, What People Do) Is Legal

         It may be “practice,” history, or “tradition” for people to jaywalk or rob or kidnap or enslave, for example, as pro-slavers argued. That is what people historically do (they said), therefore, that is what the law and Constitution allow! But such circular reasoning is wrong reasoning.

“Right is still right, even if nobody is doing it. And wrong is still wrong, even if everybody is doing it.”—Texas Ranger saying.
“An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it.”—Mohandas Gandhi.

Personal behavior, what people do, is not the standard of what is lawful, constitutional. The standard is what the law says, defined as within legal and constitutional limits. To find out what laws say, what the Constitution requires, do not look at, do not compare with tradition, with practice, with what people do. Instead, read the standard, the law, the Constitution. Here is why:

“what ought to be done is fixed by a standard . . . whether it usually is complied with or not.”—Texas
& Pac Ry v Behymer, 189 US 468, 470; 23 S Ct 622, 623; 47 L Ed 903 (U.S. Supreme Court, 1903).

Law, including constitutional law, is designed for a purpose. That is, it is

“designed to disrupt” nonconforming practice (or lower laws)—
U.S. v City of Los Angeles, 595 F2d 1386, 1391 (CA 9, 1979).

A “practice” [or state law] “not based upon any rule of law” [or Constitution] must be reversed and rejected, Biafore v Baker, 119 Mich App 667; 326 NW2d 598 (1982); The T. J. Hooper, 60 F2d 737, 740 (CA 2, 1932). Such "practice" must be superseded and ended.

That principle of law was the same during slavery. See related analysis by, e.g., Rev. Beriah Green, The Chattel Principle (New York: American Anti-Slavery Society, 1839), pp 37-39. As you will learn here, slavery was not allowed under the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the laws. But it was being done, as a "practice," a bad and illegal behavior, despite the law.

Perhaps you object, 'what about the Thirteenth Amendment'? The answer is, it is “not the language of repeal; it does not acknowledge that slavery ever rested upon statute law, or upon right; but it denies its authority longer to exist.” McElvain v Mudd, 44 Ala 48; 4 Am Rep 106 (Jan 1870) (Dissent by J. Peters, ¶23).

Likewise, Rep. Gerrit Smith said of the Thirteenth Amendment: “I never liked [it]. It implies or, at least, seems to imply, that the [original] Constitution did not forbid the greatest of crimes—whereas by the canon of legal interpretation (, and no other was admissible,) it did [already] forbid it. I should [would] have preferred an Amendment, that simply disallows a Pro-Slavery interpretation of an already Anti-Slavery Constitution.”—Letter to Senator Charles Sumner (5 February 1866).

Abolitionist Rep. Owen Lovejoy cited slavery as mere “practice” in his “The Barbarism of Slavery” (5 April 1860), House of Representatives, 36th Cong, 1st Sess., Vol 29, Appendix, pp 203, 203 again, 204a, 204a again, 204b, 204c, 205a, 205a again, 205b, 206c, and 207a.

Just as there was defiance of the Fourteenth Amendment for a century until the recent [1950's - 1960's] civil rights movement, so likewise

“[g]ross outrages, in open defiance of Magna Charta and common law, have been continued through entire generations.” Nonetheless, law is “designed to disrupt” practice, so “customs and usages do not define or create law, but should be controlled by it.”—William Goodell, Slavery and Anti-Slavery (New York: William Harned, 1852), p 576.

And to the same effect, see

  • May v Topping, 65 W Va 656, 660; 64 SE 848 (1909)
  • Frederick Douglass, Unconstitutionality of Slavery (London: William Tweedie, 1860), p 7
  • Abraham Lincoln, "Peoria Speech" (16 Oct 1854), p 221, asking rhetorically, "Who will inform the negro that he is free?"
  • Rep. Gerrit Smith, "Letter to Hon. Henry Clay" (1839), p 19
  • George W. F. Mellen, Unconstitutionality of Slavery (Boston: Saxton & Pierce, 1841), p 431
  • Lysander Spooner, Unconstitutionality of Slavery (Boston: Bela Marsh, 1845), p 23
  • and, in torture context, see Richard Hildreth, Atrocious Judges (New York and Auburn: Orton & Mulligan, 1856), p 33.

    • In short, the fact that people do engage in some action, do commit some behavior, doesn't tell us that doing it, is legal, doesn't tell us what the laws actually say.

    An Abolitionist Example
    Abolitionist Rep. Thaddeus Stevens once gave an example of the above concept. He cited the story of someone who was disagreeing.

    Later that same individual mentioned a recent murder, “Did you hear of that atrocious murder committed in our town? A [criminal] deliberately murdered [someone] .”

    The respondent said, “I think you are mistaken.”

    “How so? I saw it myself.”

    “You are wrong, no murder was or could be committed, for the law forbids it!!”

    Point made!—Rep. Thaddeus Stevens, Congressional Globe, 39th Cong, 1st Sess, 18 Dec 1865, pp 72-75. (Full Text) Likewise, re slavery! Just because something (e.g., kidnapping, rape, slavery, murder, secession) is illegal, doesn't mean it doesn't happen.
    Harriet Beecher Stowe, Key (1853), p 92, had made the same point.

    A number of abolitionists said, "When we say that slavery is illegal, we mean not merely that it is morally wrong, wicked, or sinful, in the sight of God, but that it is likewise unlawful, by the established principles of human jurisprudence, just as murder, arson, robbery, theft, and assault and battery, are unlawful, and that there is no more valid law for [favoring] the one than there is for the other. We mean that slaveholding is illegal, as other criminal practices are illegal. We affirm that there is no legislation in any of the States that makes it legal. . . . Slavery can not possibly be legalized. In its very nature it is incapable of legalization. The standard writers on common law affirm the impossibility of legalizing slavery, even by positive municipal law. They declare the right to liberty to be inalienable, and that statutes against fundamental morality are void. . . . The nature of civil government and of civil law, as defined by all standard writers on those subjects, proves it impossible to legalize slavery. 'To secure' man’s inalienable rights, 'governments are instituted among men.' And consequently they can have no lawful authority to violate the rights which they exist only to protect." See Lewis Tappan, et al., Proceedings of Convention (New York, 1855), pp 10-11.

    2. Colonies Were To Obey English Law Whereby Slavery Was Unlawful

    American colonies' laws were derived from England, the 'mother country.' Their charters issued pursuant to the British Constitution, required obeying English law including the "common law":

    (1) "there were no English statute laws . . . authorizing the holding of slaves, either in England or in the American colonies," and

    (2) "the common law of England was incompatible with slavery, and neither recognized nor permitted its existence." Goodell, supra, pp 18 and 49-51; and Benjamin Shaw, Illegality of Slavery (Boston, 1846), p 2.

    Note well that "the status of slavery was not recognized in English law"—Lawrence Henry Gipson, The Coming of the Revolution 1763-1775, in Henry Steel Commager and Richard B. Morris, eds., The New American Nation Series (New York: Harper & Row, Torchbooks University Library, 1954 and 1962), p 4.   Re "the legal aspect of the slave trade and of slavery. The one and the other were from the beginning utterly illegal . . . neither the slave trade nor slavery had any legal sanction," says Prof. Francis William Newman, M.R.A.S, Anglo-Saxon Abolition of Negro Slavery (London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., 1889), p 3.

    Since slavery was not a legal recognized status, the high court decision, Somerset v Stewart, Lofft 1, 18-19; 20 Howell's State Trials 1, 79-82; 98 Eng Rep 499, 509-510 (King's Bench, June 1772), said so. That decision thus further precluded slavery here in the colonies and subsequent U.S.

    The slavery immediately at issue in the U.S. abolitionist era had begun in the 1600's. By the 1800's, slavers deemed the passage of time as a ratification of what they were doing. But mere passage of time does not turn the illegal into legal! Every bank robber knows that: delay in apprehension does not thereby make the robbery legal and the loot his legal possession or property!

    "Quod ab initio non valet in tractu temporis non convalescet. That which is bad in its commencement improves not by lapse of time. Quod initio non valet, tractu temporis non valet. A thing void in the beginning does not become valid by lapse of time."—Black's Law Dictionary (St. Paul: West Pub, 5th ed, 1979), pp 1126-1127.

    The above-cited Somerset case showed that slavery had never legally begun.

    Somerset impacted America "because the precedent had become part of American common law."—William M. Wiecek, "Somerset's Case," Encyclopedia of the American Constitution, Leonard W. Levy and Kenneth L. Karst, eds. (New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 2000), Vol 5, pp 2451-2452. At the time of the decision, 1772, the colonists in America, including slavers and individuals who'd become the "Founding Fathers," “drew the sobering conclusion that the day was likely near when the Somerset decision would also apply to them,” says Prof. Clarence Lusane, Ph.D., Black History in the White House (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2011), Chapter 1, p 55.

    Saying likewise, that slavery was always contrary to common law, thus illegal and unconstitutional in America, were other, additional authors, at the time:
  • Gerrit Smith, Letter of Gerrit Smith to Hon. Henry Clay (New York: American Anti-Slavery Society, 21 March 1839), p 19;

  • Alvan Stewart, Legal Argument For the Deliverance of 4,000 Persons from Bondage (New York: Finch & Weed, 21-22 May 1845), p 19;

  • Rep. Horace Mann, Slavery and the Slave-Trade . . . (23 February 1849), pp 27-32;

  • Rev. William Goodell, Slavery and Anti-Slavery (New York: Wm. Harned Pub, 1852), pp 572-576;

  • Abraham Lincoln, "Speech at Peoria" (16 Oct 1854), p 221; and

  • Edward C. Rogers, Slavery Illegality in All Ages and Nations (Boston: Bela Marsh, 1855), pp 82-83.

    • One of the British Constitution 'rights of Englishmen' was to not be enslaved.

    Please re-read that.

    One of the British Constitution 'rights of Englishmen' was to not be enslaved.

    That's the Constitution the Colonies were supposed to follow.

    The British Constitution did not allow slavery. One of the 'rights of Englishmen' was to not be enslaved.

    This right applied here in the U.S. colonies. Reason: Pre-Revolution, the British Constitution WAS the U.S. Constitution.

    The 'no slavery allowed' aspect of the British Constitution, and common law, followed the Roman law concept cited by, for example, Roman Byzantine Emperor Justinian (527 C.E. - 565 C.E.):

    "Captivity and servitude are both contrary to the law of nature; for by that law all men are born free." (Institutes, 21 November 533 C.E.)
    The Institutes were following ancient Roman law, "that by nature all men are free [a legal principle] as old as ancient Rome; and the law of Rome repeatedly asserts, that all men by nature are free, and that slavery can subsist only by the laws of the State. (Digests, B. 1, T. 1, s. 4; B. 1, T. 5, ss. 4, 5.)" Cited in People ex rel. Napoleon v Lemmon, 5 Sand SCR 681; 7 N Y Super 681 (New York, 12 Nov 1852) aff'd 26 Barb 270, 287-289 (New York, 30 Dec 1857) aff'd 20 NY 562; 1860 WL 7815 (New York, March 1860).

    That in turn followed Christian doctrine.

    In fact, "All presumptions of law are in favor of liberty. It is a maxim older than Christianity itself, Presumitur pro libertate; that the presumption is always to be in favor of liberty. . . . it was the maxim of ancient Rome before Christ was born, it is the maxim of the Christian Era, and of everybody, the world over, today; it is the maxim of the civil law of Europe, coming from the early ages of the Republic, through the Empire, and surviving the Empire, a system of law matured for twenty-five hundred years, into the most perfect embodiment of human reason to which the world has given birth; this law cried through all time, All men are by nature free; it is the great cry of Pagandom to Christendom, and Christendom echoes it back; it is the maxim of the common law of England; it is the maxim of the common law of Massachusetts; it is the maxim of the whole world, save only the slaveholding States of this Union," says Robert Rantoul, Jr., The Fugitive Slave Law (3 April 1851), p 13.

    In "1102 a council held in London saw fit to decree: 'Let no one hereafter presume to engage in that nefarious trade in which hitherto in England men were usually sold like brute animals.'"—New Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol 13 (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co, 1967), p 284. (See background, theological and historical.) For centuries, there is no record of noncompliance.

    An Irish decree, "that all the English slaves in the whole of Ireland, be immediately emancipated and restored to their former liberty," was issued in 1171. Slavery in England was abolished by a general charter of emancipation in 1381, says The Anti-Slavery Examiner (American Anti-Slavery Society, 1838).

    Then in 1569, an enslaving incident was attempted in England under Queen Elizabeth I. The 'master' attempted to beat the 'slave.' This violence was deemed then, as now, 'assault and battery.' A lawsuit ensued. In that case, Matter of Cartwright, 11 Elizabeth; 2 Rushworth's Coll 468 (1569), a court found slavery unconstitutional, saying, "England was too pure an air for slaves to breathe in," Goodell, supra, p 50.

    This precedent was confirmed two centuries later. In Shanley v Hervey, 2 Eden 126 (Chancery, March 1762), a court said that

    "As soon as a man puts foot on English ground, he is free: a Negro may maintain an action against his master for ill usage [modern term, reparations], and may have a Habeas Corpus, if restrained of his liberty."

    Three years later, in Smith v Brown and Cooper, 2 Ld Raym 1274; 2 Salk 666; 91 Eng Rep 566 (1765), Chief Justice Holt said "that as soon as a negro comes into England, he becomes free: one may be a villein [serf] in England, but not a slave." Goodell, supra, p 48.

    These precedents should have ended slavery. But like any crime, it kept on recurring.

    And since slavery kept recurring, just as civil rights violations did in the U.S. despite the Constitution, a "class action" in-effect case came about. This "class action" case was filed via a writ of habeas corpus.

    An alien, non-citizen of England, James Somerset, was taken by his "master" Charles Stewart, from the colonies to England, 7 Mass Hist Soc Proc 322-326. To challenge his enslavement, his lawyers used that well-established common law writ (habeas corpus) to challenge his enslavement (essentially, detention without charges being filed).

    A person can obtain a writ of habeas corpus without being a citizen, as it covers anyone unlawfully detained.—Lysander Spooner, The Unconstitutionality of Slavery [Boston: Bela Marsh, 1845], pages 105 and 276).
    Habeas corpus continues all these years later to be as originally intended, for all "persons," regardless of citizenship. See, e.g., Matthew Rothschild, "A Great Decision on Habeas Corpus," by Matthew Rothschild (The Progressive, 13 June 2008).

    That case, Somerset v Stewart, Lofft 1, 18-19; 20 Howell's State Trials 1, 79-82; 98 Eng Rep 499, 509-510 (King's Bench, June 1772), sponsored by British abolitionists including Granville Sharp, via Judge William Murray, L. Mansfield, reconfirmed that “there neither then was, nor ever had been, any legal slavery in England.” Goodell, supra, pp 18 and 49-51.

    In fact, two years before, a colonial court had found likewise (pursuant to the common law) here in the colonies, in James v Lechmere (Mass Superior Ct, 1770). See Goodell, supra, p 112; Spooner, supra, p 287, and Emory Washburn, Sketches of the Judicial History of Massachusetts from 1630 to the Revolution in 1775 (Boston: Charles C. Little & James Brown, 1840), p 202.

    See also the Quock Walker Cases (Mass, 1783), analyzing slavery as to whether it had ever been legally and constitutionally established and allowed:

  • “nowhere is it expressly enacted or established.

  • “It has been a usage [practice contrary to] the natural rights of mankind, and to that natural, innate desire of Liberty, with which Heaven (without regard to color, complexion, or shape of noses) has inspired all the human race.

  • “And upon this ground [basis] our Constitution of Government . . . sets out with declaring that all men are born free and equal—and that every subject is entitled to liberty, and to have it guarded by the laws, as well as life and property—and in short is totally repugnant to the idea of being born slaves. . . .

  • “the idea of slavery is inconsistent with our own conduct and Constitution; and there can [constitutionally] be no such thing as perpetual servitude of a rational creature, unless his liberty is forfeited by some criminal conduct or given up by personal consent or contract.”

    • In Joseph Knight, a Negro v Wedderburn, 33 Dict of Dec 14545 (Scotland, Jan 1778), the court held that defendant slaver Wedderburn "had no right to the Negro's service for any space of time. . . ."

    When for example, the English colony Virginia was established, it was provided a constitution, a "charter." That charter specified that the people in the Virginia colony

    "shall have and enjoy all liberties, franchizes and immunities within any of [England's] other dominions, to all intents and purposes as if they had been abiding and born within the realm of England." The mandate was to follow "the common law and the equity thereof."—William J. Wood, "The Illegal Beginning of American Negro Slavery," 56 American Bar Ass'n Journal (#1) 45-49 (Jan 1970).

    Overall, all the various colonies had charters to this effect:

    "[T]he colonial charters, authorizing the colonial Legislatures to enact laws, gave no license to slavery, and contained the general proviso, that the laws of the colonies should 'not be repugnant or contrary, but as nearly as circumstances would allow, conformable to the laws, statutes, and rights of our kingdom of England.'"

    "The charters of Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas, and Georgia, as well as of Pennsylvania and the New England colonies, were essentially alike in this regard." Wherefore, "there were no colonial enactments that authorized the holding of slaves, or defined the relation and condition of slavery." Goodell, supra, p 18; Spooner, supra, pp 21-31.

    [Instead, for example:] "The first settlement of Georgia was commenced under auspices decidedly hostile to slavery. Gen. James Oglethorpe [1696-1785], a member of the British Parliament, 'conceived the idea of opening for the poor of his own country, and for persecuted Protestants of all nations, an asylum in America.' [So he set up Georgia. The governing] Trustees strictly prohibited slavery, and 'declared [it] to be not only immoral, but contrary to the laws of England.'" Goodell, supra, pp 20-21, citing, with emphasis added, Marcius Willson, American History (NY: Ivison, Phinney, Blakeman & Co, 1846), pp 261-262.

    In Forbes v Cochrane, 2 Bran & Cressw 448; 3 Dowl & Ryl 679; 107 Eng Rep 450 (England, 1824), it was again noted that the English legal system does not allow for slavery, so

    "if a man wishes to preserve his slaves, let him attach them to him by affection, or make fast the bars of their prison, or rivet well their chains [details], for the instant they get [away] they have broken their chains, they have escaped from their prison, and are free." [See Context.]

    The colonial charters were of course law, Town of Pawlet v Daniel Clark, et al, 13 US (9 Cr) 292, 332-333; 3 L Ed 735, 749-750 (10 March 1815):

    "we take it to be a clear principle that the common law in force at the emigration of our ancestors is deemed the birth right of the colonies unless so far as it is inapplicable to their situation, or repugnant to their other rights and privileges." (This is a federal Supreme Court case referencing the common law.)

    "Every Englishman treasured his birthright of liberty under the common law, which forbad slavery." "Slavery was . . . illegal in Virginia and the other English colonies."—Wood, "The Illegal Beginning of American Negro Slavery," 56 Am Bar Ass'n J, supra.

    The Somerset decision had verified this. Somerset impacted America "because the precedent had become part of American common law."—William M. Wiecek, "Somerset's Case," Encyclopedia of the American Constitution, Leonard W. Levy and Kenneth L. Karst, eds. (New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 2000), Vol 5, pp 2451-2452.

    And in fact, "Chief Justice Marshall (12 Wheat. 653, 654 [Ramsay v Allegre, 25 US 611, 653-4; 6 L Ed 746, 827]) lays great stress on the framers of the constitution having been acquainted with the principles of the common law, and acting in reference to them. Most of them were able lawyers; and certainly able lawyers drew up, and revised the instrument. Are we, then, to believe, that if they had any design to take away the common law right, or to authorize congress to take it away or to impair it; they would, knowing the rules of construction cited, and like common law maxims, have used the language they have? There is the strongest reason to believe, from the language, it was adopted for the purpose of preserving it [the right], and to reserve from congress any power over it. This probability arises, almost irresistibly, from the language used; and under the circumstances that it was used. . . . This case, and all the law on this subject, discussed and decided by it, must have been known to the lawyers of the [constitutional] convention." Wheaton v Peters, 33 US 591, 602; 8 Peters, 8 L Ed 1055, 1059 (1834).

    Pursuant to these pro-freedom facts, Virginia Governor John Murray issued a proclamation 7 Nov 1775 concerning "freedom to all slaves."—Page Smith, Ph.D., A New Age Now Begins: A People's History of the American Revolution (New York: Penquin Books, 1976), Vol. 1, p 621. For additional background, see e.g., Jill Lepore, "Goodbye Columbus: When America won its independence, what became of the slaves who fled for theirs?," The New Yorker, pp 74-78 (8 May 2006).

    In the pro-freedom enthusiasm of the Revolutionary era, there were significant numbers of voluntary manumissions. A large population of free blacks resulted. See Gary B. Nash and Jean R. Soderlund, Freedom by Degrees: Emancipation in Pennsylvania and its Aftermath (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991) (and its excellent statistical data).

    The bottom line was "that colonists should enjoy all liberties of Englishmen as if they dwelt within the English realm."

    The personal behavior known as slavery was already illegal, incompatible with established rights, when the colonists arrived here; their colonial charters were their local constitutions specifying likewise.

    3. The Declaration of Independence Was Anti-Slavery

         


    You undoubtedly already know the reason for the 1776 American Revolution and Declaration of Independence. Colonists were complaining that they were not being given their "birthright," their "inalienable rights," the full rights and liberties of Englishmen! That's the same argument the abolitionists made re slaves, not given the full rights of Englishmen!

    One of those rights was that, pursuant to English common law, you couldn't be made a slave! Reason: slavery was illegal in the British Empire, including the U.S. colonies, meaning, it was not authorized.

    One issue of the era was the 40¢ cent tea tax!—See George Mellen, Unconstitutionality of Slavery (Boston: Saxton & Pierce, 1841), p 40.

    For background from that era, see also "African Slavery In America," by Thomas Paine, in Pennsylvania Journal and the Weekly Advertiser (8 March 1775). Within weeks, on 14 April 1775, in Philadelphia, the first anti-slavery society in America was established in Philadelphia, with Paine a founding member. Paine was also author of Common Sense, the document that explained in everyday language, reasons for independence from Britain.

    In 1776, the Revolution came, and the Declaration of Independence. It affirmed the rights and liberties of Englishmen for colonists! and equality of all people in terms of fundamental rights. The stage had been set for the Declaration by the consensus created by Paine's Common Sense, says, e.g., Howard Fast, Citizen Tom Paine (Cleveland and New York: World Pub Co, 1943), pp 119-122.

    That Revolutionary era's view, the Founding Fathers' view, was,
  • "The right to freedom being the gift of Almighty God, it is not in the power of man to alienate this [original grant] gift and voluntarily become a slave [e.g., be taxed 33¢ for tea!]."—Samuel Adams, "The Rights of the Colonists" (Boston: 20 Nov 1772). Adams was a Revolutionary leader.

  • "Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God."—John Bradshaw (1602-1659).

  • Britain "covenanted with the first settlers . . . that we should enjoy 'all the Libertys of free natural born subjects of Great Britain.'"—Paul Revere, Letter, c 1782. Revere was the famous 'Midnight Rider' warning that 'the British are coming.'

  • "I was involved in several causes [lawsuits] in which negroes sued for their freedom, before the [1776] Revolution. The [legal] arguments in favour of their liberty were much the same as have been urged since . . . arising from the rights of mankind."—John Adams, Letter, 21 March 1795. Adams became U.S. President, 1797-1801.

  • "Early in the agitation against Great Britain, individuals had remarked on the inconsistency of a people holding slaves and at the same time complaining that Parliamentary taxation would reduce them to slavery. As the struggle progressed, more and more Americans came to see the need for casting out this beam."—Prof. Edmund S. Morgan, The Birth of the Republic 1763-1789 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956), p 96.

  • "Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God."—Thomas Jefferson. "Opposition to tyrants is obedience to God."—New Haven (cited by Alexander Winston, "The Hunt for the Regicides," 16 American Heritage (# 1) pp 26-29, 90-93 (December 1964), at p 93.

  • The American Revolution was therefore deemed a "holy resistance to oppression."—Marquis de Lafayette, Bunker Hill Anniversary Speech (17 June 1825).

    • Note also stylistic background for the Declaration of Independence, and that era's school textbook, with a compilation of republican, pro-emancipation writings of the era, becoming a symbol of human rights and the power of eloquence and articulation: The Columbian Orator, Caleb Bingham, ed. (1797). (Decades later, when Frederick Douglass discovered this book, containing a master-slave dialogue ending in a slave being freed, this book was a factor in inspiring him to seek freedom.)

    "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that ALL MEN are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

    "That, TO SECURE THESE RIGHTS, GOVERNMENTS ARE INSTITUTED AMONG MEN, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed;

    "THAT WHENEVER ANY FORM OF GOVERNMENT BECOMES DESTRUCTIVE OF THESE ENDS, IT IS THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO ALTER OR ABOLISH IT, and to institute a new Government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”—2/4 July 1776.

    The Declaration of Independence in Paragraph 1 refers to "The Laws of Nature and of Nature's God.” This alludes to the "Natural Law" doctrine, as detailed by e.g., John Locke and William Blackstone, especially the latter's Commentaries on the Law. Blackstone wrote: "Man, considered as a creature, must necessarily be subject to the laws of his Creator, for he is entirely a dependent being . . .. And consequently, as man depends absolutely upon his Maker for everything, it is necessary that he should in all points conform to his Maker's will. This will of his Maker is called the law of nature."

    The Declaration's Paragraph 2 reference to mankind as "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness" rebuts the slaver view that rights come from government, the Declaration was founded on the view that God, not government, is the author and grantor of independence, and that government's purpose is to "secure [protect] these Rights." This is all part of the "Natural Law" concept of law known in the Revolutionary Era. The "Natural Law" concept is evident in Romans 2:14-16. God as giver of life is evident in, e.g., Genesis 2:7. That God is pro-freedom is evident from, e.g, Galatians 5:1. The "Pursuit of Happiness" concept is evident in Ecclesiastes 3:13.

    It (the Declaration of Independence) of course, as long as the U.S. remains independent,

    "has never been repealed. It was, for years, the only Constitutional law of the United States, and it is no less Constitutional law now, than formerly," citing a then authority, John C. Spencer, saying that "'The first act of our nation (the Declaration of Independence) being a solemn recognition of the liberty and equality of ALL MEN, and that the rights of liberty and happiness are inalienable—was the corner-stone of our [nation], and is above all Constitutions and all laws.'" Goodell, supra, p 574.

    Alvan Stewart, Legal Argument For the Deliverance of 4,000 Persons from Bondage, supra, pp 28-31, cited scientific evidence from nature confirming the validity and accuracy of the Declaration's 'all men are created equal' concept; and, poetically, at pp 43-45, the Declaration's anti-slavery impact in other nations.

    The Declaration contains language against people denying others their rights, against oppression of man by man. Spooner, supra, pp 36-39.

    The Declaration "estops" (prevents) doing the same to others, say
  • George Mellen, Unconstitutionality of Slavery (Boston: Saxton & Pierce, 1841), p 28 and p 34;
  • Joel Tiffany, Unconstitutionality of American Slavery (Cleveland, Ohio: J. Calyer, 1849), pp 27-32; and
  • Sen. Charles Sumner, LL.D., The Barbarism of Slavery (Washington, DC: 4 June 1860), p 226.

    • The issue of applying the Declaration to slavery in the U.S. arose. Courts found "that the Declaration had abolished slavery." Goodell, supra, pp 111 and 574, citing cases such as Commonwealth v Aves, 35 Mass (18 Pick) 193, 209 (27 Aug 1836), a habeas corpus case, which in turn cited earlier cases, e.g., Littleton v Tuttle, 2 Dane Abr 413 (1796) and Winchendon v Hatfield, 4 Mass 123 (1808). These cases too were published.

    The ex-colonies, now states, wrote new Constitutions, with bills of rights, using Declaration of Independence style wording, all thus (redundantly) banning slavery. Goodell, supra, p 78.

    OF all the state constitutions, that were in force at the adoption of the constitution of the United States, in 1789, not one of them established, or recognized slavery," says Lysander Spooner, Unconstitutionality of Slavery (Boston: Bela Marsh, 1845, 3rd ed, 1860 p 39

    Soon, four years before the 1787 U.S. Constitution, Commonwealth v Nathaniel Jennison (Worcester, Mass, 1783) found that slavery had

    "nowhere [been] expressly enacted or established. It had been a . . . practice.

    "[Now] the people of America [are] more favorable to the natural rights of mankind, and to that natural, innate desire of Liberty, which the Heaven (without regard to color, complexion . . .) has inspired all the human race.

    "[So] our Constitution . . . declaring that all men are born free and equal [renders] slavery . . . totally repugnant . . . inconsistent. . . . there can be no such thing."

    "As a result all slaves in Massachusetts were thenceforth free." "Here the [Massachusetts] constitution adopted in 1780 [had] declared in its first article, 'All men are born free and equal.'"—Prof. Edmund S. Morgan, The Birth of the Republic 1763-1789 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956), p 97.

    Pursuant to that 1780 document, the lawsuit of Elizabeth Freeman, et al. v John Ashley (Great Barrington Mun Ct, Aug 1781), freed Freeman et al and directed Ashley to pay "thirty shillings lawful silver money" in damages and "five pounds fourteen shillings and four pence" attorney costs. See Howard W. Felton, Mumbet (New York: Dodd, Meade & Co, 1970), p 8; and Cokie Roberts, Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation (New York: William Morrow, 2004), pp 153-154.

    Prominent abolitionists in that era believed that the abolition of the slave trade would mean the end of slavery. Cut off the stream into the lake; the lake dries up. Doing that to slavery, ending the slave trade, would mean, slavery was on the way out. See, e.g., F. Douglas, Unconstitutionality of Slavery, supra, p 10; and Goodell, Slavery and Anti-Slavery, supra, p 84. "In most of the northern states the abolition of the slave trade was followed shortly by the abolition of slavery itself."—Morgan, Birth of Republic, supra, p 97.

    And U.S. leaders (the Founding Fathers) intended, in addition, retaining the English anti-slavery concept of Somerset v Stewart.—Sen. Charles Sumner, Barbarism of Slavery, supra, p 224. This would assure slavery ending via the litigation route as per the ongoing line of precedents.

    Between the time of the Declaration of Indpendence and the current U.S. Constitution, there was a short time when the U.S. was organized under the "Articles of Confederation."

    "No one charges upon [accuses] the old 'Articles of Confederation' any recognition of slavery. And no one supposes that the Federal Constitution originated it, or gave to it any legal validity which it did not possess before. The absolute illegality of slavery, at the time the Federal Constitution was adopted, is hence as certain as any legal fact of history can be, and no one pretends that it has acquired any additional legality since that time." See Lewis Tappan, et al., Proceedings of Convention (New York, 1855), p 14.

      4. The Constitution Banned Slavery  

    So, as slavery was seen as on the way out, the Constitution's authors, the Founding Fathers, used words chosen and crafted to not "recognize . . . the legality of slavery" as it had never been legal, merely illegal practice. As we saw at the beginning, practice is NOT law.

    Accordingly, "the slaveholders would agree to a free constitution," says Lysander Spooner, Unconstitutionality of Slavery (Boston: Bela Marsh, 1845, 3rd ed, 1860), p 186. And, "it is, in law, considered reasonable —as it is, in fact, one of the highest evidences of reason—for a man voluntarily to do justice, against his apparent pecuniary interests," p 186. See also the entire closely reasoned chapter on Consent, pp 182-189.

    Wherefore, "neither the terms 'slave' nor 'slavery' are to be found there [in the Constitution]." Goodell, supra, p 84; and Gerrit Smith, Letter (New York: American Anti-Slavery Society, 1839), pp 18-19.

    The Founding Fathers were defended by abolitionists against slaver claims that the Founding Fathers were hypocrites, i.e., intending freedom for themselves but pro-slavery for others. See, e.g.,
  • George Mellen, Unconstitutionality of Slavery (Boston: Saxton & Pierce, 1841), pp 29-30
  • Lewis Tappan, et al., Proceedings of Convention (1855), pp 5-6.
  • Sen. Charles Sumner, The Barbarism of Slavery (Washington, D.C.: 1860), p 224 (observing that the
    Founding Fathers retained English anti-slavery legal doctrine in the Constitution).
  • Lewis Tappan, et al., Proceedings of Convention (New York, 1855), p 40 (noting that the term "the
    compromises of the Constitution" was invented after 1820, i.e., was "a phrase never before heard").

    • As a matter of background, see Lysander Spooner's
  • summary of the pro-slavery interpretation of the Constitution, pp 205-236
  • his rebuttal, pp 155-205
  • his presentation, pp 61-114
  • his analysis of the Founders' intent, pp 114-123, and
  • of the people's, pp 124-126.

    • The Founding Fathers deemed rights' origin as God. Rights thus were not "derived from the Constitution, but [each] a preexisting right of man, secured by . . . the Constitution . . . the framers of the Constituion would have repudiated the idea that they were giving to the people the right of petition [for example]. No, sir. That right God gave to the whole human race," said Hon. John Quincy Adams (Congressional Globe, 9 February 1837).

    Note also that, in law, the framers of a constitution are presumed to have knowledge of judicial construction of existing constitutional provisions. Jones v Ypsilanti, 26 Mich App 574; 182 NW2d 795 (1970). Somerset was existing judicial construction of the existing constitution.

    Also: “The citizens are the authors of the law, and therefore its owners, regardless of who actually drafts the provisions, because the law derives its authority from the consent of the public, expressed through the democratic process,” citing BOCA v Code Technology, Inc., 628 F2d 730, 734 (CA 1, 1980), says State of Georgia v The Harrison Company, 548 F Supp 110, 114 (DND Ga, Atl Div, 1982). The public both owns and is presumed to know the law and court precedents, e.g., Wheaton v Peters, 33 US 591; 8 Peters, 8 L Ed 1055 (1834); Davidson v Wheelock, 27 F 61 (CCD Minn, 1866); and Howell v Miller, 91 F 129 (CA 6, 1898); related federal law 17 U.S.C. § 105, and the fact that “The 'law' is owned by the public and cannot be copyrighted.” Legally, you know what you own. The Founders "owned," knew, the "rights of Englishmen" set forth by the "common law" and precedents such as Somerset against slavery.

    "In the Virginia Convention that ratified the Constitution, Patrick Henry, (a member of the Federal Convention,) said that Congress, by the Constitution, 'had power to pronounce all slaves free.' 'There is,' said he, 'no ambiguous implication or logical deduction. The paper speaks to the point. They have the power in clear and unequivocal terms, and will clearly and certainly exercise it.'

    "In the same Convention, Gov. Randolph said: 'They insist that the abolition of slavery will result from this Constitution. I hope there is no one here who will advance an objection so dishonorable to Virginia. I hope that at the moment they are securing the rights of their citizens, an objection will not be stated that those unfortunate men now held in bondage BY THE OPERATION OF THE GENERAL GOVERNMENT, may be made FREE.'

    "With this 'understanding' the Constitution was ratified by Virginia.

    "General Wilson, another member of the Federal Convention, from Pennsylvania, assured the people of that State that the Constitution "laid a foundation for banishing slavery out of this country." See Lewis Tappan, et al., Proceedings of Convention (New York, 1855), p 19.

    Notwithstanding such data from the time, subsequent slavers and their apologists claim that the Founding Fathers either (a) deferred the issue of slavery or (b) somehow wrote slavery into the Constitution. And, contradictorily, slavers admit that words such as “slave” and “slavery” are not in the Constitution! How do slavers and their apologists reconcile their contradictory stories?!

  • By claiming the Founders somehow magically “intended” slavery, even though the words say no such thing!

  • Or, that the Founders were too ignorant to know the difference between the words "servant" and slave."

    • The bottom line is, the Founders' words either meant what they said, or they don't. They either express the Founders' meaning, their intent, or they don't!

    So let's actually read, examine, study the words in the Constitution! Let us determine the actual "intent" that the Founders had by examining the actual words the Founders used. That's what abolitionists did!!

    The Founders knew about habeas corpus, knew that pertinent courts had struck down slavery on that basis, knew "The Illegal Beginning of American Negro Slavery," supra, etc.

    Knowing all this, the Founders begin the Constitution begins its Preamble with an all-encompassing term, "we the people" excluding nobody, and stating the Constitution's purposes, including to promote liberty for all by a "more perfect" government than hitherto [under the Articles of Confederation]. The purpose of a constitution is to defend, not subvert, rights. Stewart, supra, p. 24.

    "Slavery is unconstitutional because it is irreconcilably opposed to the declared objects [purposes] of the Constitution, namely, 'to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.' These grand objects [purposes] of the Constitution [stated in the Preamble] can never be secured so long as slavery is permitted to exist in the nation," say Lewis Tappan, et al., Proceedings of Convention (New York, 1855), p 15.

    In Article I § 9, the Founders had the Constitution recognize and adopt habeas corpus—the right the Founders knew had been and was being used by alleged slaves including non-citizens such as Somerset, supra, to obtain freedom via anti-slavery court orders—and the Founders have the Constitution ban interference with habeas corpus. "It is this writ," (says [Edward] Christian, the annotator of [lawbook author] Blackstone,) "which makes slavery impossible in England." Its proper application [meaning, enforcement] would make slavery impossible here," says Lewis Tappan, et al., Proceedings of Convention (1855), p 16.

    The Founders write the Constitution's Article 4 § 4 to guarantee "to every State . . . a republican form of government" (the fundamental rights/legal equality of all people to self-determination and participation in the governmental process). "For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery."—Jonathan Swift (1667-1745).   (Reference to slavery being contrary to republican government is cited in Madison's Papers.)

    "It is essential to" a republican government "that it be derived from the great body of . . . society, not from an inconsiderable proportion, OR a favored class of it."   (Madison, in No. 39 of the Federalist ¶ 4.) This was written for the especial object of persuading the people to adopt the Constitution, by convincing them that it provided a republican government.

    "The true foundation of republican government is the equal rights of every citizen in his person and property, and in their management." (Jefferson.)

    "Republics are created by the virtue, public spirit, and intelligence of the citizens. They fall, when the wise are banished from the public councils, because they dare to be honest, and those abandoned to vice [e.g., slavers, tobacco pushers] are rewarded, because they flatter the people in order to betray them." (Joseph Story - Justice of the Supreme Court, son of Elisha Story, a member of the Sons of Liberty.)

    The word "master" was a title of nobility, i.e., from the feudal nobility's "lord paramount" concept, a monarchy notion. Feudal nobles had had "serfs." America had rejected feudalism and monarchy ("divine right" rule by supposedly "God-ordained" kings and nobility). So Article I § 9 and Art. I § 10 ban "nobility" (a master concept). See, e.g., Abraham Lincoln, Peoria Speech (Illinois, 1854), p 253; Spooner, supra, p 109; Rep. Horace Mann, Slavery and the Slave-Trade (1849), pp 44-45; Stewart, supra, p 36; Lewis Tappan, Address to the Non-slaveholders of the South: on The Social and Political Evils of Slavery (New York: S.W. Benedict, 1843), pp 1-2 and 53; and Tappan, et al., Proceedings of Convention (1855), p 16.

    "Servitude [is] the state of voluntary or compulsory subjection to a master." Hodges v U.S., 203 US 1, 17; 27 S Ct 6; 51 L Ed 65 (1906); 58 CJ 745, 746 n 1.

    And, "the slaveholder [is] the most absolute and shameless of all despots," says Rev. Beriah Green, The Chattel Principle (1839), p 18.

    The word "master" was a title of nobility, tantamount to the "lord paramount" concept of Medieval Feudalism. Feudal masters had had "serfs." The master-slave concept came from the monarchy and the old "divine right of kings" notions. The Founding Fathers wanted to prevent a monarchy / nobility here in America. So they wrote words to make the Constitution carefully reject and ban these aspects (fundamental ones to slavery, one person lording it over another person).

    Later, following the Founders' view, Abraham Lincoln said this anew in his Speech at Peoria, p 253 (16 October 1854).

    Modern research verifies. "The framers of the Consitution had not intended to make slavery a national institution supported by the Union's fundamental law." Moreover, its words "were not intended to make the Constitution a proslavery compact."—Prof. Don E. Fehrenbacher, Ph.D., The Slaveholding Republic: An Account of the United States Government's Relation to Slavery, ed. Ward M. McAfee (New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp ix-x.

    A number of abolitionists added, "We deny that the Constitution could have contained any valid recognition of slavery, because there was never any legalized slavery in this country, to be the subject of such recognition . . . We affirm that the general structure of the Federal Constitution, as well as its particular provisions, preclude the legal existence of slavery, forbid the States to maintain it, provide for the liberation of the enslaved, and authorize and require, at the hand of the Federal Government, its suppression." See Lewis Tappan, et al., Proceedings of Convention (1855), p 7.

    The Old South defied these facts, established monarchy and nobility via slavery ("lord paramount" masters and their serfs/slaves)—Rev. John Rankin, Letters on American Slavery (Ohio: 1823), p 69; Richard Hildreth, ed., Atrocious Judges (New York and Auburn: Orton & Mulligan, 1856), p 36.

    Establishing nobility such as "lords paramount" (masters) in America violates the "republican government" clause. The Constitution made the federal government responsible to stop such a thing from occurring.

    For such a state of affairs to exist, was not allowed by law, but merely derived from force, Com v Aves, 35 Mass 193 (1836), supra. To claim to be a "master" and hold a person by force = kidnapping.

    Once kidnapped persons escape or are otherwise outside the kidnapper's raw power, they are free. Pertinent precedents on this type concept include e.g.,

    Forbes v Cochrane, 2 Bran & Cressw 448; 3 Dowl & Ryl 679; 107 Eng Rep 450 (1824);
    Lunsford v Coquillon, 14 Martin 401 (Louisiana, May 1824) [cited by S. P. Chase, Brief, 1837];
    Julia v McKinney, 3 Mo 270 (Missouri, Oct 1833);
    Marie Louise v Marot, et al, 8 La (Curry) 475 (June 1835) and 9 La (Curry) 473 (Louisiana, May 1836) [cited by Chase, Brief, supra, 1837];
    and
    Nancy Jackson v Bulloch, 12 Conn 38 (Connecticut, June 1837).

    The Founders in the Constitution's Article I § 9 and Art. I § 10 also ban "ex post facto" laws, and "bills of attainder" (penalty or detention in servitude without prior notice, without charges first being filed, and without due process of law). For details, see Rep. Horace Mann, Slavery and the Slave-Trade (1849), p 44. These constitutional prohibitions rendered unconstitutional all Southern laws aiding and abetting slavery.

    "Slavery is an 'attainder' because it 'attaints the blood,' and imposes disabilities on the child, on account of the condition of the parent. It establishes an order of nobility by that same process, and by conferring hereditary or transferable powers of subjugation and control upon one class or order of men over another class, [unconstitutionally made] their [supposed] hereditary inferiors and subjects," says the Radical Abolitionist Convention (1855), p 16.

    A "bill of attainder" is "A law that attaints the blood, or creates disabilities on account of parentage or birth. A law that provides that the child of a slave mother and of a free father “shall follow the condition of the mother,” and be a slave for life—and its descendants after it forever—is “a bill of attainder.” Exactly what the Constitution says, (section nine,) neither Congress nor any State shall pass. This clause of the Constitution alone, if not violated, would put an end to this whole [slavery] controversy," says Rep. Amos P. Granger, "State Sovereignty — The Constitution — Slavery," 28 Cong Globe Appx., 35th Cong, 2nd Sess (17 February 1859).

    The Founders in Article I § 10 also ban states' obstructing people's right to make contracts, e.g., to marry, to acquire property, to not labor except for pay from a person of one's own choosing, etc. The clause also bans states from creating a Confederacy with other states.

    These clauses enable the federal government to enforce people's rights, including the right to freedom, i.e., no slavery recognized. The federal government would have been of no value if it and its courts could NOT enforce all aspects of the Constitution.—Cohens v Common-wealth of Virginia, 19 US (6 Wheat) 264; 5 L Ed 257 (1821); Ableman v Booth, 62 US (21 How) 506; 16 L Ed 169 (1859); Alpheus T. Mason and William M. Beaney, American Consitutional Law, 5th ed (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc, 1972), p 118.

    Article I § 8 grants Congress various powers; none of them include creating or continuing slavery. See Rep. Horace Mann, Slavery and the Slave-Trade . . . . (1849), pp 37-40.

    Included in Article 1 § 8 is a grant of power to wage war and create a military. The clause has no words limiting it to any specific group of people. Congress could put slaves in the military, train them, arm them, then they could, constitutionally, overpower their 'masters.'

    The Article 1 § 8 war power is what President Abraham Lincoln relied on in the Emancipation Proclamation, depriving the enemy of the wherewithal to wage war. Ex-President John Quincy Adams (1825-1829) had said that clause empowered ending slavery.

    “The very act [of enslaving] was a declaration of war upon human [kind].”—Rev. Beriah Green, The Chattel Principle (1839), p 18. Clearly “a forced system of labour endangers the peace.”—Frederick Douglass, Unconstitutionality of Slavery (London: William Tweedie, Pub, 1860), p 11.

    Indeed, “denial of [fundamental rights] would, upon principles of public law, be just cause of war.”—Mitchell v Wells, 37 Miss 235, 282 (1859) (dissent by J. Handy).

    “This [allowing rights denial via slavery, unconstitutional detentions] was allowing a state of war de jure in the body politic, which could not be prevented from becoming a war de facto to the destruction of the commonwealth [society].”—Edward C. Rogers, Slavery Illegality (1855), p 9.

    Congress has power to declare war and make peace. Slavery is an outrage on the slaves, and they are necessarily [inherently] enemies to the nation that permits it. Congress, therefore, has power to make peace with the slaves by restoring to them their rights. . . . until slavery is abolished, we are continually exposed to a state of war. And the same principle affirmed by Mr. Adams would warrant abolition as a means of preserving peace or of being prepared for war." See Lewis Tappan, et al., Proceedings of Convention (New York, 1855), p 17.

    Though Lincoln cited that Article 1 § 8 'war power,' he need not have done so, as even in peacetime, the President had emancipation authority, pursuant to Article 2 § 3, "take care that the laws be faithfully executed" (each of these constitutional laws herein cited [as e.g., Tiffany, supra, p 140, had urged]).

    Some black slaves had already obtained their rights and been freed in court precedents above cited, e.g., via the habeas corpus process. Now the Founders write an equality clause, Article 4 § 2, saying, "The citizens of each state shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states." This mandate included the states in the South.

    Clauses that slavers pretend relate to slavery, the so-called "three-fifths" clause, and the so-called "fugitive slave" clause, were actually on other subjects!
  • representation of citizens-in-process, aliens, of which America (a land of immigrants) had so many; and
  • indentured servants (then common) to whom salary/wages had been advanced, respectively.
    Even if such clauses had related to slavery (they did not), they would have been effectively superseded and repealed by the subsequent adoption of the Bill of Rights, which of course, have authority over any clause prior to them.
    Benjamin Franklin, signer of both the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, was elected in 1787, as president of America's first anti-slavery society! He certainly never deemed the Constitution compatible with slavery!
    See also the analysis of clauses such as the "three-fifths" clause, by Lysander Spooner, Unconstitutionality of Slavery (1845), pp 73-81 and 242-270, and Robert Rantoul, Jr., The Fugitive Slave Law (Lynn, MA: 3 April 1851), pp 7-8. .
    The bottom line is this: "The framers of the Consitution had not intended to make slavery a national institution supported by the Union's fundamental law." Moreover, its words "were not intended to make the Constitution a proslavery compact."—Fehrenbacher, The Slaveholding Republic, supra, pp ix-x.

    • "Congress shall have power to establish a uniform rule of naturalization." [Article 1, § 8.] To "naturalize" a man is to change his condition from that of an alien to that of a free citizen. Under this clause Congress may determine whether or no the slaves are already free citizens. If they are, it can declare them to be so. If they are not, it can naturalize them, and make them such," says Lewis Tappan, et al., Proceedings of Convention (New York, 1855), p 17.

    The bottom line is, says George Mellen, supra, pp 30-33, the Founding Fathers were not hypocrites, professing support of liberty while enacting bondage. They meant to, and did, establish a pro-liberty government, p 33.

    Alvan Stewart, supra, p 42, and Sumner, The Barbarism of Slavery, supra, p 224, noted likewise.

    The Founders knew that, when you win your freedom on a writ of habeas corpus, you do NOT pay the loser, whomever had detained you illegally. The U.S. system is based on a type of 'loser pays,' not 'winner pays'! Likewise, when slavery is banned by law, just as by a court habeas corpus order, no payment is made to the slaver. The Founders were aware of this principle having been followed in Somerset v Stewart (1772).

    The Founders make the Constitution, by words they wrote in Article VI § 2, "the supreme law of the land . . . anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding." Goodell, supra, pp 575-576; Spooner, supra, p 270; and Shaw, supra, p 1. Remember that, the Constitution is supreme. (Naturally, this supremacy enables the federal government to protect people's rights against violations by any state.)

    The effect of such legal language, separately and collectively, was to abolish slavery, if such prohibition/abolition had not been sooner effected by, e.g., litigation pursuant to the already existing common law and Declaration of Independence. Goodell, supra, pp 84-85 and 574-577, citing, e.g., 3 Madison Papers 1429 and 1569; 2 Elliott's Debates 452 and 484; 3 Elliott's Debates 598; and Debates of the Virginia Convention, p 463.

    Indeed, while the Constitutional Convention was in session in 1787,

    "the Old Congress passed an ordinance abolishing slavery in the North-Western Territories, and precluding its future introduction there.

    "The first Congress under the new Constitution ratified this ordinance . . . the ratification in the new Congress received the vote of every member except Mr. Yates, of New York, the entire Southern delegation voting for its adoption.

    "By this ordinance slavery was excluded from Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa."—Goodell, pp 83 and 574; Smith, supra, p 17, Spooner, supra, p 288, Stewart, supra, p 17; and, Lincoln, "Peoria Speech, 16 Oct 1854," Nicolay, John G. and John Hay, eds., Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln, Vol II (New York: Francis D. Tandy Co, 1894 and 1905), p 194.

    There had been another weaker Ordinance, 1784. The one of 1787 was markedly more anti-slavery, because in three years, "New Englanders by this time had become strongly opposed to slavery."—Prof. Edmund S. Morgan, The Birth of the Republic 1763-1789 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956), p 116. "It [the Ordinance of 1787] was formed before the dogma that THE NATION [the federal government] could not SUPPRESS [ban] SLAVERY had ever been heard of."—Lewis Tappan, et al., Proceedings of Convention (New York, 1855), p 41.

    The Ordinance became an issue in subsequent court cases (just as laws do now). It was

  • UPHELD, pursuant to Congress' plenary authority in the territories, as having banned slavery, Jarrott v Jarrott, 7 Ill 1 (Dec 1845).

  • APPLIED and ENFORCED in a Mississippi case! yes, Mississippi!: Harry v Decker, 1 Miss (1 Walker) 36, 42-43 (1818) ("Slavery is condemned by reason and the laws of nature. It exists, and can only exist, through municipal regulations, and in matters of doubt, is it not an unquestioned rule, that courts must lean 'in favorem vitæ et libertatis.' . . . How should the Court decide . . .? I presume it would be in favor of liberty.")

  • And see Spooner, supra, p 200; and Salmon P. Chase, Anti-Slavery Legal Brief (1837), p 235.

    •          The proposed Constitution did not take effect automatically. It needed voter approval. Slaver Patrick Henry opposed the proposed Constitution, urged voters to reject it because it was anti-slavery. See " Patrick Henry's Case Against the Constitution: The Structural Problem with Slavery" by Robin L. Einhorn, in Journal of the Early Republic;Winter 2002, Vol. 22, Issue 4, p. 549 (December 2002). It "[d]iscusses U.S. politician Patrick Henry's argument against the proposed U.S. Constitution. Efforts to persuade the Virginia convention to reject the proposed Constitution; Perceived inevitability of freedom for slaves; Henry's resting of his argument on economic interest."

    On the other hand, due to pro-freedom voter fears that the proposed Constitution lacked a "bill of rights," its defenders in The Federalist Papers,

    "assured them that the Constitution was more than the equivalent of such bills of rights" under which slavery had already been recognized as banned, and assured them that the clauses stating its purpose, e.g., to "secure the blessings of liberty" to "the people of the United States" constituted "'a better recognition of popular rights' than could otherwise have been framed."

    Thus assured "that the Constitution was in favor of freedom," the voters ratified it. Goodell, supra, pp 87-89. One cannot write more comprehensive language!! Enforced, it would have helped stop tobacco planters' (to be elaborated, § 13, below) and accessories' family destroying behavior.

    5. The Bill of Rights Banned Slavery

    But even those reassuring words were not enough to satisfy some people, e.g., Thomas Jefferson (as shown by writings of his at the time).

    So the Constitution was immediately amended to add the "Bill of Rights." "The Bills of Rights in the American Constitutions have not been drafted for the introduction of new law, but to secure old [already existing] principles against abrogation or violation; they are conservatory rather than reformatory." Weimer v Bunbury, 30 Mich 201; 1874 Mich. LEXIS 168 (1874).

    For example, the First Amendment forbids laws "prohibiting the right of the people peaceably to assemble together." Southern states passed such laws regularly, to promote slavery, and to prevent peaceable efforts against it.

    Another example, the Second Amendment protects the "right to bear arms." That right to defend oneself, would end slavery, as noted by Tiffany, supra, pp 117-120.

    The Fourth Amendment "forbids slavery by providing that 'the right of the people to be secure in their persons . . . shall not be violated,'" says the Radical Abolitionist Convention (1855), p 16. Reference Deut. 24:10-11.

    The Fifth Amendment says that
    "No person shall be . . . deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." "'Due process of law' includes an indictment, trial by jury, and judgment rendered in open court." See Rep. Horace Mann, Slavery and the Slave-Trade . . . . (Washington, D.C.: 23 Feb 1849), pp 41-44; Alvan Stewart, Legal Argument For Deliverance from Bondage, supra, pp 34-35; Goodell, Slavery and Anti-Slavery, supra, pp 575-576, and Tappan, Proceedings, supra, p 15. "No one will pretend that any slave in the United States ever lost his liberty by this process, or that 'due process of law' could ever reduce any man to slavery, though it may deprive him of liberty by imprisonment for crime."

    The the Sixth Amendment guarantees the right to speedy trial, and to jury trial, rights from the English 'common law.' See references including:
  • The Wrongful Imprisonment/SpeedyTrial Act (1701);
  • Patton v United States, 281 US 276, 288; 50 S Ct 253; 74 L Ed 854 (1930);
  • Duncan v Louisiana, 391 US 145, 149; 88 S Ct 1444; 20 L Ed 2d 491 (1968).
    Slaves were being held without jury trial at all, much less 'speedy.'

    • The Eigth Amendment precludes "cruel and unusual punishment." Reference Deut. 15:2-3.

    The right to freedom is part of the "common law." The "common law" is mandated recognition by the Seventh Amendment.

    Thus, with these amendments, even if some words of the pre-Bill of Rights Constitution could somehow be construed as somehow pro-slavery (though no colonial charter, state constitution or law had established it, and the common law precluded it)—inconceivable in view of the multiple prohibitions of so many aspects of slavery, the Bill of Rights repeals and overrules any such prior words. Goodell, supra, p 89. So slavery, already illegal, remained illegal, as, in law,

    "Where rights are infringed [e.g., if the Constitution writers intended to suddenly constitutionalize and legalize slavery] . . . the legislative intention must be expressed with irresistible clearness to induce a court of justice to suppose a design to effect such objects." U.S. v Fisher, 6 US (2 Cranch) 358, 390; 2 L Ed 304, 314 (1804). Goodell, supra, p 574; Spooner, supra, pages 18 and 63; and Rep. Amos P. Granger, Speech (H. Rep., 4 April 1856), p 8.

    "As men whose intentions require no concealment generally employ the words which most directly and aptly express the ideas they intend to convey, the enlightened patriots who framed our Constitution, and the people who adopted it, must be understood to have employed words in their natural sense, and to have intended what they have said." Gibbons v Ogden, 22 US (9 Wheat) 1, 188; 6 L Ed 23, 68 (1824) (stating a "rule of construction of constitutional provisions").

    And, "a legislative act founded on a mistaken opinion of what was law, does not change the actual state of the law as to pre-existing cases." Talbot v Seaman, 5 US (1 Cranch) 1, 35; 5 L Ed 15 (1801). (Goodell, supra, p 570; and Spooner, supra, p 276).

    Soon came the case of Commonwealth v Holloway, 2 Serg & Rawle 305, 306 (1816), a habeas corpus case, applying the "irresistible clearness" principle to slavery [it had not been constitutionalized by words in the Constitution] and freeing an alleged slave.

    And see other "freedom is presumed" cases, e.g.,

    Fisher v Fisher, 2 NY Common Law Rpts (2 Johnson's Cases) 88 (Oct 1800);
    State v Lasselle, 1 Blackf 60 (Indiana, 1820);
    Flack v Cunningham, 1 Blackf 107 (Indiana, 1820);
    Le Grand v Darnall, 27 US (2 Pet) 664; 7 L Ed 555 (Jan 1829) (Taney as attorney);
    Stoutenborough v Haviland, 15 NJL 266 (Feb 1836);
    State v Dillahunt, 3 Del 551 (April 1840);
    Bailey v Cromwell, 4 Ill (3 Scam) 71 (July 1841);
    Kinney v Cook, 4 Ill 232 (Dec 1841);
    Hone v Ammons, 14 Ill 29 (Nov 1852);
    Rodney v Illinois Central Ry Co, 19 Ill 42 (1857);
    Miller v McQuerry, 17 Fed Cas 335 (#9,583); 5 McLean 469; 10 West Law J 528
    (D Ohio, Sep 1853); and
    Wood v Ward, 30 Fed Cas 476 (#17,965); 24 Int Rev Rec 180; 6 Am Law Rec 675
    (April 1878); 58 CJ 745, 749 n 44.

    Indeed, the mere application itself by habeas corpus to be discharged from servitude, is proof of the detention being unlawful, i.e., involuntary within the meaning of the prohibition of involuntary servitude, In re Clark, 1 Blackf 122; 12 Am Dec 213 (Indiana, Nov 1821).

    In another habeas corpus case, Sewall's Slaves, 3 Am Jurist 404 (Indiana, 1829), a Virginian, Mr. Sewall, was traveling through Indiana with slaves intending to move to Illinois, a State with anti-slavery laws. When the habeas corupus petition was applied, the Indiana court freed the slaves. (Sewall had pretended he was really moving to Missouri, a pro-slavery area; but the pretense came out in court!)

    Soon slavery's illegality was so well-established that in Commonwealth v Aves, 35 Mass 193, 209, supra, the issue was deemed "rather a matter of curiosity than of utility, it being agreed on all hands that, if not abolished before

  • [by the common law,
  • the 1641 Massachusetts ban,
  • Somerset, 20 How St Tr 1, supra, or
  • by the Declaration of Independence],

    • it was so [abolished] by the declaration of rights," Goodell, supra, p 111. See also Stewart, supra, pp 26-27.

    Thus, in 1850, during the abolitionist era, three years after Jefferson Davis (1808-1889) became a senator (D., Miss.) in 1847, his colleague, a prominent pro-slavery senator, Senator James M. Mason (Virginia), admitted against interest that no southern state had any constitution or "positive law" [meaning 'written' law] saying

    "that slavery is established in [any slave] State . . . it is impossible to [find such a clause] . . . for no such proof [law] can be produced . . . in any of the slave States." Cong Globe, 31st Cong, I Sess, App (19 August 1850), pp 1583-1584. Goodell, supra, p 571; Rogers, supra, p 106; Spooner, supra, p 280; and Sumner, supra, Barbarism of Slavery, p 140.

    Two analyses citing certain scholarly material elaborating this type abolitionist data are

    Spooner's Analysis Showing Slavery Unconstitutional from "Was Slavery Constitutional Before the Thirteenth Amendment?: Lysander Spooner's Theory of Interpretation," by Randy E. Barnett

    Thomas G. West, Vindicating the Founders, "Was the American Founding Unjust? The Case of Slavery."

    Stephen D. Foster Jr., "The Founding Liberals" (15 May 2012) ("The Founders . . . did believe that slavery had to end at some point and they knew that progress could not happen all at once, especially when they were just trying to keep the new nation afloat, but they intended us to progress [pursuant to the rule of law they inserted into the Constitution and Bill of Rights].")

    The language of the Thirteenth Amendment was “not the language of repeal; it does not acknowledge that slavery ever rested upon statute law, or upon right; but it denies its authority longer to exist [in practice].” McElvain v Mudd, 44 Ala 48; 4 Am Rep 106, (Jan 1870) (Dissent by J. Peters, ¶23).

    No State could have even conducted a vote to establish slavery. Voting to violate the Constitution is not allowed under the American Constitutional system. “The [effect of the Constitution is] to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One's right to life, liberty and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no election.” West Virginia State Board of Education v Barnette, 319 US 624, 638; 63 S Ct 1178; 87 L Ed 1628 (1943). See also like result in Romer v Evans, 517 US 620; 116 S Ct 1620; 134 L Ed 2d 855 (1996).

    And, as shown above, slavery also violated The Bill of Rights. "The Bills of Rights in the American Constitutions have not been drafted for the introduction of new law, but to secure old [already existing] principles against abrogation or violation; they are conservatory rather than reformatory." Weimer v Bunbury, 30 Mich 291; 1874 Mich. LEXIS 168 (1874).

    In 1837, James Birney was arrested for knowingly harboring a fugitive slave. He retained Salmon P. Chase as his defense attorney. The defense had three parts:
    • (a) slavery is unconstitutional, so

    • (b) Birney couldn't have harbored a slave (as it is a non-existent status in law) and

    • (c) certainly not "knowingly."
    The Ohio Supreme Court unanimously ruled in Birney's favor. Ohio v Birney, 8 Ohio 230 (1837). An earlier precedent to the same effect is Windsor v Jacob, 2 Tyler 192 (Vermont, Aug 1802).

    This type anti-slavery, pro-rights, decision helped fulfill Founding Fathers pro-liberty desires. For example, Thomas Jefferson favored "individual [rights] as against the states," says Alistair Cooke's America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973), p 150. Jefferson opposed governmental secrecy, e.g., at the Constitutional Convention ("so abominable a precedent"). He lacked others' fear of "the tyranny of majority opinion." Jefferson "pictured life in America as a long pastoral symphony, a continuing Utopia of chivalrous and learned rulers walking hand in hand with good, honest farmers in--a favorite phrase--"'perfect harmony,'" p 153. See also Thom Hartmann's "To Restore Democracy: First Abolish Corporate Personhood" (17 February 2007) (on Jefferson's opposition to monopolies).

    6. Kidnaping People Was Illegal Then, As Now

    Kidnaping people was illegal then as now, see numerous state precedents, for example:

    Lunsford v Coquillon, 14 Martin 401 (La, May 1824);
    Julia v McKinney, 3 Mo 270 (Oct 1833);
    Marie Louise v Marot, et al, 8 La (Curry) 475 (June 1835) and 9 La (Curry) 473 (May 1836);
    Nancy Jackson v Bulloch, 12 Conn 38 (June 1837);
    Com v Griffin, 42 Ky (3 B Mon) 208 (Fall 1842);
    Anderson v Thoroughgood, 5 Del 199 (June 1847);
    Taylor v Horsey, 5 Del 131 (April 1849); and
    State ex rel Savary v Caroline, 20 Alabama 19 (January 1852); 58 CJ 745, 747 n 19.

    There were also federal precedents against engaging in kidnaping (alias the 'slave trade'), involving both criminal penalties and forfeiture of the ship. See Supreme Court precedents such as

    The Merino, 22 US (9 Wheat) 391; 6 L Ed 118 (5 March 1824);
    U.S. v Gooding, 25 US (12 Wheat) 460; 6 L Ed 693 (16 March 1827);
    U.S. v Preston, 28 US (3 Pet) 57; 7 L Ed 601 (Jan 1830);
    U.S. v The Ship Garonne, 36 US (11 Pet) 73; 9 L Ed 527 (Jan 1837);
    U.S. v Morris, 39 US (14 Pet) 464; 10 L Ed 543 (Jan 1840); and
    The Amistad, 40 US (15 Pet) 518; 10 L Ed 826 (March 1841).

    See also lower federal court precedents such as

    U.S. v Smith, 27 F Cas 1158 (#16,332); Brunn Col Cas 82; 4 Day 121; NC Cas 81 (D Conn, 1809);
    U.S. v Andrews, 24 F Cas 815 (#14,454); Brunn Coll Cas 423; 5 City Hall Rec 120 (SD NY, 15 Sep 1820);
    U.S. v LaCoste, 26 F Cas 826 (#15,548); 2 Mason 129 (D Mass, Oct 1820);
    U.S. v Malebran, 26 F Cas 1145 (#15,711); Brunn Col Cas 426; 5 City Hall Rec 122 (D NY, 1820);
    U.S. v The Francis F. Johnson, 25 F Cas 1200 (#15,157a); 20 Niles Reg 137 (D SC, 6 April 1821);
    U.S. v Kennedy, 26 F Cas 762 (#15,525); 4 Wash CC 91 (D Penn, April 1821);
    U.S. v La Jeune Eugenie, 26 F Cas 832 (#15,551); 2 Mason 409 (D Mass, May 1822);
    Strohm v U.S., 23 F Cas 240 (#13,539); Taney 413 (D Md, April 1840);
    U.S. v Libby, 26 F Cas 928 (#15,597); 1 Woodb & M 221 (D Maine, May 1846) (has
    a detailed history of laws banning the slave trade);
    The Porpoise, 19 F Cas 1064 (#11,284); 2 Curt 307 (D Mass, May 1855);
    U.S. v Naylor, 27 F Cas 78 (#15,858); 13 Law Rep 449 (D NY, 19 Nov 1856);
    Charge to Grand Jury, 30 F Cas 1026 (#18,269a); 3 Phila (Pa) 527 (D Georgia, Nov 1859);
    U.S. v Gould, 25 F Cas 1375 (#15,239); 8 Am Law Reg 525 (SD Alabama, Spring 1860);
    U.S. v Haun, 26 Fed Cas 227 (#15,329); 8 Am Law Reg 663 (SD Alabama, 30 June 1860); and 58 CJ 745, 747 n 20 and n 23 (summary).

    Related cases upheld assisting slaves to escape to obtain freedom, e.g., Drayton v U.S., 7 F Cas #4,074; 1 Hayw & H 369 (D DC, 19 Feb 1849) (dismissing a larceny charge against a person helping a slave escape on a ship, as such aid is not a conversion to one's own use); and State v Hawkins, 8 Port (Ala) 461; 33 Am Dec 294 (Jan 1839); 58 CJ 745, 751 n 72[b] (likewise dismissing a larceny charge).

    It was separately illegal, as per U.S. anti-piracy law, to be engaged in the business of the slave trade, or even being employed on such a voyage, The Alexander, 1 F Cas 362 (#165); 3 Mason 175 (CA Mass, May 1823); Charge to Grand Jury, 30 F Cas 1026 (#18,269a); 3 Phila (Pa) 527 (D Georgia, Nov 1859); and 58 CJ 745, 747 n 21.

    It was separately illegal to outfit vessels for the slave trade,

    The Caroline, 5 F Cas 90 (#2,418); 1 Brock 384 (D Virginia, Nov 1819);
    Strohm v U.S., 23 F Cas 240 (#13,539); Taney 413 (D Md, April 1840);
    U.S. v The Catherine, 25 F Cas 332 (#14,755); 2 Paine 721; 3 Law Rep 255 (NY, 1840);
    U.S. v The Augusta, 24 F Cas 892 (#14,477) (SD NY, Sep 1861);
    U.S. v Nathaniel Gordon, 25 F Cas 1364 (#15,231); 5 Blatchf 18 (SD NY, 8 and 30 Nov 1861)
    (death sentence); and
    58 CJ 745, 747 n 22 (summary).

    Criminal penalties or forfeitures were imposed even if the ship captain did not know or believe the people on board were slaves, The Porpoise, 19 F Cas 1064 (#11,284); 2 Curt 307 (CA Mass, May 1855). A vessel became liable to forfeiture if built or equipped in the United States for use in transporting slaves from country to country, as soon as the unlawful process began, whether completed or not, Charge to Grand Jury, 30 F Cas 1026 (#18,269a); 3 Phila (Pa) 527 (D Georgia, Nov 1859).

    If slavery be illegal it is unconstitutional, of course. If it was illegal when the Constitution was adopted, then the Constitution can contain no legal recognition of it—no binding compromise with it. The Constitution could not have recognized as legal what did not legally exist—could not have formed any valid compromise with it. See Lewis Tappan, et al., Proceedings of Convention (New York, 1855), p 15.

    United States v Amy, 24 F Cas 792 (CCD Va, 1859) (Taney as judge), denied slaver property rights in a slave, vis-a-vis the U.S. government. The case denied coverage of the slaveholder by the Fifth Amendment 'taking' concept. The federal government had prosecuted a a slave for stealing mail. The slaveholder alleged a property right! and that allowing the successful prosecution would cause him to lose the alleged right! Since there was no such right, the slaveholder clearly could not lose the right, due to the successful federal prosecution.

    People own themselves. Any Fifth Amendment
    'taking' violates their rights, not the taker's -
    kidnapper's - man-stealer's!
    Parker Pillsbury, Acts of Anti-Slavery Apostles, p 72
    Edward Rogers, Slavery Illegality, p 93
    John Rankin, Letters on Slavery, p 99
    Charles Sumner, Barbarism of Slavery, pp 131-132

    In Groves v Slaughter, 40 US (15 Pet) 449; 10 L Ed 1060 (1842), the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Mississippi's ban on importing slaves. The Mississippi Supreme Court was likewise doing so, in, e.g., Green v Robinson, 5 How 80, 99-109; 4 Miss Annot Ed 28 (Dec 1840); Cowen v Boyce, 5 How 769; 4 Miss Annot Ed 310 (Jan 1841); and Wooten v Miller, 7 S & M 380; 8 Miss Annot Ed 139 (Nov 1846).

    These anti-slavery court precedents were all published--in permanent volumes for permanent retention by libaries. That is how we can know of them! If you think it is laborious just to read the lists of precedents cited here, think of going to your local law library, locating each volume and case, and reading them all! There are quite a number of them, you'll agree!

    A 1640's precedent on returning slaves as kidnaping victims is cited in Commonwealth v Aves, 35 Mass 193, 208 (1836), in its discussion of the history of colonial law.

    "[B]y the constitution and laws of this Commonwealth, before the adoption of the constitution of the United States, in 1789, slavery was abolished, as being contrary to the provisions of the declaration of rights . . . . By a very early colonial ordinance, (1641), it was ordered, that there should be no bond slavery, villenage, or captivity . . .

    "And by an act a few years after, (1646,) manifestly alluding to some transaction then recent, the general court [legislature] . . . to bear witness against the heinous and crying sin of manstealing, &c., ordered that certain negroes be sent back to their native country (Guinea) . . . . See Ancient Charters, &c., 52, c. 12, § 2, 3."

    It quoted the declaration of rights, "'All men are born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights. . . .' It would be difficult to select words more precisely adapted to the abolition of negro slavery. . . . That [it] was broad enough in its terms to embrace negroes, and that it was intended by the framers of the constitution to embrace them, is proved by the earliest contemporaneous construction, by an unbroken series of judicial decisions, and by a uniform practice from the adoption of the constitution to the present time. The whole tenor of our policy, of our legislation and jurisprudence, from that time to the present, has been consistent with this construction, and with no other."

    The court further said "the law of this State is analogous to the law of England, in this respect; that . . . slavery is considered as unlawful and inadmissible in both . . . because contrary to natural right and to laws designed for the security of personal liberty." (Pp 210-211).

    Slavery was not based on law, but on force (kidnaping/rapine/conquest). The Supreme Court, in the case of The Antelope, 23 US (10 Wheat) 66, 120; 6 L Ed 268, 281 (18 March 1825), so stated:

    "That it [slavery] is contrary to the law of nature will scarcely be denied. That every-man has a natural right to the fruits of his own labor, is generally admitted; and that no other person can rightfully deprive him of those fruits, and appropriate them against his will, seems to be the necessary result of this admission. . . . Slavery, then, has its origin in force. . . ."
    For background on the force and violence involved, see, e.g.,
  • Rev. John Rankin, Letters on American Slavery (Ohio, 1823; Boston: Garrison & Knapp, 1833; Newburyport: Charles Whipple, 1837; Isaac Knapp, 5th ed., 1839; and NUP, 1970), p 99, saying slavery "originated in violence and theft, and is perpetuated by means equally unjust as those by which it had its origin."
  • Walter Rodney, Ph.D., How Europe Underdeveloped [Exploited] Africa (Howard Univ Press, November 1981) (Chapter 3 Excerpt on African resistance to slavery, but overwhelmed by aggressive European firepower)
  • "The Ravaging of Africa - Corporate Plunder Pt 1" (Youtube Video)
  • Prof. Marable Manning, How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America (1983)
  • "Colonialism in 10 Minutes: The Scramble For Africa" (Video)
  • "Great African Civilizations Destroyed by Europeans"
    As the world's worst court [says Tiffany, supra, pp 49-50], the Supreme Court did not decide for the 'rule of law,' AGAINST that 'practice,' but FOR the practice, contrary to its duty, supra, and falsified as well, citing war as a basis for slavery, contrary to information in the Somerset case briefing, p 28.
    "And this, you understand, in lands where rapine and conquest, class-tyranny and priestly domination have been the custom since the dawn of history; in which no property-right can possibly trace back to any other basis than force," says Upton B. Sinclair, The Profits Of Religion (1917), in § 3.17, Das Centrum.
    Even pro-slavery apologists such as theologians George Junkin and Rice admitted "that American slavery ought never to have existed," says Rev. John G. Fee, An Anti-Slavery Manual (New York: William Harned, 1851), pp 86-87.

    • To the same effect, see also Alvan Stewart, Legal Argument, supra, p 27 (citing this Supreme Court decision), and p 48 (citing the fact that all U.S. slaves had been stolen from themselves).

    7. Why Secession Occurred

    Using "force" to kidnap people into slavery is, abolitionists said, a sin, i.e., immoral, and had never been legal here. So how could it be occurring? Everyone, including Southern legislators and congressmen, knew the information herein.

    For example, secessionist James A. Bayard said at the time of secession,

    "The sole cause of the existing disunion excitement which is about to break up the government is the . . . antislavery . . . sentiment." (Cited in Allan Nevins, The Emergence of Lincoln, vol II [New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1950], section on secession in the Lower South, pp. 328-335.)
    "I have, senators, believed from the first that the [First Amendment freedom of speech and press] agitation of the subject of slavery would, if not prevented by some [unconstitutional] timely and effective measure, end [result as people became aware of slavery's characteristics] in disunion."—South Carolina Senator John C. Calhoun, 4 March 1850.

    Here is another example. Alexander H. Stephens, the Vice-President of the Confederacy, knew the information herein stated. He so stated shortly after the secession leading to the Confederacy. He admitted that the South DISAGREED with the views of the Founding Fathers and Constitution about slavery being a sin and violation of natural rights as the above references discuss. On Thursday, 21 March 1861, in his "Cornerstone Speech" (extract below), he specifically so stated in a public and published analysis, concerning the issue of:

    “. . . African slavery as it exists among us . . . . This was the immediate cause of the late rupture [secession] and present revolution.

    “[Thomas] Jefferson, in his forecast [prediction of possible U.S. history], had anticipated this [disunionism over slavery], as the 'rock upon which the old Union would split.' He was right.

    “What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact [March 1861, secession in effect]. But whether he [Jefferson] fully comprehended . . . may be doubted.”

    “The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution were,

    • [1] that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature [natural/inalienable right as referenced above];

    • [2] that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. . . . the general opinion of the men of that day was, that, somehow or other, in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away . . . .”

    “This was an error. . . . and the idea of a government built upon it. . . . Our new government [the Confederate States of America] is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid – its cornerstone rests – upon the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man. That slavery – subordination to the superior [white] race – is his natural and moral condition. This – our new [Confederate] government – is the first in the history of the world based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.. . . . It [Slavery] is, indeed, in conformity with the Creator. It is not for us to inquire into the wisdom of His ordinances or to question them.”—Reprinted by Frank Moore (ed.), The Rebellion Record: A Diary of American Events, 11 vol (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1868), Vol. I, pp 44-49.

    Seceding states South Carolina, Mississippi, Georgia, and Texas in their secession resolutions emphasized slavery as THE cause, says Curtis F, in "Absolute Proof the Civil War Was About Slavery" (3 November 12013).
    President Jefferson Davis said likewise, emphasizing slavery as the underlying factor, in his Message to Congress (29 April 1861)—Moore, supra, pp 166-175.
    Emphasis on slavery as THE issue, was cited by the Charleston, SC Mercury (11 Oct 1860); and the New Orleans, LA Bee (14 Dec 1860).
    Slavery as the cause was cited by Southern secession documents, the voting process for secession, and the members of Congress of resigned to join the Confederacy. The seceders wrote the South's Constitution to specifically uphold slavery, i.e., worded it unlike the U.S. Constitution. For details, see David Barton, "Confronting Civil War Revisionism: Why The South Went to War" (December 2008).
    General Ulysses S. Grant concurred in Southerners' analysis of slavery as causing the War. “The cause of the great War of the Rebellion against the United States will have to be attributed to slavery.”—Personal Memoirs (New York: C.L. Webster & Co, 1885-1886), Vol. II, Chapter XXI, Conclusion, first sentence.
    Pro-slavery Reverend Dr. Smythe of Charleston said "The war is a war against slavery, and is therefore treasonable rebellion against the Word, Providence and Government of God." [Abolitionists believed the opposite, that the War and Emancipation Proclamation were enforcement actions, the extreme opposite of rebellion.]
    "We went to war on account of the thing we quarreled with the North about. I never heard of any other cause of quarrel than slavery. Men fight from sentiment. After the fight is over they invent some fanciful theory on which they imagine that they fought.'' -- Confederate Col. John Mosby, cited by Leonard Pitts, Jr., "The South fought to keep slavery, period" (Miami Herald, 14 April 2010), and: "Confederate 'President'' Jefferson Davis once flatly cited 'the labor of African slaves' as the cause of the rebellion."

    What was the problem? There are several aspects to the answer. For example, there was plain disagreement with the 'slavery is sin' and 'slavery violates natural right' beliefs of Northerners and religious people. So the issue is, why did they disagree? Moral people understand that they personally do not want to be kidnapped, nor their spouses or children. So in principle, they should understand this in others!

    While the South pretended to be the "Bible-Belt," Southrons in fact directly violated basic Bible principles:
  • They placed their own traditions above Bible laws, contrary to Bible direction, e.g., Matthew 15:2-3, 6, and Mark 7: 8-9, 13.
  • They focused on exceptions and labels, contrary to Bible principles to deal with the statistical norm, the long-term norm, the substance, e.g., Proverb 22:13, Psalm 73:17, Matthew 7:3-5, Luke 6:41-42.
  • They focused on actual or perceived Northerner flaws, and though claiming to be Bible authorities, the "Bible-Belt," disregarded Bible retribution-process principles and examples, e.g., Exodus 12:29-30,   Exodus 14:24-28,   Leviticus 26:14-39,   Numbers 14:41-45,   Deuteronomy 28:15-68,   Judges 3:12-13,   Judges 4:1-2,   2 Kings 15:17-20,   Jeremiah 34:17,   2 Kings 24:2,   Habukkuk 1-4,   Matthew 23:35, etc.
  • With respect to the Civil War, Southrons ever-after whined, and still whine, about the alleged tariff issue! about Lincoln's alleged abuses of their rights! his allegedly unconstitutional acts! and about Northern racists and drunks having fought them! -- anything and everything but the real issue, slavery and their obsession to expand it to more and more people. On the tariff and similiar issues, such whiny Southrons carefully avoid mention of the fact of their near 100% control over the federal government 1793-1861!
  • Such whining Southrons disregard the basic human fact that even racists and drunks will fight to protect themselves and their women, a very pertinent fact in view of Southerners' expansionist policy including to expand slavery to whites and white women.
    And see Charles Nordhoff (1830-1901), Secession is Rebellion: Rebellion Cannot Succeed!: The Union is Indissoluble Except by Consent of All the States: An Open Letter to the Rev. A. A. Lipscomb (New York: Baker & Godwin, 1860). Secessionist Southrons were rebelling, while pretending to be the "Bible Belt," even though well knowing that the Bible teaches, "rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft," 1 Samuel 15:23, verifying evilness, Proverbs 17:11, and warranting execution, Exodus 22:18.

    • What was the problem with Southern legislators? Here's an answer. Some Southern legislators were described as "a set of drunkards, gamblers, and whoremongers," words by abolitionist Daniel Worth cited by Prof. Clement Eaton, The Freedom-of-Thought Struggle in the Old South (Duke Univ Press, 1940, and New York: Harper & Row, 1964), p 140.

    (Daniel Worth, supra, would likely deem his words still a good description of some Southern legislators who still disrespect rights, indeed, aid and abet rat poisoning cigarettes so as to kill Yankees and blacks in retaliation for the North having won the Civil War and freed the slaves.)

    "When the elections for Burgesses [representatives] were held, the planters [e.g., of tobacco] were usually the overwhelming choice of the voters," says Alistair Cooke's America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973), p 68. "The . . . social types who were plantation owners, and therefore generally Burgesses [representatives], was always a shock to the visiting English, one of whom made the sniffy comment, in 1662, that you couldn't expect much wisdom from the Burgesses [politicians], for "they are usually such as were our servants thither, and though by time and industry they may have attained competent estates [money], yet by their poor and mean education, they are unskillful in the judging of [political matters]," pp 68-69.

    For politicians, content is a mere 10%!! Non-verbal communication is 60%! with vocal tonality, pitch, and pauses 30%. Recall is a mere 25%. Reference: Stanley Zareff, "Literally Speaking," 14 Worth (#1) 46-48 (January 2005).

    Here is another answer: “The readiness with which Southern [politicians] prefer the most false and audacious claims . . . exhibits a state of society in which truth and honor are but little respected.”—Lewis Tappan, Address to the Non-slaveholders of the South: on The Social and Political Evils of Slavery (New York: S.W. Benedict, 1843), p 36. Of course they'd lie!

    Walt Whitman deemed "seven-eighths of [such politicans] the meanest kind of bawling and blowing officeholders, office-seekers, pimps, malignants, conspirators, murderers, fancy-men, custom-house clerks, contracts, kept-editors, spaniels well train'd to carry and fetch, jobbers, infidels, disunionists, terrorists, mail riflers, slave-catchers, pushers of slavery, creatures of the President, creatures of would-be Presidents, spies, bribers, compromisers, lobbyists, spongers, ruin'd sports, expell'd gamblers, policy-backers, monte-dealers, duellists, carriers of conceal'd weapons, deaf men, pimpled men, scarred inside with vile disease, gaudy outside with gold chains made from the people's money and harlots' money twisted together; crawling, serpentine men, the lousy combinings and born freedom-sellers of the earth." Source: Prof. Joseph R. Conlin, The American Past: A Survey of American History (Vol I, to 1877), 6th ed. (Fort Worth: Harcourt College Pubs, 2001), p 414.

    Note pertinent medical / analytical findings on politicians' widespread mental abnormality:

  • World Health Organization, “Wide research needed to solve the problems of mental illness,” World Mental Health, Vol 12, pages 138-141 (WHO Press Release, October 1960) says that “people with psychopathic make-up often become leaders” / “les postes de commandement sont souvent assumés par des personnes à tendances psychopathiques”

  • Robert Payne, The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler (New York: Praeger Pub, 1975), says at p xi, “The psychopath in a position of supreme power is almost a common-place.”

  • Abnormal Psychology and Modern Life, 5th ed (Scott, Foresman & Co, 1976), p 10, by James Covington Coleman, Ph.D., summarizes the 1960 WHO data thus: “individuals with psychopathic personality makeup, who tend to exploit power for selfish purposes and have little concern for ethical values or social progress, often become leaders”;

  • Prof. Michael P. Ghiglieri, Ph.D., Dark Side of Man (Reading, MA.: Perseus Books, 1999), says at p 230, “. . . madmen—and slightly mad men—still rise to lead nations”; and

  • “Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition,” by John T. Jost, Jack Glaser, Arie W. Kruglanski, Frank J. Sulloway, 129 Psychological Bulletin (#2) 339-375 (July 2003), cites politician symptoms.

  • “The Authoritarians," by Robert Altemeyer (Univ of Manitoba, 2006) (concerns such individuals as "very aggressive . . . hostile . . . almost totally uninfluenced by reasoning and evidence . . . dogmatic . . . hypocrites, from top to bottom . . . two-faced, and . . . one face never notices the other [and] give the flimsiest of excuses and even outright lies about things they’ve done wrong [and] the rank-and-file believe them?")

  • H.L. Mencken says, “People constantly speak of 'the government' doing this or that, as they might speak of God doing it. But the government is really nothing but a group of men, and usually they are very inferior men.”

  • Aspects of politican mental disorder include but are not limited to abulia, dyscalculia, dyslexia, fragmentation, confabulation, delusions including of grandeur, time disorientation, unresponsiveness to normal stimuli, and anosognosia.

    • A method by which such depraved people attained such disproportionate influence in America, enabling their obstructing the Constitution, was this. The South was able to install in office a disproportionate number of
  • Presidents
  • Representatives in Congress
  • Electors in the Electoral College.
    • Background on this situation is cited by, e.g.
  • Gerrit Smith, Letter (1839), p 26
  • Lewis Tappan, Address (1843), pp 50-52
  • Rev. William Goodell, Slavery and Anti-Slavery (1852), p 224
  • Abraham Lincoln, Peoria Speech (1854), pp 233-234
  • Sen. Charles Sumner, Barbarism of Slavery (1860), p 230.

    • The result was the South's disproportionate control in the courts, the civil service, and the military. Abolitionist Senator and Secretary of State William H. Seward "analyzed the civil service of the national government and could descry [identify] not a single person . . . who was 'false to the slave holding interest' [i.e., respected the rights herein cited]," say Charles A. and Mary R. Beard, The Rise of American Civilization, II (NY: The Macmillan Co, 1927), p 8.   "It has come to this, that no law can be passed, no appointment made, no contract given out, but the interest of Slavery must first be consulted," said Rep. Amos P. Granger, "State Sovereignty — The Constitution — Slavery" (17 February 1859), p 8.   "Our Civil Service was becoming a system of political prostitution. Roguery and plunder . . . had steadily crept into the management of public affairs." See Prof. Kenneth M. Stampp, The Era of Reconstruction (NY: Random House, 1965), p 191.

    Such politicians were aided and abetted by depraved clergymen.

    Southrons did not respect education, see background and examples 1, 2, 3, and 4. Southrons deemed educated people capable of detecting lies, inconsistencies, politician fabrications, etc., to be “elite.” This Southron politician attitude continues to present, e.g., by George W. Bush (18 April 2004).

    Such politicians deem that there are enough non-elite ("idiots") who will believe anything they say, to keep being elected. Audacious, pro-falsehood politicans rely on significant numbers of uninformed people, who pay little heed to events and are essentially unaware of rebuttals and alternate views, to therefore believe only such politican's claims, regardless of how blatantly false.

    And on Constitutional Law matters (despite slavery being so clearly unconstitutional), the typically uneducated Southron would believe their politican words over against and instead of the clear words of the Constitution itself! This ignorance continues to present, among "unreconstructed" Southrons.

    Note explanatory background data by the

  • World Health Organization, “Wide research needed to solve the problems of mental illness,” 12 World Mental Health 138-141 (WHO Press Release, October 1960) (“people with psychopathic make-up often become leaders” / “les postes de commandement sont souvent assumés par des personnes à tendances psychopathiques”) (additionally, such psychopaths are supported by vast numbers!!)

  • Abnormal Psychology and Modern Life, 5th ed (Scott, Foresman & Co, 1976), p 10, by James C. Coleman, Ph.D. (summarizes pertinent 1960 data thus: “individuals with psychopathic personality makeup, who tend to exploit power for selfish purposes and have little concern for ethical values or social progress, often become leaders”) (again, such psychopaths are supported by vast numbers!!);

  • “Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition,” by John T. Jost, Jack Glaser, Arie W. Kruglanski, Frank J. Sulloway, 129 Psychological Bulletin (#2) 339-375 (July 2003) (cites conservative politician symptoms pursuant to multiple studies);

  • Polybius [205 B.C. - 125 B.C.], “none but unprincipled and beastly men in society assume the mastery over their fellows. . . .” (Volume 4). [See context by E. C. Rogers, supra, p 17].

  • Examples of Such Politicians' Manipulations, e.g., on Abortion (Pretending To Oppose It While Actually Helping Cause It By Supporting Tobacco; By Never Ending It, They Keep The Uneducated Voting For Them Indefinitely);

  • Unthinking of the Uneducated (for background, see The New Yorker (30 August 2004);

  • Medical History Site (Tobacco-caused-Brain-Damage) (significant in view of the slavery-tobacco link.

    • The pro-slavery legislators and congressmen had the data and references to know slavery to be unconstitutional. But numbers of their constituents enjoyed family destroying activities such as rape, forced prostitution, torture.

    Examples
    Axe-Murder Concubines-for-Clergy Eye-Gouging Racking and Salting
    Skinning Slave-Driving Torture-Murder Whip-to-Death

    They [Southern politicians] already for a century, had a record of passing pro-rape laws. Many Southern clergy favored this, as shown by the evidence from Rev. Stephen S. Foster, Brotherhood of Thieves (New-London: William Bolles Pub, 1843), pp 71-73.

    So following that pattern was continued in 1850. That year, they (with Northern congressional accomplices) passed a law (the “Fugitive Slave Act”—something NOT provided for by the Constitution, Goodell, supra, pp 227-233, and Lewis Tappan, The Fugitive Slave Bill: Its History and Unconstitutionality (New York: William Harned, 1850), pp 17-28, in essence abolishing the Constitutional right to trial by jury for one group of accused persons (i.e., persons accused of being a slave, a status without moral and constitutional basis) and in essence abolishing habeas corpus notwithstanding the Constitution's Article I § 9 clause for habeas corpus—the right long used by alleged slaves to become freed, as the above-cited court cases show.

    Click here for the FSA Text.

    Southern congressmen realized that honest, moral Northern juries would be a threat to their continuing criminal enterprise. Northern juries would foreseeably be a slavers' nightmare (fully informed jurors), blow the whistle, deem slavery illegal (as so many courts had already done), vote accused slaves "not guilty," and find slave-catchers guilty of kidnaping. The southern "drunkards, gamblers, whoremonger, and asses" and their Northern accessories (during Pres. Millard Fillmore's administration) in the 1850 Congress that passed the "Fugitive Slave Act" banned Northern jury review as they knew slavery was illegal and unconstitutional. As noted above, Senator Mason admitted against interest why slavers feared Northern juries:

    "A trial by jury necessarily carries with it a trial of the whole right, and a trial of the right to service will be gone into . . . in determining upon any other fact."

    There was no "right" to service by slaves. No slave had signed a contract to serve! (This is in contrast to indentured servants, who had signed such contracts). See, e.g.,
  • Lysander Spooner, Unconstitutionality of Slavery (Boston: B. Marsh, 1845, 3rd ed, 1860), pp 67-73
  • Benjamin Shaw, Illegality of Slavery (Boston: 1846), pp 10-11
  • Lewis Tappan, The Fugitive Slave Bill: Its History and Unconstitutionality (New York: Wm. Harned, 1850), pp 25-26.

    • So, knowing slavery to be unconstitutional, Sen. James M. Mason admitted that Southern fear of a jury trial arose as slavers would be required to show evidence

    "that slavery is [by law] established in the State from which the fugitive has absconded.

    "Now, this very thing, in a recent case in the city of New York, was required by one of the judges of that State."

    "In that case, the judge of the State court . . . went so far as to say that the only mode of proving it was by reference to the statute book. . . . it is impossible to comply . . . for no such proof [law] can be produced . . . in any of the slave States." Cong Globe, 31st Cong, I Sess, App, pp 1583-1584 (19 Aug 1850).

    Sen. James M. Mason

    "said distinctly [p 1589] that he was not willing the trust the question with the Courts in the free states. . . Hence . . . the peculiar structure of the infamous Fugitive Slave bill, allowing no litigation, no counter evidence, no habeas corpus, no 'due process of law.' If slavery were believed by the slave-holders to be legal, would they fear to have the question litigated in the Courts?" Goodell, supra, p 571.

    New York case law, including the earlier case alluded to, applied the above-cited "natural law" concepts against slavery. See People ex rel. Napoleon v Lemmon, 5 Sand SCR 681; 7 N Y Super 681 (12 Nov 1852) aff'd 26 Barb 270, 287-289 (30 Dec 1857) aff'd 20 NY 562; 1860 WL 7815 (March 1860). The decision
  • followed the principle cited in 1849 by Rep. Horace Mann, Speech, pp 30-31

  • cited a number of anti-slavery court precedents including The French Slave Case, 13 Causes Célèbres 49 (1738); Somerset v Stewart, 20 Howell's State Trials 1 (1772); Sewall's Slaves, 3 Am Jurist 404 (Indiana, 1829); and Commonwealth v Aves, 35 Mass 193 (1836), supra.

    • Explanation for citing a French case: French policy stated in 1571, affirmed in 1607, said: "All persons are free in this kingdom; as soon as a slave has reached these frontiers and becomes baptized, he is free."
    This case had been cited in briefing in Somerset v Stewart, 20 Howell's 1, 12 (1772).

    Sen. Mason, in denouncing Northern courts, disregarded a precedent from his own state of Virginia, DeLacy, Vice Consul v Antoine, 34 Va (7 Leigh) 438 (April 1836) refusing a claim to a slave!

    The Constitution's the Sixth Amendment, guarantees the right to jury trial. This right is one of the ancient 'rights of Englishmen,' part of the common law:

    Patton v United States, 281 US 276, 288; 50 S Ct 253; 74 L Ed 854 (1930)
    Duncan v Louisiana, 391 US 145, 149; 88 S Ct 1444; 20 L Ed 2d 491 (1968)

    Here is a reprint of key aspects of the position of the government of Massachusetts in Commonwealth v Aves, 35 Mass (18 Pick) 193, 202-203 (1836):

    "[N]o people are bound to enforce or hold valid in their courts of justice, any contract or law, which offends their morals, or contravenes their policy, or violates a public law, or offers a pernicious example. . . . Slavery is within all these. . . . It is offensive to morals. The testimony of ethical writers against slavery is unanimous and decisive. And some of the most eminent statesmen of the South, as Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, William Pinckney, have concurred with the moralist . . . . Slavery sets before our citizens a pernicious and detestable example."

    The position paper also refuted the notion that the North was like the South, in having had slavery. Not so, for example, "Massachusetts has known nothing like the slave system . . . The slavery which was abolished here nearly sixty years ago [before 1836] resembled little more than in name the . . . South [system]. It was far milder than the ancient English villenage [during Middle Ages feudalism], and differed from apprenticeship only its duration."

    Sen. Charles Sumner

    As the common law applied throughout the nation, freedom was a national principle, said scholar Charles Sumner, in

  • "Freedom National, Slavery Sectional," Congressional Globe, 32th Cong, 1st Sess, App, 26 Aug 1852, pp 1102-1114;

  • "The Landmark of Freedom," Cong Globe, 33d Cong, 2d Sess, 21 Feb 1854, p 11; and

  • "The Barbarism of Slavery," Cong Globe, 36th Cong, 1st Sess, 4 June 1860, at pp 125 / 2591 and 234 / 2603.

    • Sen. Sumner well described the anti-slavery viewpoint during the era of the Founding Fathers, and the subsequent moral deterioration.

  • "Slavery had no national flavor, existed nowhere on the national territory, beneath the national flag, but was openly condemned by Nation, Church, Colleges, and Literature of the time."

  • "A moral deterioration occurred in the South."

  • "The generous sentiments which filled the early patriots, giving to them historic grandeur, gradually lost their power."

  • So the nation became "not now what it was in the beginning," "it has shrunk in character."
    "Since Washington and Jefferson, in fact ever since [Alexis] de Tocqueville wrote his well-known [1835] book on America, American mores have been deeply altered. . . . the intellectual and moral standards of the nation have [seriously] lowered, principally in political circles. Men who enjoyed some authority on account of their knowledge, their moral character or their fortune, slowly withdrew from public life, disgusted with electoral struggles, repulsed by venality, and frightened by a violent, passionate press," says Lt. Col. Camille Ferri-Pisani, Lettres sur les États-Unis d'Amérique (1862) transl. by Prof. Georges J. Joyaux (1959).

    • For more on the Founders' views, then being undermined and even denied by pro-slavery advocates such as Senators Stephen Douglas and Henry Clay, see Gerrit Smith, Letter to Henry Clay (1839), pp 17-18; and Abraham Lincoln, "Cooper Union Speech" (27 February 1860).

    As the national moral deterioration occurred, Southern politicians passed 'slave codes.' These were unconstitutional. When ". . . the States have made available to [private] individuals the full coercive power of government to deny" other individuals their rights, that is unconstitutional. Shelley v Kraemer, McGhee v Sipes, 334 US 1, 19; 68 S Ct 836; 92 L Ed 1161 (1948).

    Thomas Jefferson had opposed such governmental misconduct in his Notes on Virginia (1797), p 298. For description of slave codes, see Charles Sumner, Barbarism (1860), pp 129-142; and Harriet B. Stowe, Key (1853), pp 76-80 and 107-109.

    We must distinguish form and substance. Not just anything passed by legislators that has the form of a law, is in fact a law. To be a law, an enactment must be constitutional, i.e., within the actual de jure authority of the Legislature. This condition precedent fact is well settled.
    "All laws which are repugnant to the Constitution are null and void." Marbury v Madison, 5 US (2 Cranch) 137, 174, 176; 2 LE 60 (1803).
    "Where rights secured by the Constitution are involved, there can be no rule making or legislation which would abrogate them." Miranda v Arizona, 384 US 436, 491; 86 S Ct 1602; 16 L Ed 2d 694 (1966).
    "An unconstitutional act is not law; it confers no rights; it imposes no duties; affords no protection; creates no office. It is in legal contemplation, as inoperative as though it had never been passed." Norton v Shelby County, Tennessee, 118 US 425, 442; 6 S Ct 1121; 30 L Ed 178 (1886); Wuebker v James, 58 NYS2d 671, 677 (1944).
    "The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One's right to life, liberty and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no election." West Virginia State Board of Education v Barnette, 319 US 624, 638; 63 S Ct 1178; 87 L Ed 1628 (1943). Compare Romer v Evans, 517 US 620; 116 S Ct 1620; 134 L Ed 2d 855 (1996). The whole idea of the "Bill of Rights" is to forbid politicians to even vote on taking away peoples' rights.
    Judges must obey and enforce the constitution and laws themselves, e.g., Matter of Hague, 412 Mich 532; 315 NW2d 524 (1982); Holman v Athens Empire Laundry, 149 Ga 345; 100 SE 207; 6 ALR 1564, 1574-5 (Ga, 1919) ("Neither the opposite party nor the public has the right, legal or equitable, to invade the clear legal rights of another. . . . final settlement of . . . rights does not lie in the broad discretion of the chancellor [court], but in the clear legal and equitable rules which bind the chancellor himself.") Judges must follow the law.
    Unconstitutional enactments are treated as though they had never existed, see examples in one state alone: Bonnett v Vallier, 136 Wis 193, 200; 116 NW 885, 887 (1908); State ex rel Ballard v Goodland, 159 Wis 393, 395; 150 NW 488, 489 (1915); State ex rel Kleist v Donald, 164 Wis 545, 552-553; 160 NW 1067, 1070 (1917); State ex rel Martin v Zimmerman, 233 Wis 16, 21; 288 NW 454, 457 (1939); State ex rel Commissioners of Public Lands v Anderson, 56 Wis 2d 666, 672; 203 NW2d 84, 87 (1973); and Butzlaffer v Van Der Geest & Sons, Inc, Wis, 115 Wis 2d 539; 340 NW2d 742, 744-745 (1983).

    8. Slavery Extended To White Women

    During the Fugitive Slave Act debate in Congress, examples of white women being made slaves were cited by Northern Senators, in the Cong Globe, 31st Cong, I Sess, App, 1586 (19 Aug 1850). This is elaborated below after the following introduction to this aspect.

    Southern legislators, "drunkards, gamblers, whoremongers, and asses," had a vile motive. Once they had an entire class, blacks, outside the protection of law, via their giving illegal practice priority over law, they went another step. Once there is an unprotected class, everyone is in danger; just say that someone is in the unprotected class: presto, they have no rights. This would include, did include, whites.

    Newspaper advertisements for "runaway slaves" increasingly came to describe them in white coloration terms. By 1843, there was a term now no longer familiar, "white negro."

    "It is no less certain that white children have sometimes been kidnapped and sold into slavery."

    Example: "a boy . . . was stolen from his parents at seven years of age, immersed in a tan-vat to change his complexion, tatooed and sold, and, after a captivity of fourteen years, succeeded in escaping. The tanning process is not necessary now [1853], as a fair skin is no longer presumption against slavery. . . . That kidnappers may steal and sell white children at the South now, is evident. . . . "

    "When the mind once becomes familiarized with the process of slavery,--of enslaving first black, then Indian, then mulatto, then quadroon, and when blue eyes and golden hair are advertised as properties of negroes,—what protection will there be for poor white people, especially as under the present fugitive slave law they can be openly carried away without a jury trial?"

    "A Governor of South Carolina [George McDuffie] openly declared [in view of pro-worker slavery presentations by State clergy and Association], in 1835, that the laboring population of any country, bleached or unbleached, were a dangerous element, unless reduced to slavery. Will not this be the result then?"

    Quoted from Harriet Beecher Stowe, A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin (Boston: John P. Jewett & Co, 1853), Part III, Chapter IX, pp 183-184.

    "And it is known that, in some cases, white persons have been kidnapped who had no African blood in their veins," says Rev. William Goodell, Slavery and Anti-Slavery (1852), p 142.

    Ohio State University professor and historian Robert Davis, in his book, Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast, and Italy, 1500-1800 (2003), discusses large-scale white-slavery of a type that many immigrants to the U.S. knew about having happened in Europe, and wished to avoid happening to themselves here.

    See similar concern about white slavery by

  • Edward C. Rogers, Slavery Illegality in All Ages and Nations, supra, pp 51, and 60;
  • Lewis Tappan, Address (1843), p 17 citing Kentuckian Robert Wickliffe,
  • Dr. Nelson and Gerritt Smith, cited by Rev. Parker Pillsbury, Forlorn Church (1847), p 80;
  • Rep. Horace Mann, Slavery and the Slave-Trade (1849), p 45;
  • William I. Bowditch, "White Slavery in the United States" (New York, N.Y.: American Anti-Slavery Society, 1855);
  • Northern Senator statements in 1850; and
  • Senator Charles Sumner reference to slaver writings re both black and white slavery, in The Barbarism of Slavery (Washington, 1860), p 220.

    Theirs was a realistic analysis and fear of slavery being extended to whites, verified by other pro-slavery-of-whites-remarks at the time, and supported a century later by Michigan State University Prof. Russell B. Nye: "The [putative Southern] slave laws made no distinction in color; slavery was a matter of condition [kidnapping] only. If a person who was 99.9% white could, under the [putative Southern] law, be claimed as a slave, the next step was a logical one." See Nye, "The Slave Power Conspiracy, 1830-1860," 10 Science and Society 262-274 (Summer 1946); and Lewis Tappan, The Fugitive Slave Bill: Its History and Unconstitutionality (New York: William Harned, 1850), p 32.

    Rev. John G. Fee, Antislavery Manual (1851), p 150, cited slaver logic (lack of education = basis for refusing freedom) as applying to whites as well.

    Rev. Freeman, supported by Rev. Bishop Levi S. Ives, D. D., preached in 1836 for white slavery, cited by Deacon James G. Birney, Bulwarks (1840), p 40.

    The infamous segregation case, Homer Plessy v Judge John H. Ferguson, 163 US 537; 16 S Ct 1138; 41 L Ed 256 (18 May 1896) was to that effect, ordering Plessy, an octoroon, 7/8 white, treated as though black. Remember, this was only the third decade AFTER the Civil War, showing that the perverted Confederate mentality had already resumed control of the federal government.

           For perspective, see PBS' Race: The Power of an Illusion: Sorting People.

    • Southern Senators in Congress recognized clearly that having an unprotected class of people around, meant that they and their constituents could do another family-destroying activity, enslave white women. Abolitionists objected to their moral depravity.

    Southerners' actions to enslave white women became an issue during the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act debate, when southern senators were expressing their fear of honest Northern states' rights laws ("personal liberty laws") and courts giving jury trials to accused slaves. Southern Senators, on behalf of their constitutents, wanted to be able to enslave white women with impunity.

    They also feared arrests of slave-catchers under anti-kidnaping laws in Northern states. Such laws and others upholding habeas corpus for accused slaves, were called "personal liberty laws."

    Southern senators deemed southern and federal courts amenable to enslaving white women, but feared northern states' rights pro-liberty laws, and northern juries. Examples were cited in the debate, Cong Globe, 31st Cong, I Sess, App, 1586 (19 Aug 1850), but of course, only examples of white women succeeding in getting review.
    • Re one white girl, she was only rescued after being paraded on a New Orleans auction stand.

    • Re an Irish girl, she was kidnapped by a Maryland slaver in Pennsylvania. The slaver alleged that she was black, and a slave, so not entitled to habeas corpus review or jury trial. Fortunately for her, Pennsylvania state courts had more integrity than southern and federal courts, so ordered review anyway, despite the U.S. Supreme Court having told Pennsylvania courts not to do so in Prigg v Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, 41 US 539; 10 L Ed 1060 (January 1842). The result was, the white girl was released, but not until after the horror of having been falsely imprisoned during the proceedings, and the terror that she might be deprived of review, and forced to go with the pervert slaver.

    Significantly, southern senators treated the issue of enslaving white women with "mirth," changed the debate to jailing abolitionists who objected, and banned review by habeas corpus.

    See the article on white slavery, five years later, by William I. Bowditch, White Slavery in the United States (New York, N.Y.: American Anti-Slavery Society, 1855).

    Can you now see, perceive, understand, grasp,
    • why almost immediately thereafter, the Party of Lincoln was established?

    • why so many Northerners came to see Southern Senators and their constituents as sex perverts, degenerates, rapists, white-women kidnappers?

    • Can you understand this now? that slavery meant kidnapping white women? and invoking Southern "states' rights" notions to oppose Northern objections!?

    • Can you now understand why Southerners fought so very hard in the Civil War? to be able to keep on kidnaping white women with impunity? They were enraged that we 'damn Yankees' finally meant to stop their sex-pervert thrills.

    9. The Supreme Court Majority Knowingly Lied in the Dred Scott Case To Uphold Slavery

    As the data shows, black people accused of being slaves had repeatedly won in court pursuant to writs of habeas corpus and other legal principles. These cases were published. Abolitionists widely circulated them. Soon, pro-slavery southerners developed a horror of educating slaves, even banned teaching reading and writing, lest they learn their rights (a modern form of this is directed against anti-tobacco education).

    Along came the case of Dred Scott. Scott, a slave whose marriage was being obstructed by slavery, began trying to become free in 1834 by running away. Once he became able to litigate, he cited constitutional rights such as the Article I § 10 right to contract. He had married, and slavery violated that contract by separating him from his wife. Spooner, supra, p 98. Scott needed a writ of habeas corpus. With honest judges, that'd be no problem.

    In an earlier Mississippi case, Harry v Decker, 1 Miss (1 Walker) 36 (1818), "[t]he issues . . . were identical to those . . . in Dred Scott." That Mississippi Supreme Court decision "generally evidenced a sophisticated, sensitive appreciation of natural rights and the eminent dangers of state-ordained slavery [so had] granted the slaves [in that case] freedom."—Judge Michael P. Mills, "Slave Law in Mississippi from 1817-1861: Constitutions, Codes and Cases," 71 Mississippi Law J (#1) 153-239 (Fall 2001), p 179. And see Spooner, supra, p 200.

    Abolitionists concerned about the "Slave Power" feared that these moral decisions might be overruled. Such fear was expressed in, e.g., 1855, by Lewis Tappan, et al., Proceedings (June 1855), pp 34-35.

    Soon, in March 1857, to the horror of moral people, the Supreme Court (the world's worst court) under tobacco user Chief Justice Roger Taney (1777-1864) in 1857 refused to free Scott! Worse, Taney used what is now called "conservative" interpretation, i.e., citing history, practice, tradition, to narrow, limit, and obstruct the words of the Constitution. Taney pretended that there had never been any such anti-slavery precedents as you saw above! precedents that millions of Americans knew existed!!

    In the infamous case of Dred Scott v Sandford, 60 US 393, 407; 15 L Ed 691, 701 (1857), tobacco-user Taney (to appease slavers) hallucinated or knowingly lied that blacks

    "at the time of the Declaration of Independence, and . . . Constitution . . . had for more than a century before had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and . . . might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit . . . ."

    So he and the Court issued no writ of habeas corpus! They ignored, defied, flouted, disdained, cast aside centuries of law and precedents! For more background, see, e.g., Prof. Stanley I. Kutler, ed., The Dred Scott Decision: Law or Politics? (Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1967).


    Examples of Writings Taney Ignored
    Adams | Burnett | Chase | Fee | Garrison | Green | Horsley | Lay | Lincoln
    Mansfield | May | Mellen | Otis | Patton | Rankin | Rogers | Sandiford | Sewall
    Shaw | Smith | Spooner | Stewart | Stowe | Tappan | Tiffany | Tucker | Weld

    Chief Justice Taney lied.
  • Or perhaps he hallucinated; tobacco is an hallucinogen; early records show that some Indians used it for that very purpose, says Jan G. R. Elferink, "The Narcotic and Hallucinogenic Use of Tobacco in Pre-Columbian Central America," 7 Journal of Ethnopharmacology 111-122 (1983), and references therein).

  • Or perhaps Taney displayed psychopathology;

  • or criminality;

  • or brain-damage-induced impairment of linear reasoning;

  • or tobacco-intoxication;

  • or Alzheimer's-type memory loss,

  • or held the creationist or untermenschen viewpoint later termed "Nazi";

  • or rejected the Bible principles cited in Acts 2:44-45 and 4:32, 34-35 (details).

    Each of the above would meet the criteria of insane: unable “to appreciate the wrongfulness of his conduct,” and “to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law.”—People v Matulonis, 115 Mich App 263; 320 NW2d 238 (1982), as he was a tobacco user thus not “a person of normal sensibilities,” Aldridge v Saxey, 242 Oregon 238; 409 P2d 184 (1965).
    This would be another example of “how disease . . . has frequently changed the course of civilization.” See Frederick F. Cartwright (medical historian) and Michael D. Biddiss (history professor, Cambridge), Disease and History (New York: Dorset Press, 1972). See also Howard N. Simpson, Invisible Armies: The Impact of Disease on American History (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1980).

  • or exceeding constitutional authority;

  • or lack of impartiality by going outside the record evidence;

  • or "conservative" (actually Confederate) type reasoning using tradition and practice to override the rule of law (i.e., the opposite method than that cited by honest judges in, e.g., the 1903, 1932, 1979 and 1982 cases).

    • Regardless of which is the correct medical, psychiatric, behavioral, explanation of Taney's aberration from actual reality, the bottom-line fact is clear: his denying existence of well-established anti-slavery rights recorded by anti-slavery precedents, a list so lengthy that you, the reader, have likely had slow-going through this site, and related links, the volume of data and number of precedents Taney, et al., ignored is so large!

    Remember, slavers agreed with Taney's bizarre, psychotic disregard of reality! “It is difficult today to comprehend the psychosis of the southern mind. . . .” says Prof. Clement Eaton, The Freedom-of-Thought Struggle in the Old South (Duke Univ Press, 1940, and New York: Harper & Row, 1964), supra, p 384.

    Note standard psychiatric data, the “special [warped] laws of logic that the schizophrenic uses in support of his complexes or ideas, which to us seem delusional. . . . keep in mind that” what “seems absurd to us is expressed . . . by the patient . . . To him, his idea is rational, unquestionable, based on an absolute conviction of its truth. His unconscious motivation, a desire that cannot be controlled . . . obliges the patient to use unusual ways of thinking,” p. 65, Understanding and Helping the Schizophrenic (New York: Basic Books, 1979), by Dr. Silvano Arieti. At 46, “The patient does not attempt to demonstrate the validity of his ideas. He 'knows'; that is enough. His knowledge comes from an inner, unchallenged certitude that does not require demonstration. 'He knows.'”
    At 24, “To date, it has not been demonstrated that the schizophrenic can be taught or coerced or convinced not to have these thoughts,” says Schizophrenia: Symptoms, Causes, Treatments (New York: Norton, 1979), by Kayla Bernheim, Ph.D., and Richard Lewine, Ph.D.
    No evidence could persuade slavers! And they did indeed hold “special [warped] ideas of logic” by which to read into the Constitution their pre-conceived notions. See a summary of slavers' warped “laws of logic” in L. Spooner's book Unconstitutionality of Slavery, supra, pages 205-236. Spooner wrote a rebuttal of those warped “laws of logic.” But reasoned rebuttal was to no avail; the “psychotic” South could not “be taught or coerced or convinced.” Even in the 21st century, its “unreconstructed” adherents continue to hold the long-discredited notions!

    Everybody educated knew that since 1569, court precedents had found slavery illegal and unconstitutional in so many precedents that it is a burden to list examples of the cases and prohibitions! (It is taking you some time just to read this ultra-abbreviated summary!!) Taney went so far as to falsely say that Dred Scott (black) could not sue in federal court as he was not a citizen. The contrary, e.g., in Somerset v Stewart, 98 Eng Rep 509, supra, that a person need not even be a citizen to invoke habeas corpus, was widely known.

    Chief Justice Taney was recognized as immoral and a liar at the time, deserving eternal infamy (tantamount to the infamy of the 7 Dec 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor), said Rep. Thaddeus Stevens (1792-1868), "Reconstruction," Cong Globe, 39st Cong, I Sess, pp 72-75 (18 Dec 1865). (Full Text) (Taney and Hitler [a Taney disciple who followed the Taney precedent that some people have no rights to be respected] were alike, both had the same mental disorder.)

    For other references on the Dred Scott decision, see, e.g.,
  • Don E. Fehrenbacher, The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and Politics (1978)
  • Earl M. Maltz, Dred Scott and the Politics of Slavery (Lawrence: Univ. Press of Kansas, 2007) (Review)
    Pro-slavery apologists support the Dred Scott decision as correct interpretation of the pre-13th Amendment Constitution. In fact, however, the Constitution means what it says, not what the Supreme Court here falsely claimed it meant, an abolitionist point, later in essence upheld in
  • Wuebker v James, 58 NYS2d 671, 677 (1944) (the Constitution means what it says, not what the Supreme Court may from time to time allege it means)
  • Shelley v Kraemer, McGhee v Sipes, 334 US 1, 19; 68 S Ct 836; 92 L Ed 1161 (1948) (when ". . . the States have made available to [private] individuals the full coercive power of government to deny" other individuals their rights, that is unconstitutional).
    Standard historical analysis routinely cites government's law violations:
  • Carthaginian violation of treaty in attacking Rome in Punic War era
  • Germany disregarding treaty on Belgian neutrality in 1914
  • Japan attack on Pearl Harbor without prior declaration of war
  • Nazi crimes against humanity contrary to 1923 treaty; note precedents such as U. S. v Alstötter et al. ("The Justice Case"), 3 TWC 1; 6 LRTWC 1; 14 Ann Dig 278 (1948), and The Nurnberg Trial, 6 FRD 69 (1946), establishing that following orders is not a defense; each person is required to do right, regardless of orders).
  • judicial corruption and bribery, etc.

    • 10. Northern Knowledge and Lincoln's Election/Actions

    It was the Northern populace's widespread knowledge of
  • the "book-law" precluding slavery legality

  • evil effects and applications of the Dred Scott decision, and

  • that the Supreme Court, the world's worst court, had knowingly, grossly, egregiously lied (in the 1857 Dred Scott case) to uphold slavery by ignoring competent analysis and centuries of precedents,
    • that was a major factor in the election of Abraham Lincoln as President three years later, in 1860.

    Lincoln would foreseeably not appoint immoral, dishonest people to the Supreme Court. Lincoln's appointees would [as Frederick Douglass said in Speech, p 19 (1860)]   foreseeably decide future cases correctly, i.e., anti-slavery, pursuant to the above many precedents. For example, he appointed Salmon P. Chase as U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice, who as an attorney had won a case arguing slavery unconstitutionality, the above-cited Birney case.

    Abraham Lincoln Prior to the egregious lying Dred Scott decision, Lincoln (1809-1865) had predicted that an anti-slavery president would likely not be elected by 1864, perhaps not even in his lifetime, but in that of a youth (Noah Brooks) to whom he was speaking in 1856. See Noah Brooks, Washington in Lincoln's Time (New York: Century Co, 1895). But shortly thereafter, HE was himself elected!!!

    Lincoln realized that the common law "is not much known except among lawyers." "Speech at Peoria, 16 Oct 1854," Nicolay, John G. and John Hay, eds., Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln, Vol II (New York: Francis D. Tandy Co, 1894 and 1905), p 222. As slaves did not know their common law rights (having been denied the right to read and write), "Who will inform the negro that he is free? Who will take him before court to test the question of his freedom? In ignorance of his legal emancipation he is kept . . . ." (p 221). (George Mellen in Unconstitutionality of Slavery, supra, pp 431-432, had said the same thirteen years before.)

    Lincoln likened pro-slavery arguments to "the old argument for the 'divine right of kings.' By the latter [argument], the king is [allowed] to do just as he pleases . . . the white man is to do just as he pleases with his black slaves. . . . The two things are precisely alike. . . ." And he rejected the pro-slavery arguments, pursuant to morality and the common law, which rejection was widely known and disseminated nationwide.

    For related analysis of the 'divine right of kings' notion infesting Southerners, see Edward C. Rogers, Slavery Illegality, supra, p 60.
    See also Lincoln's 26 June 1857 Speech analyzing the Dred Scott decision.

    So between Lincoln's election and inauguration, pro-slavery Southerners resorted to promoting revolution and taking actions to prevent Lincoln's inauguration, overthrow the U.S. government, seize federal armories, choose a different president, make Washington, D.C., the Confederate capital, etc.

    After failing in that overthrow effort, they resorted to secession to obstruct beginning compliance with the federal and state Constitutions. See references, e.g.,
    • Speech, Sen. Alfred Iverson, Cong Globe, 36th Cong, 2 Sess, 10-11 (Dec 1860);
    • the Charleston (S.C.) Mercury (7 Jan 1861);
    • Benson J. Lossing, Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War (NY: 1868); and
    • Edward A. Pollard, Life of Jefferson Davis, with a Secret History of the Southern Confederacy (Philadelphia, 1869).

    The Confederates had spies and saboteurs in the North to treasonously obstruct the law enforcement effort known as the Civil War. See, e.g., John Bakeless, Spies of the Confederacy (Philadelphia: J. P. Lippincott, 1970).

    Civil War, Cause of
    The underlying cause of the Civil War was slavery. See references such as Adam Goodheart, 1861: The Civil War Awakening (2012). The war was "not just a Southern rebellion but a nationwide revolution" to free the country of slavery and end paralyzing attempts to compromise over it. The revolution began long before the war's first shots were fired. But it worked on the minds and hearts of average whites and blacks, slaves and free men. By 1861 it had attained an irresistible momentum. Goodheart shifts focus away from the power centers of Washington and Charleston to look at the actions and reactions of citizens from Boston to New York City, from Hampton Roads, Va., to St. Louis, Mo., and San Francisco, emphasizing the cultural, rather than military, clash between those wanting the country to move forward and those clinging to the old ways. War would be waged for four bitter years, with enduring seriousness, intensity, and great heroism, Goodheart emphasizes."
    In the face of this, the pro-slavery South decided to secede. In this context, the immediate cause of the Civil War was South Carolina's shooting at a U.S. ship in January 1861, the Star of the West, and shooting at U.S.-bought land and property, Fort Sumter, in April 1861.

    Remember Pearl Harbor? The "day in infamy"? Japan shooting at Americans without first having declared war? That's what happened to begin the Civil War.

    When people start shooting at you, their "reasons" (Japan had reasons; Germany in World War I had "reasons" for shooting at the Lusitania)—their 'reasons' aren't the cause of the war. Their shooting is!

    Remember your History Class? Sen. Seward had been expected in the South to be nominated for President, not Lincoln.

    Remember Pearl Harbor? What if Roosevelt had not shot back, just told Japan, 'you can have Hawaii, and California, Oregon, Washington.'

    That's about how it was back then, before the Civil War. The U.S. under outgoing President James Buchanan, retreating and retreating! Surrendering not just fort after fort, but state after state.

    Lincoln was a near-pacifist, did nothing to recover a thing. Nothing . . . until the South did worse than Japan at Pearl Harbor. Japan simply shot and ran. South Carolina shot and took, took over Fort Sumter. Only then did Lincoln react, and then asking for a mere 75,000 volunteers!--even though Stephen O. Douglas recommended 200,000!

    Southerners were determined to have conquest, conquest after conquest, to spread slavery, unconstitutional slavery. They'd even commit treason for it.

    Zachary TaylorIn 1850 under President Zachary Taylor (a former general), "treason" was the word. He specifically applied it to military officers who (like Robert E. Lee a few years later) would not stay loyal. Taylor said of such, "hang him as I did the deserters and spies at Monterey"--Julian Hawthorne, The History of the United States From 1492 to 1912 (New York: P. F. Collier & Son, 1898), p 875.

    Pres. Taylor's attitude was to "defend [the Union] not by compromises [with slavers], but by putting down treason with the strong hand. Had he lived another year, either the war of secession would have taken place [immediately, i.e., by 1851], or it would never have taken place at all. But he died [of no known natural cause but of apparent poisoning July 1850] and so made way for the immortal career of Lincoln." Hawthorne, p 880.

    But sadly, only after a series of three cowardly spineless Presidents (Fillmore, Pierce, Buchanan) whose depravity led Southrons to feel they could commit treason (including apparent poison-murder of President Taylor) and get away with it.

    For slavers, traitors, and their accessories, attempting to obstruct the war effort and thus aid and abet its overthrow and/or losing the Civil War, Chief Justice Taney was perfectly willing to issue writs of habeas corpus, e.g., in the case of Ex parte Merryman, 17 Fed Cas 144 (#9487); 9 Am Law Reg 524; 24 Law Rep 78; 3 West Law Month 461; 9 Am St Trials 880-897 (CC Md, Taney, 246, 25 May 1861). To Taney, traitors could have such a writ anytime, but slaves, never!! Lincoln came to feel that Taney should be arrested, his efforts to obstruct the Union winning the war were so egregious.

    Incidently, this extreme unconstitutional and immoral opposition by the Supreme Court to the Constitution's clauses against slavery, was a factor in Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. People would sue then as now; Lincoln knew that if he simply honestly cited Article 2 § 3 ("take care that the laws be faithfully executed"), the immoral Supreme Court, or undeed any hostile court, might declare his taking such "care" meaningless or unconstitutional. In fact, a number of lawsuits did occur:

    Emancipation Proclamation Litigation Cases
    1. Dorris v Grace, 24 Ark 326; 1866 Ark. LEXIS 33 (Dec 1866) (in tandem with a case, Hawkins v Filkins, 24 Ark 286; 1866 WL 610 (1866), by ex-Confederate Col. David Walker, which "sustained the legality of Arkansas’s wartime government (and hence contracts and other legal proceedings)."
    2. Leslie v Langham, 40 Ala 524; 1867 Ala. LEXIS 30 (Jan 1867)
    3. Logan v State, 40 Ala 733; 1867 Ala. LEXIS 65 (June 1867)
    4. Pickett v Wilkins, 13 Rich. Eq. 366; 34 S.C.Eq. 366; 1867 WL 2726 (S.C.) (Dec 1867)
    5. Gholson, Adm'r v Blackman, 44 Tenn (4 Cold) 580; 1867 Tenn. LEXIS 75 (Dec 1867)
    6. Weaver v Lapsley, 42 Ala 601; 94 Am Dec 671; 1868 Ala. LEXIS 174 (June 1868)

    7. Slaback v Cushman, 12 Fla 472; 1868 Fla. LEXIS 16 (Dec 1868)
    8. Buie v Parker, 63 NC 131; 1869 N.C. LEXIS 16 (Jan 1869)
    9. Vicksburg, Etc. Railway Co v Green, 42 Miss 436; 1869 Miss. LEXIS 10 (April 1869)
    10. Harrell, Adm'r v Watson, 63 NC 454; 1869 N.C. LEXIS 98 (June 1869)
    11. McElvain v Mudd, 44 Ala 48; 4 Am Rep 106; 1870 Ala. LEXIS 9 (Jan 1870)
    12. Andrews v Page, 50 Tenn (3 Heisk) 653; 1871 Tenn. LEXIS 122 (Dec 1870)

    13. Kaufman v Barb, 26 Ark 24; 1870 Ark. LEXIS 74 (Dec 1870)
    14. Henderlite v Thurman, 63 Va. (22 Gratt.) 466; 12 Am Rep 526 (June 1872)
    14. Mark v McGeorge, 6 Ky Op 117; 1872 Ky. LEXIS 449 (19 Dec 1872)
    16. Rives v Farish's Adm'r, 65 Va (24 Gratt) 125; 1873 WL 5155; 1873 Va. LEXIS 8 (Nov 1873)
    17. Graves v Pinchback, 47 Ark 470; 1 SW 682; 1886 Ark. LEXIS 38 (16 Oct 1886)
    18. West v Jones, 85 Va 616; 8 SE 468; 1889 Va. LEXIS 73 (10 Jan 1889)
    19. Erwin v Nolan, 280 Mo 401; 217 SW 837; 1920 Mo. LEXIS 200 (6 Jan 1920)

    See also the article, "The Legal Effects of the Civil War," by Erwin C. Surrency, in The American Journal of Legal History, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Apr., 1961), pp. 145-165.

    So when Pres. Lincoln issued the above-cited Emancipation Proclamation, he carefully made it a purely military order in his capacity as Article 2 § 2 Commander-in-Chief. It is well-established that armies can capture enemy personnel and confiscate enemy property, e.g., troops' weapons, indeed, whatever they use to make war. Lincoln was also familiar with the book by William E. Whiting, LL.D., The War Powers of the President, and the Legislative Powers of Congress in Relation to Rebellion, Treason and Slavery (Boston: John L. Shorey, 1862), citing the power to abolish slavery in war-time enemy territory. As the Confederacy, enemy territory, was calling itself a separate nation, and calling slaves "property," using them to carry on the war effort, Lincoln could take them at their word! He could of course, note that they were using slaves for military purposes, themselves citing slavery as the only cause of the war.

    So he carefully worded the Emancipation Proclamation to be a typical military order, only capturing / confiscating "property" (freeing slaves) in enemy territory or battle staging areas! Lincoln thus wisely made it unlikely that the Supreme Court could overrule it. Lincoln could not know that the dishonest Taney would die the next year, and that he (Lincoln) could then replace him with a more honest person, Salmon P. Chase.

    Chase was a long-time abolitionist who had already supported in the Birney case, supra, and would foreseeably continue to uphold, the Constitution's many anti-slavery clauses. He would foreseeably, as Chief Justice, agree that it was about time someone in the White House "take care that the laws be faithfully executed" against slavery! When a property seizure case did come to the Supreme Court under Chase, he did rule pursuant to the standard law commonly known, that such seizures are lawful in wartime, U.S. v Alexander, 69 US (2 Wallace) 404; 17 L Ed 915 (10 March 1865).

    For more analysis on the constitutionality of Lincon's actions, see, e.g., Prof. Daniel Farber, Lincoln's Constitution (Chicago: Univ of Chicago Press, 2003).

    In an Emancipation-Proclamation-related case, a court specifically ruled that the Emancipation Proclamation was a war measure, upholding its constitutionality, and noting that pursuant to international law (cited in authoritative texts of the era, e.g., Henry Wheaton, Elements of International Law: 2nd annotated ed. by William Beach Lawrence [London: S. Low, 1863], p 604, specifically cited by Dorris v Grace, 24 Ark 326, supra), a nation at war can legally take any measure to strengthen itself or weaken its enemy, Buie v Parker, 63 NC 131, 146, supra.

    The other cases listed, also had the Emancipation Proclamation as an issue (in context of cases on, e.g., mortgages, inheritances, crime prosecutions, etc.) and deemed it proprio vigore (what it said it was, a war measure effective progressively by force of arms). (This was so even in cases such as Andrews v Page, 50 Tenn 653, supra, that defied the prior well-reasoned precedents, and denounced it (the Proclamation) as somehow unconstitutional!, and gratuitously blaming the abolitionists!)

    Truly Lincoln, like any good lawyer, and military commander, had drafted it, the military seizure order, carefully and well to preclude its being overridden by corrupt judges! And helped end the unawareness of rights, that he had lamented a decade earlier.

    11. The "Rescue" Doctrine: Background, Incidents and Principles

    The "rescue" doctrine starts with moral underpinnings. A "rescue" need not be directed only against a private, lone, one-of-a-kind, individual situation. A "rescue" may also be done in a systemic situation of widespread abuses. The "rescue" doctrine may be said to arise from concepts such as of executing slavers (Exodus 2:11-12) and opposition to tyranny. Such opposition can include "tyrannicide." This is the case with slavery. Let's first look at background.

    Tyrannicide had long been cited by Christian advocates, e.g., by
  • Hubert Languet (1518-1581) and Philippe de Mornay, seigneur du Plessis-Marly (1549-1623), alias Junius Brutus, Vindiciae contra Tyrannos (1579 translated 1648) (background at www.constitution.org/vct/vind_laski.htm and history.wisc.edu/sommerville/367/Vindiciae.htm)

  • Jesuit Fr. Juan de Mariana (1535-1624), De Rege et Regis Institutione (Toledo, 1598) (background at cepa.newschool.edu/het/profiles/mariana.htm and www.library.georgetown.edu/advancement/newsletter/66/bookburning66.htm) (killing the manifestly evil)

  • Scottish religious reformer John Knox (1505-1572), declared it both lawful and positively necessary to kill rights betrayers

  • John L. Somers, Daniel Defoe, et al, Vox Populi, Vox Dei (London: T. Harrison, 1709), providing historical background

  • David Walker in Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World (28 September 1829), elaborated this approach.

  • Rev. Henry Highland Garnet (1815-1882), 16 August 1843, An Address to the Slaves of the United States of America (Troy, New York: J. H. Tobbitt Pub, 1843 and 1848) (elaborated this 1 Timothy 5:8 Christian duty with respect to slavers, to halt their assaults on slaves' families. Note the same concept expressed thus a century later: “How we burned in the [soviet] prison camps later thinking: What would things have been like if every police operative [slaver], when he went out at night to make an arrest [a capture], had been uncertain whether he would return alive? If during periods of mass arrests [captures] people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever was at hand? The organs [police / slavers] would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and, not withstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine [arrest system] would have ground to a halt.”—Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), Chapter 1, pp 3-18, especially p 13. (book on soviet-era concentration camps). And see also "Free at Last" (BBC Documentary, March 2007), on "history of black and African resistance to slavery."

  • Rev. Theodore Parker in John Brown's Expedition Reviewed in a Letter from Rev. Theodore Parker at Rome to Francis Jackson, Boston (Boston: The Fraternity, 1860), defended John Brown's rescue actions and the right of slaves to kill slavers.

  • Abolitionist Attorney Wendell Phillips advocated this approach in U.S. jury trial context. Phillips knew: "What supports slavery? Northern bayonets, calming the masters' fears. . . . Disunion [ceasing the North's aiding and abetting slavers] leaves God's natural laws to work their good results. . . . Under God's law, insurrection is the tyrant's check [restraint]. Let us stand out of the path [get out of the way], and allow the Divine law to have free course [i.e., slave insurrection, self-rescue]."

  • Abolitionist Henry C. Wright said, "Resistance to slaveholders and slavehunters is obedience to God, and a sacred duty to man. . . . [It is] our right and duty . . . to instigate the slaves to insurrection."

  • "Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God."—John Bradshaw (1602-1659).

  • See also the "original grant" doctrine; the Domitian assassination precedent; and examples of what happens when people are submissive, non-resistant toward tyrants, thus enabling even more tyranny, as shown by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), Chapter 1, pp 3-18. Note especially p 13:
    "How we burned [contemplated] in the prison [slave] camps later thinking: What would things have been like if every police [slave] operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest [to enslave], had been uncertain whether he would return alive? If during periods of mass arrests [enslavements] people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever was at hand? The organs [secret police / slavers] would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt."

    • The multiple legal facts herein cited establish the moral and legal validity of rescue efforts. Note writings for and actual rescue efforts in that era:
  • Nat Turner's August 1831 in Virginia
  • Rev. John Rankin's for decades
  • Capt. Jonathan Walker's in 1844
  • Drayton-Sayres' in April 1848
  • Rev. John G. Fee's analysis in 1851
  • Passmore Williamson in June 1855
  • St. John Brown's 16 Oct 1859 at Harper's Ferry (see 1909 biography, John Brown, by William E. B. DuBois, Ph.D. [1868-1963]; and his 1853 activism; contrast with the ravings of the pro-slavery sentencing judge)
  • the Underground Railroad in, for example, Vermont
  • and the entire "Underground Railroad."

    • John Brown

    Rescue efforts are simply actions to do what the government was not doing, what the police were not doing. They were not taking "care that the laws be faithfully executed," not enforcing the constitutional laws freeing slaves (themselves uninformed of their right to freedom, as Abraham Lincoln observed, Peoria Speech (1854), p 221).

    When the government does not enforce the laws (a non-allowable omission), others (private citizens) may foreseeably step in to do so. A pertinent precedent is the case of United States v McCardle, 3 Am St Trials 303-305; Wheeler's Crim Cas (NY, 18 Dec 1822). In that case, a private citizen (like Nat Turner, Rev. Rankin, John Brown, etc.) rescued two women being unlawfully detained. In court, the rescuer was upheld for doing so; and the opponent (woman-detainer / 'slaver') was criminally prosecuted!

    Rescue doctrine was of course denounced by slavers! See, e.g., "An Incendiary Circular" (Dec 1859).

    The message for the many cases, including the Turner and Brown cases, is clear. Where vile, base, morally depraved judges (such as depraved Southern judges), would not issue writs of habeas corpus to free illegally detained people, others (e.g., Rankin, Brown, the "Underground Railroad," etc.) can act to enforce those people's legal rights. The concept of such pro-active enforcement is called "Private Attorney General," a concept upheld anew a century later by a more honest Supreme Court.

    The Supreme Court explained that such "private attorney general" enforcement is being done "not for himself alone [or at all] but [for others] as a 'private attorney general' vindicating a policy that [the Constitution writers] considered of the highest priority." Newman v Piggie Park Enterprises, 390 US 400; 88 S Ct 964, 966; 19 L Ed 2d 1263, 1265 (1969). (This concept had been cited in, e.g., Oatis v Crown Zellerbach Corp, 398 F2d 496, 499 (CA 5, 1968); Miller v Amusement Enterprises, Inc, 426 F2d 534 (CA 5, 1970); and Jenkins v United Gas Corp, 400 F2d 28, 33 n 10 (CA 5, 1968)). In such a case, there is no de jure intent by the rescuer (the "Private Attorney General," the law enforcer) to violate the law, as the rescuer's purpose is to secure enforcement of the actual or supreme law, e.g., the Constitution.

    Virginia's vile, depraved, immoral arresting officers, prosecutors, judges and juries that prosecuted Nat Turner, John Brown, and others, were therefore clearly not only constitutionally and legally wrong, but also morally unregenerate, vile, and depraved. They were committing their unconstitutional actions for the specific purpose of enforcing rape, torture, murder, and like depravities. As per McCardle, supra and other precedents, they were the ones who should have been arrested, prosecuted, convicted, hanged.

    Significant numbers of slaves engaged in self-rescue type activities. You can understand that women being raped, women being kidnapped, have a right, even a duty, to kill their rapist, their kidnapper, thus end the crimes in process and foreseeable.
    Slavery was Naziesque death camps writ large and long. It didn't end, like Naziism, in a mere twelve years. Slavery was Dachau, Auschwitz, Buchenwald, for the foreseeable future, century after century, no end in sight, as per Southern expansionism. Slavers, tobacco planters, had no scruples about the killings of tens of millions then, and now.
    Note also examples of lynchings showing a pattern of disrespect for life. See also history of U.S. lynchings.
    Is it not agreed now, that people at Dachau, Auschwitz, Buchenwald, should have killed their oppressors? not gone so passively to the slaughter? should have killed the guards? the commandants? the officials' families resident at the camps? whomever necessary to destroy them, their morale, and end the genocide. Buie v Parker, supra.
    Is it not now felt that the camps themselves should have been bombed by the Allies?
    Slavery is, viewed in depth, war. Slavery is war. Mitchell v Wells, 37 Miss 235, 282 (1859) (dissent by J. Handy).
    Slavery is multiple acts of war. Slavery is aggressive war, war of aggression. Slavers' war violates standard laws of war and conducting it, i.e., slavers did not wear uniforms, did not respect civilians, did not declare war, mass-murdered civilians, did not treat slaves even up to 'prisoner of war' standards, mass-murdered prisoners, etc.
    Remember Hiroshima? Nagasaki? Hamburg? Dresden? In dealing with nations at war, America and England have shown that it is acceptable to bomb enemy cities, to fire-bomb enemy cities, to atomic-bomb them, to mass kill enemy women and children. They are not mere unexpected "collateral damage," they are known in advance to be foreseeable casualties, they are legitimate targets. The goal is to destroy aggressor morale, thus end the war. Buie v Parker, supra.
    Slaves (when you remember they are targets of slavers' war of aggression), have the same war-fighting rights, indeed, the right to achieve the same purpose, the ending of the slavers' war. This includes the right to use the same American/English war methods, including killing not only slavers, but their women and children.
    Remember, killing only the camp commandant, the slaver himself, leaves the women and children as heirs, fellow soldiers, continuing the slaver war on society.
    In combat, you shoot the enemy until they die or surrender. You shoot them even when they are fleeing, you shoot them in the back. You know that their flight indicates their intent to return fire at you, in the future. Your right to shoot, and keep shooting, continues until the enemy is wholly dead or surrendered.
    Note Harriet Beecher Stowe's example of pioneers escaping Indian captivity.
    Deaths of slavers, in the following case list, are thus referred to as "executions" (though called by the slaver courts, "murders"!) Slave cases exercising the right, nay, duty, to escape captivity, stop rapes and kidnaping, end slavers' war, by killing slavers and their accomplices and/or families, are documented in cases such as the following:

  • Byrd v State, 2 Miss (1 How) 163 (1834) (execution of a master)

  • Dick, et al v State, 30 Miss (1 Geo) 593 (1856) (execution of a master)

  • Alfred v State, 37 Miss (8 Geo) 296 (1859) (execution of slaver who'd committed rape)

    • Remember, slavery did involve, and rely on, vile unregenerates as judges, who ignored pro-morals precedents such as McCardle, supra.

    Writers on 'Rescue' Principle
    Rev. John Rankin (1823) Rev. Beriah Green (1836)
    Rev. John G. Fee (1849) Lewis Tappan (1850)
    Rev. William Goodell (1852) Rev. George Cheever (1859)
    Rev. William Patton (1859) John G. Whittier (1859)

    12. The "States' Rights" Myth

    As we saw above, Senator Jefferson Davis' colleague Senator James M. Mason (D., Va.) had publicly admitted in 1850, that there were no states that had legally established slavery. All states had slavery bans written into their constitutions via Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights style clauses.

    In short, contrary to myth, slavery was not and never was a "state institution," but was always personal behavior, prohibited personal behavior.

    All states had agreed to the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, clauses of which prohibited all aspects of slavery and provided the well-established ancient common law remedy, habeas corpus. Sen. Davis knew it, the many above-cited pro-freedom court cases, the many anti-kidnaping court precedents, and the fact that abolitionists were quoting Sen. Mason's confession across the U.S., and that Pres. Lincoln was foreseeably going to appoint moral, honest judges who knew it too.

    Under the U.S. Constitution, States have certain rights, such as two Senators per state, Representatives in Congress pursuant to population size, Electoral College members, and a "republican form of government." Obviously, none of these rights provides for slavery. See Lewis Tappan, et al., Proceedings of Convention (New York, 1855), p 7.

    "Whatever the rights of the States may be, they can not include nor sanctify State wrongs. The States have reserved no right to violate the inalienable rights for the protection of which both the State and National Governments were organized. They have no right to do that which the Federal Constitution, ratified by them, expressly forbids them to do." See Lewis Tappan, et al., Proceedings of Convention (New York, 1855), p 18.

    The "states' rights" myth defended by slavers and their accessories, including secessionist southerners to justify their starting the Civil War (the War of the Rebellion), is thus clearly a lie.

    Far from being an honest leader, Jefferson Davis (D., Miss.) was simply a type of the worst form of lying politician, a typical manipulator of Southern 'poor white trash,' one knowing he was lying, alleging a "states' right" to do what he knew to be unlawful and unconstitutional, and no right at all. Nowadays people such as him and Robert E. Lee are recognized as vicious criminals, typically charged with crimes such as CSC ("criminal sexual conduct").

    Remember, they were murdering Yankees, fighting for the "right" of every Southern pervert and degenerate to rape women at will, and to 'rent-a-woman' (a pretty quadroon or octoroon) at their forced-prostitution brothels. Nowadays, their names would be on lists of sex perverts and offenders.

    Southern politicians still make pretenses linking slavery and states' rights, says Stanley Crouch, "Trent Lott's Link to Racist Group Has Real Pedigree," New York Daily News (6 Jan 1999).

    Southern leaders were NOT for 'states' rights.' [That was the story they told the poor white trash they manipulated!!] They vehemently denounced Northern states for passing state habeas corpus laws not excluding accused slaves. Such full-coverage habeas corpus laws were called, in that era, 'personal liberty' laws, in an effort to reduce the prevalent kidnapping of non-slaves. Pro-slavery southerners OPPOSED such states' rights' laws!

    "I treat the subject lightly because to a [trained analyst] it [the Southern claim] is so totally ridiculous as hardly to warrant being taken seriously. To treat such testimonies [claims] with anything else than the ridicule they deserve does not serve, and indeed has not served, historical truth. . . . The whole story . . . is totally farcical."—Prof. W. Hugh Thomas, M.D., The Murder of Adolf Hitler (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995), p 112.

    13. Expansion-of-Slavery

    The South, the "Slave Power," was ruling America, as Vice-President Henry Wilson said. The South had been manipulating the federal government to make pro-slavery policies, treaties, and wars, all to expand slavery throughout the U.S.A. and beyond, to last forever:

    Click here for maps showing U.S. expansion. Slavers expanded the U.S. from the original 13 colonies sliver along the Atlantic Ocean, to extend west across the Continent to the Pacific Ocean, and southwards to seize over one-half of Mexico by war, war of aggression.

    In the 1860 election, the pro-slavery candidate running against Abraham Lincoln was Vice-President John Breckinridge. “Breckinridge was pledged to take” “pro-slavery actions. He certainly would have appointed pro-slavery justices to . . . the Supreme Court. . . . Breckinridge also favored the admission of New Mexico and other national territories . . . as slave states, so the balance between free and slave states would have been permanently destroyed. [Also a factor] was the determination of Breckinridge [advocates] to extend the empire of slavery by purchasing, or conquering, Cuba. . . . a Breckinridge victory would have assured that the United States remained a slaveholding nation.” Reference: History Prof. David Herbert Donald, “1860: The Road Not Taken,” 35 Smithsonian (#7) 54-56 (October 2004). The choice was clear: expansionism, including white slavery: yes or no. (See also the Supreme Court decision Johnson v M’Intosh, 21 US (8 Wheat) 543; 5 L Ed 681, 543 [1823] and Prof. Robert J. Miller's "The New Land Rush" (3 May 2007) on the "discovery" doctrine.)

    Other major pro-slavery Southerners wanted slavery expanded even more. Pro-slavery writer Henry Middleton of South Carolina wanted slave territory expanded to create

    "a great Southern confederacy [to] extend its sway over adjacent tropical regions, over the West Indies, Mexico & Central America, with slavery as its foundation & cotton, sugar, rice, & tobacco [crops]."—Page Smith, Ph.D., The Nation Comes of Age (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co, 1981), p 1172.

    They wanted to expand slavery, have more area in which to commit their atrocities. Slavers intended to establish and

    "control the newly proclaimed Confederate Territory of Arizona . . . the first step in the Confederacy's cherished plan to seize a port on the Pacific Ocean, thereby achieving its own manifest destiny and gaining access to the fabulous gold mines of the West."—David H. Rosenberg, "Confederate Manifest Destiny in New Mexico," 13 America's Civil War (#3) 51-57 (July 2000).

    Slavers had obstructed Cuban independence during the 1820's South American revolts under Simon Bolivar, etc., against Spain. Goodell, supra, pp 266-267. The South intended slavery forever, and to expand it to whites, said Goodell, supra, and quoting Southern Senator Henry Clay, at pp 140-142.

    Mississippi Senator Albert Gallatin Brown, colleague of Senator Jefferson Davis, advocated

    "a congressional slave code [for territories, to] provide ironclad protection for our [slave] property in whatever new slave territory we annex—Cuba, Mexico, or Central America. If the North rejects our demand [to expand slavery], I would regard it as grounds for disunion."—Allan Nevins, Emergence of Lincoln, vol. 1, p 416.

    Sen. Jefferson Davis and colleagues favored acquiring more slave territory south of the U.S., and to pay for it, sought a $30 million appropriation, to buy Cuba from Spain. Jefferson Davis felt that acquiring only Cuba would not be enough expansion of slavery; he also sought acquiring Central America. When a Northern senator accused Southern senators of wanting to conquer

    "the whole tropical belt of the Western hemisphere," colleague Senator Robert Toombs agreed, "It's true; the whole of it."—References, see:
  • Jefferson Davis Papers (10 vols), ed. Haskell M. Monroe, Jr., et al., (Baton Rouge: Lousiana State Univ Press, 1971—), Vol 6, p 607 and 628
  • Allan Nevins, Emergence of Lincoln, vol. 1 (New York: Scribner, 1950), p 449
  • Cong. Globe, 35th Cong, 2nd sess. (1858-1859), vol 2, p 1187
  • Jefferson Davis, Jefferson Davis, Constitutionalist: His Letters, Papers, and Speeches, 10 vols., ed. Dunbar Rowland (Jackson: Mississippi Dept. of Archives and History, 1923; reprinted New York: AMS Press, 1973), vol 4, p 79.

    • Jefferson Davis had been Secretary of War under pro-slavery President Franklin Pierce. "Pierce tried to distract the nation from its internal problems by dreaming of expansion into Cuba, Canada, Nicaragua, and even Formosa (currently known as Taiwan)." Reference: "Fessenden & Hyde," by K. Wongs Richanalai, in The Bowdoin Orient, Vol. CXXXIII, Issue 8 (2November 2001). (Pierce's aggression into Asia terrified Japan, leading it to enter a self-defense war footing, ultimately leading to Pearl Harbor (others overlook its connection to slaver aggression and expansionism). Reference: David Bergamini (1928-1983), Japan's Imperial Conspiracy (New York: Morrow [1971].)

    Pro-slavery activist Robert B. Rhett of South Carolina wanted slavery greatly expanded

    "extending their empire across this continent to the Pacific, and down through Mexico to the other side of the great gulf, and over the isles of the sea . . . presenting to the world the glorious spectacle"

    of a greatly expanded slavery!! These sex criminals didn't want to stop their crimes; they wanted to declare war on Mexico again, and Cuba, South America, Caribbean, and Asian nations, to have far more victims in which to continue their vile and immoral actions!

    Southerners conclusively wanted "everlasting slavery," said Lewis Tappan, Address to the Non-slaveholders of the South (New York: S.W. Benedict, 1843), p 54. The term “perpetualist” was for Southerners intending to keep slavery forever. See Rev. John G. Fee, The Sinfulness of Slaveholding (1851), p 34.

    Slavery forever was also the goal of
  • The Charleston (City) Gazette, cited by James G. Birney, The American Churches: The Bulwarks of American Slavery (1840), p 7
  • Senator Henry Clay, cited by Rev. William Goodell, Slavery and Anti-Slavery (1852), p 140.
  • Pro-slavery congressmen, referenced by Rep. Owen Lovejoy, "The Barbarism of Slavery" (5 April 1860), p 206.

    • J. D. B. De Bow, "an influential southern editor and publisher, wrote that it was the American destiny to absorb not only all of Mexico, but also the West Indies, Canada, and Hawaii. That was for appetizers. De Bow continued:"

    "'The gates of the Chinese empire must be thrown down by the men from the Sacramento and the Oregon, and the haughty Japanese tramplers upon the cross be enlightened in the doctrines of republicanism and the ballot box. The eagle of the republic shall poise itself over the field of Waterloo [in Europe], after tracing its flight among the gorges of the Himalaya or the [Russian] Ural mountains, and a successor of Washington ascend the chair of universal [planet-wide] empire.'" Source: Prof. Joseph R. Conlin, The American Past: A Survey of American History (Vol I, to 1877), 6th ed. (Fort Worth: Harcourt College Pubs, 2001), pp 396-397.
    Ed. Note: Incidently, observe historical results of such threats. The U.S. threat to Japan, when commenced to be carried out by pro-slavery President Franklin Pierce, triggered Japan's self-defensive fear and armament leading to Pearl Harbor, says David Bergamini (1928-1983), Japan's Imperial Conspiracy (New York: Morrow, 1971). The Southerner-slaver role in leading to Pearl Harbor is clear.

    For more references, see, e.g.,
  • the section of “The Origins of Slavery Expansionism,” in Prof. Eugene Genovese, The Political Economy of Slavery (Pantheon Books, 1961, 1963, 1965); and

  • God Against Slavery, by Rev. George B. Cheever, D.D. (1857), p 172: “[I]nstead of staying it [halting slavery] where it is, they [Southern slavers] propose its universal extension. There is territory enough to carve out twenty-nine new States in the region proposed to be set open to the freedom [expansion] of slavery. There are no geographical barriers to the existence and the lust of power; it overrides every thing; there is no climate on earth unfavorable to it. Freedom is a flower that you must cherish; but slavery is a weed, as [Edmund] Burke [1729-1797] once truly said, that you may have anywhere; only scatter the seed. The question before us is as to the deliberate national extension of this system.”

    • Slavers had rejected Virginia writer, professor, and judge S. George Tucker's 1796 suggestion to end slavery in a century, by after 1896! See his Dissertation, p 97.

    Slavers, like children who never grow up mentally, had a mind-set parents recognize in toddlers. "Toddlers don't yet understand the niceties of ownership. If they see something they want, they'll take it without a second's thought—such a common behavior [as the toddler] doesn't see anything wrong with what he's done."—Lawrence Kutner, Ph.D., "How to Discipline Someone Else's Child," Parenting (March 2000), pp 119-123, at 120.

    Of course, there were Northerners who objected to the expansion of slavery, e.g.,

    Of course, Mexico had resisted slavers' plans of conquest and aggression, for example, at the Alamo, executing all the pro-slavery gunfighters, including Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, and Col. William Travis, a "militant advocate of slavery." (As Southerners oft control U.S. history book writing, the "Remember the Alamo" story typically does not mention the real truth about the pro-slavery motives of the Alamo gunfighters.)

    When as Rev. George Cheever alluded to, we moral Yankees merely said 'No to expansion of kidnaping and rape,' by electing Lincoln, they called us "radical" and began shooting at us, killing hundreds of thousands. Slavers make the Mafia look good (indeed, help create it via the gateway drug process leading to other drugs); slavers were clearly by far the most vicious blood-thirsty organized-crime-gang of thugs on the continent.

    Abraham Lincoln won the Presidency in 1860 when the "anti-extensionists" and the "abolitionists" coalesced. Remember, the House of Representatives, due to the North's larger population, was anti-slavery. The Senate remained pro-slavery, with the Vice-President to cast a typically pro-slavery vote. Example: 22 states = 44 senators. A pro-slavery decision would need only those 22 votes; the pro-slavery Vice-President would then make the 23rd vote pro-slavery. The 11 slave states would remain in control, and thus prevent confirmation of any anti-slavery judges.

    With Lincoln's election, and an anti-slavery Vice-President Hannibal Hamlin, the 23rd tie-breaking vote would go the other way, anti-slavery.

    The South promptly seceded as they saw that they'd lose the courts (as Lincoln-appointed anti-slavery judges would be confirmed), and eventually even the Constitution would be enforced, perhaps even be altered by the North. Add a mere 11 more states, a two-thirds vote in Congress could occur, 33 states - 11; 66-22.

    Add another 11, total of 44, that would make a 3/4th situation, to amend the Constitution, 33-11. To forestall this foreseeable situation, the South seceded.

    14. The Reparations Issue

    For background, see, e.g., the book by James O. and Lois E. Horton, Slavery and the Making of America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005) (on the role of slaves in developing the nation), and Ta-Nehisi Coates, "The Case for Reparations," The Atlantic (21 May 2014).

    Reparations (also known as 'damage awards,' redress, payment) are something juries, courts, and like adjudicators, award litigants every day, in thousands of different cases, and have a record going back millennia, to the Bible, to the Code of Hammurabi, and like codes of law.

    Damage awards, verdicts, jury awards, of course include matters such as "back pay," one's wages of which one was deprived. This is a concept easy to understand. See precedents and principles such as are cited by

    See also reparations-related writings, e.g.,

  • Penny Hess and Omali Yeshitela, Overturning the Culture of Violence (St. Petersburg: BSU Pub, 2000)

  • University of Dayton Law Prof. Vernellia Randall, "Reparations for Slavery Are Due, But Healing Isn't About the Money, Says Health Care Expert" (31 July 2002)

  • Victor Nickson, The Nickson View II: The Answer to the Horowitz-10 (1stBooks Library, January 2003)

  • Boris I. Bittker, The Case for Black Reparations (Beacon Press, 2003)

  • Randall Robinson, The Debt

  • Clarence J. Mumford, Race and Reparations - A Black Perspective for the 21st Century

  • Ray Winbush, Should America Pay?: Slavery and the Raging Debate on Reparations

  • Joe R. Feagin, Racist America: Roots, Current Realities and Future Reparations

  • Roy L. Brooks, When Sorry Isn't Enough: The Controversy over Apologies and Reparations for Human Injustice

  • Jana Thompson, Taking Responsibility for the Past: Reparation and Historical Injustice

  • George Schedler, Racist Symbols and Reparations

  • Alfred L. Brophy, Randall Kennedy, Reconstructing the Dreamland: The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921, Race Reparations, and Reconciliation

  • Arthur Serota, Ending Apartheid in America: The Need for a Black Political Party and Reparations Now

  • Ali Alamin Mazrui, Black Reparations in the Era of Globalization

  • Ali A. Mazrui, Black Reparations in a Conservative World: Racial Aspirations & Political Realities

  • William Kweku Asare, Slavery Reparations in Perspective

  • Bill Fletcher, Adolph Reed, Reparations? Yes/No

  • Boris I. Bittker (with introduction by Tony Morrison), Case for Black Reparations: The Groundbreaking First Book on Black eparations, Essential Reading for the Twenty-First Century

  • Robert S. Lecky, Black Reparations for American Slavery (At Issue)

  • Linda Allen Eustace, Imari Abubakari Obadele, Eight Women Leaders of the Reparations Movement, U.S.A: An Intimate Glimpse

  • Chokwe Lumumba, Reparations Yes!: The Legal and Political Reasons Why New Afrikans, Black People in the United States, Should Be Paid Now for the Enslavement

  • Ida Hakim, Reparations, the Cure for America's Race Problem: A Collaborative Effort in Reparations Advocacy by the Founding Members of C.U.R.E.

  • Ifama Jackson, Reparations Now - A Teaching Presentation (August 2003)

  • "the Moravian Church and the Episcopal Church both apologized for owning slaves and promised to battle current racism." The Episcopalians also launched a national, years long probe into church slavery links and into whether the church should compensate black members. A white church member, Katrina Browne, also screened a documentary focusing on white culpability at the denomination's national assembly," says The Macomb Daily, p 9A (10 July 2006). "[Rev.] Jayne Oasin, social justice officer for the denomination . . . will oversee its work on the issue." Browne's documentary is "Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North," and it "details how the economies of the Northeast and the nation as a whole depended on slaves. 'this was . . . not some Southern anomaly.'"

  • Prof. Charles Ogletree (Harvard Law School) says "This matter is growing in significance rather than declining," quoted in The Macomb Daily, p 9A (10 July 2006). See also "Slavery Reparations Gaining Momentum" (AP News, 9 July 2006), "It has more vigor and vitality in the 21st century than it's had in the history of the reparations movement."

  • Prof. Denis G. Rancourt, "Calculated MINIMUM reparation due to slave descendants: $1.5 million to each Black citizen of the USA" (18 January 2013)

    • The logistical difficulty alleged seems to be, 'the amount may be hard to calculate, the time period is so far back.' But calculations extending back some significant time frames do occur.

    Modern examples of tracing back in such manner include
    (a) the restorations of property in East Germany, to original owners (or heirs) so as to undo the Communist government confiscations immediately after World War II;
    (b) restorations of bank accounts to Holocaust victims, or heirs; and
    (c) a recent Indian rights case in the State of New York, going back to the time of the 1776-1783 Revolutionary War!
    Title searches on real estate at each sale, involve a significant tracing back-in-time. To persons in the analytical occupations involved, the task is routine (definitely not as onerous as it may seem to a laymen).

    Back pay awards in regular employee-discrimination cases are routinely calculated. Individuals trained in the subject know how to manage many of the complexities involved.

    Reparations to a significant degree, can particularly be charged against the property ownership of the era. Property records are public record, tracked back centuries. Title companies do this every day! Their title records tracking research is not an especially difficult hard process for the trained individuals involved. 'Reparations' can to a significant extent, be treated as a lien against the title! This fact can help obviate concern of those who feel that the entire reparations bill is proposed to be against taxpayers generally.

    Considered this way, calculating and affixing responsibility for back pay can be done.

    Let's cover the next point. Some people think "reparations" mean "back pay" and that ONLY. Imagine you are a white woman kidnapped and raped. Would you feel that damages ("reparations") are solely for "back pay"?

    Of course not. You might not have even lost job time.

    Any competent judge, jury, adjudicator, understands that "damages"   (reparations) includes much more. The award must cover the total abuse situation (called “sexual harassment” in employee cases), and provide for actual damages, infliction of mental anguish and emotional distress, exemplary damages, punitive damages, etc. In a single recent case, a jury awarded $80,000,000 to the “felt” woman. For a lifetime of slave-holder abuses, and the potential for such abuses that slaves, especially women, faced daily, the awards would be in the trillions, including interest. (The term commonly used to reference such “damages” is “reparations”).

    Slavery involved constitutional rights denials. There was, e.g., no "procedural due process" in terms of enslaving people. When there is such a violation (no due process), the injured person is entitled to damages even if not harmed. Slavery of course involved holocaust-level harm. For a discussion on even the 'no-harm' situation, see Carey v Piphus, 545 F2d 30 (CA 7, Ill, 1977) rev'd and remanded 435 US 247; 98 S Ct 1042; 55 L Ed 2d 252 (1978) (damages award as procedural due process is an "absolute" constitutional right).
    See also Garner v Memphis Police Dept, 710 F2d 240, 248 (CA 6, 1983) ("the remedying of deprivations of fundamental constitutional rights must be of prime concern to courts and other governmental bodies. A rule imposing liability despite good faith reliance insures that if governmental officials err, they will do so on the side of protecting constitutional rights. It also serves the desireable goal of spreading the cost of unconstitutional governmental conduct among the taxpayers who are ultimately responsible for it."), citing Bertot v School District No. 1, Albany County, 613 F2d 245, 251 (CA 10, 1979) (good faith reliance on the prior law of the circuit provided no independent protection from liability for wrongful act).
    Slaves had a right to proper notice of charges! says the case of Josephine, a slave v State of Mississippi, 39 Miss (10 Geo; 19 Miss Annot Ed) 613, 647 (Oct 1861): The right to a properly drafted statement of charges is "a substantial right . . . and not a mere question of form or proceeding."
    Since no such notices were provided to slaves, there was never any lawful slavery, never any constitutional slavery.
    One way to do some significant portion of "reparations" is to transfer the property titles from the slavers to the slaves on the plantations and other slave locations, as of the slavery ending time frame. This title transfer would be done retroactively, and of course, on paper, for step one. Thus the slaves of the past would be recorded as the actual owners. Then following standard inheritance principles, the inheritance would pass on down the line of descent, to the current descendants.
    For “the practical meaning of the phrase 'equality of opportunity' . . . [t]he most popular metaphor, used by Lyndon Johnson among others, was that of the shackled runner: Imagine a hundred-yard dash in which one of the two runners has his legs shackled together. He has progressed ten yards while the unshackled runner has gone fifty yards. At that point, the judges decide the race is unfair. How do they rectify the situation? Do they merely remove the shackles and allow the race to proceed? Then they could say that “equal opportunity” now prevailed. But one of the runners would still be forty yards ahead of the other. Would it not be the better part of justice to allow the other runner to make up the forty-yard gap; or to start the race all over again? That would be affirmative action toward equality.”—Eugene J. Dionne, Jr., Ph.D., Why Americans Hate Politics (Simon & Schuster, 1991), p 90.

    The ex-slaves were further brutalized after the Civil War, by voting denials, segregation, 'Jim Crow' laws, lynchings, mass criminalization via the DWB process which is continuing, etc., etc. And of course, they were denied the reparations/awards including land and money which they should have received, and but for the unlawfulness, would have received.

    In terms of the urgency of the freed slaves being forthwith granted land, abolitionist Wendell Philips at the time saw the need for same: "Every man knows that land dicatates government. If you hold [own] land, every man his own farm, it is a democracy; you need not curiously ask of the statute book. If a few men own the territory [land], it is an oligarchy; you need not carefully scan its laws. . . . Daniel Webster said, in 1820, the revolution in France has crumbled [split] up the nobles' estates into small farms; the throne [monarchy] must either kill them or they will kill out the throne [monarchy]. . . . Now while these large estates remain in the hands of the just defeated [Confederate] oligarchy, its [Confederate] power is not detroyed. But let [the U.S.] confiscate the land of the South, and put it into the hands of the negroes and white men who have fought for it, and you may go to sleep with your parchments," see, e.g., Prof. Richard Hofstadter, The American Political Tradition & the Men Who Made It (New York: Random House, 1948, 1973), Chapter VI, p 199.

    This must be viewed in combination: the receipt of additional continuing abuse continuing for a century+, combined with the non-receipt of the well-warranted awards. A halt of abuses is not in sight, so it is clear that mere “affirmative action” is a trivial, minuscule, absurdly-low, nothing. In no sexual harassment case would any victim agree to mere “affirmative action,” the potential that somebody, somewhere else, some other time, might receive some possible benefit, dollar amount undefined. The victim would want her own redress, damage award of a specific high dollar amount.

    Affirmative action is nothing by comparison. It is outrageous that anyone would even dare to think to oppose it, indeed, they should be advocating full payment of all accrued damages.

    Even the minimal remedy known as "affirmative action" is under attack, for example, in Michigan. But it fortunately has defenders.

    Since those persons entitled to the awards as of the Civil War are now deceased, reparations should be calculated retroactively, as of when they should/would have been granted but for the post-Civil War discrimination. Then the heirs should be traced, and the damages paid to them—which they would have received by inheritance, but for the discriminatory refusal to have paid them to their ancestors. Wherefore, TCPG supports full payment of reparations, and, though deeming it inadequate, affirmative action.

    From a moral point of view, civil law or government, may never contravene or oppose the moral law.
  • "The province of human government is to protect—not to destroy man's natural rights, but more perfectly secure them to him," says Rev. John G. Fee, Sinfulness of Slaveholding (1851), p 6.

  • "Upon the law of Nature and Revelation all human laws depend."

  • "No human laws should be suffered to contradict these."

  • "Nay, if any human laws should allow, or enjoin us to commit a violation of the revealed law, we are bound to transgress that human law, or else we must offend both natural and revealed law."—Vol. I. pp. 28, 29. (Cited by Rev. John G. Fee, Anti-Slavery Manual (1851), pp 70-72.)

  • Government aiding and abetting private individuals in violating a right is unconstitutional, i.e., when
    “. . . States have made available to [private] individuals the full coercive power of government to deny” other individuals their rights.—Shelley v Kraemer, McGhee v Sipes, 334 US 1, 19; 68 S Ct 836; 92 L Ed 1161 (1948).

  • Indeed, “denial of [fundamental rights] would, upon principles of public law, be just cause of war.”—Mitchell v Wells, 37 Miss 235, 282 (1859) (dissent by J. Handy).

    “This [allowing rights denial via slavery, unconstitutional detentions] was allowing a state of war de jure in the body politic, which could not be prevented from becoming a war de facto to the destruction of the commonwealth [society].”—Edward C. Rogers, Slavery Illegality (1855), p 9.

    “The very act [of enslaving] was a declaration of war upon human [kind].”—Rev. Beriah Green, The Chattel Principle (1839), p 18.

    “The moral law, like every other law, comes not to confer rights, but to protect rights already existing. It presupposes . . . certain rights [already exist] to be guarded, not given . . . .”—Rev. John G. Fee, Sinfulness of Slavery (1851), p 11.

    • Some Reparations Analyses/Discussions
    The International Reparations Movement Website
    The Legal Basis of the Claim for Reparations
    by Lord Anthony Gifford, QC, Jamaican Attorney at Law
    The NCOBRA Reparations Action Coalition
    More on Slavery at "About.com"
    More on Reparations at "About.com"
    The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks
    (New York: Dutton, 2000) by
    Randall Robinson, President, TransAfrica Forum
    The Reparations Assessment Group

    15. Tobacco Planters—Slavers

    Who was responsible for slavery? Tobacco planters were especially guilty. They began the major use of slaves in the U.S. See Glenn Porter, ed., Encyclopedia of American Economic History, Vol II (NY: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1980), “Slavery,” pp 552-561. It says “of the American slave population . . . most worked in tobacco,” p 552. This occurred early, “by the end of the [seventeenth] century [1700] plantation gangs were almost wholly composed of Negroes.”—Jerome E. Brooks, The Mighty Leaf: Tobacco Through the Centuries (Boston: Little, Brown and Co, 1952), p 99.

    “It has been held that both the social and economic structure of the South was fixed by tobacco long before cotton became king, and that the large fortunes of the landed aristocracy of the South, the first in our country, were acquired by exploitation of tobacco land and slave labor.”—Sr. Mary Anthonetta Hess, Ph.D., American Tobacco and Central European Policy: Early Nineteenth Century (Washington, DC: Catholic Univ. of America Press, Ph.D. dissertation, 1948), p 3. Dr. Hess cited, e.g., Meyer Jacobstein, The Tobacco Industry in the United States (New York, 1907), pp 31-32; and Thomas J. Wertenbaker, The Planters of Colonial Virginia (Princeton Univ., 1922), pp 23, 133, and 150.

    Note "Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent English colony in the New World . . . within several years . . . The major villain in the piece was tobacco, a crop [with] immense popularity in Europe and [which] the colonists saw as making their fortunes. The large-scale cultivation of tobacco required huge tracts of land, the more so because it [tobacco] wore out the soil at a prodigious rate [see details]. There was, of course, plenty of available land in coastal Virginia in the early 17th century, but it was heavily wooded. To the colonists it made perfect sense simply to seize [steal] the fields that the Indians had already cleared. Thus began the inexorable process of pushing the tribes farther and farther inland [via an] unceasing campaign of terror.”—James A. Maxwell, ed., America's Fascinating Indian Heritage (Pleasantville, NY: Reader's Digest Assn Inc, 1978), p 152.

    “King Charles in 1627 wrote to the Governor and Council of Virginia of his anxiety 'that the colony produced no substantial commodity and was “wholly built upon smoke,” . . .'”—George L. Beer, The Origins of the British Colonial System, 1578-1660 (New York, 1908), pp 90-91, cited by Dr. Hess, supra, pp 2-3, n 9.

    Truly, "it was tobacco that set the Southern pattern of a single . . . cash crop, grown on a large plantation," says Alistair Cooke's America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973), p 69. A prominent tobacco planter of that early era, William Byrd, lamented the amount of work time needed for raising "that bewitching vegetable, tobacco," p 69. The amount of work involved was a factor in producing slavery. Virginia "developed . . . a recognizable class system: at the top a small and hard-working class of land-owners; a main body of yeomen who, once black slavery relieved them of hard labor, became a middle class; and at the bottom the indentured [pre-paid] servants," p 68. Slavery thus created a fourth even lower class. Soon, "you would have noticed [a] novelty that took hold as the root of Southern prosperity: the heavy labor was done by blacks [in] slavery," p 72. "In [Virginia's] first forty years . . . were no more than three hundred blacks. All the lowly labor was done by white indentured servants. But tobacco called for labor battalions, and for more drudgery than skill . . . the Virginians needed slavery . . . blacks were shipped in legions," p 72.

    Note that "the first moral objections came from the North . . . The first realistic objections to slavery came in the South, and there was a long and strenuous campaign to stop it. But it was not waged in the conscience of the South," p 72.

    England established tobacco regulations. Colonists, e.g., George Washington, had "a hatred of the English method of conducting the tobacco business," says Howard Fast, Citizen Tom Paine (Cleveland and New York: World Pub Co, 1943), p 106. So Paine wondered if Founding Fathers' stated Revolutionary views were not "all a clever cover for their desire to be freed from the dictatatorship of the British tobacco agents," p 81.

    “The cultivation of tobacco in New England . . . was opposed by the majority of the Puritans and thus there was no extensive development in those colonies.”—Dr. Hess, p 3, n 12.

    Descriptions of
    Slavers At The Time
    Censors
    "Mad Bulls"
    "Despots"
    "Criminals"

    “When you head South, you're talking about two things—tobacco farmers and evangelicals,” said Ralph Reed (2000). See also the book by Allan Kulikoff, Tobacco and Slaves (Univ of North Carolina Press, 1988).

    In the South's “production of money crops for export,” tobacco was the “first” of the South's "principal staples of export"—Roy P. Basler, A Short History of the American Civil War (New York: Basic Books, Inc, 1967), p 6. (Cotton—and the 'Cotton is king' myth—were after-thoughts.)

    As tobacco was predominant, tobacco led to slave territory expansion attempts, supra. Thus, "the needs of the tobacco crop for virgin land and cheap labor were largely responsible for our Mexican and Civil Wars."—Pryns Hopkins, Ph.D., Gone Up in Smoke: An Analysis of Tobaccoism (Culver City, CA: Highland Press, 1948), p 251.

    Slave prices were "from $600 each in 1810 to $1,000 in 1840 to $1,200 and $1,800 for a prime field hand on the eve of secession."—William C. Davis, ed. The Civil War: Brother Against Brother: The War Begins (Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1983), p 32. "The price of a slave typically represented ten times the yearly earnings of a free worker."—Porter, Encyclopedia of Am Econ History, Vol II, supra, p 556.

    “A planter would consider it a good year if each field slave produced a profit of $250.”—Davis, The Civil War: Brother Against Brother: War Begins, supra, p 11. $250 for a year, would still be twice what the slaver would otherwise likely earn on his own, when average annual pay was $125 for white workers.

    Slavers committed rape (“amalgamation,” in Southern terminology; the 1860 census showed 588,000 mulatto women. Source: Barbara Goldsmith, Other Powers (NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), p 154. This was out of a mere four million slaves! i.e., a significant pervcentage! And likely add in an equal number of mulatto males. This mass rape pattern in the Old South occurred "in a context and era in which black women had little capacity to repel sexual attacks by white men . . . black women's bodies were completely at the mercy of whites. . . . Forced into the dual role of worker and breeder, black women rountinely experienced forced sex, as it profited white slavers to breed more slaves," says Prof. Clarence Lusane, Ph.D., Black History in the White House (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2011), Chapter 9, pp 416. "White men frequently had sex with the black women they enslaved. The pervasiveness of this practice was such that more than half of those in the contemporary United States who claim African American heritage have documentable white ancestors. . . . According to scholar Henry Louis Gates, 'fully 58 percent of African Americans have at least 12.5 percent European ancestry,'" p 417. The term is "octoroon."

    Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), Notes on Virginia (1797), p 298, had provided background on this subject. So did Rep. Horace Mann, Slavery and the Slave-Trade (1849), p 19.   Rev. Theodore D. Weld noted slavers' stamping "their own image in variegated hues, upon a swarming progeny!" in Bible Against Slavery (1837), p 94.

    As family destroyers, slavers' policy was “to part children from their mothers at a very early age . . . before the child has reached its twelfth month . . . to hinder the development of the child's affection toward its mother, and to blunt and destroy the natural affection of the mother for the child.”—Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Chapter 1 (1845). Kentucky clergyman Rev. Robert J. Breckinridge in the African Repository, 1834, said likewise.

    The results continue to scar America. “It was by destroying the Negro family under slavery that white America broke the will of the Negro people.” Bible-Belt bigots forcing black men into roles of public submissiveness “worked against the emergence of a strong father figure,” said the Moynihan Report (1965), cited by E. J. Dionne, Jr., Ph.D., Why Americans Hate Politics (Simon & Schuster, 1991), p 90.

    Quadroons are offspring of a mulatto and a white; octoroons, of a quadroon and a white. Slavers could make 20 times annual pay, by raping the slave woman. Pretty quadroons and octoroons sold for $2,500, 20 times normal white worker pay. Rape = wealth for tobacco planter rapists.

    "A few traders had special rooms for displaying 'choice stock'—pretty quadroons and octoroons who fetched up to $2,500 or more from New Orleans brothel owners."—Davis, The Civil War: Brother: The War Begins, supra, p 51. Est. 15 per day, @ $0.50 each, for 300 days, is $2,225 in one year, a large (89%) return on investment.

    This "fancy girls" issue, "choice stock," relates to "'that which is ever a curse to a slave girl'—personal beauty," says Lerone Bennett, Jr., Before the Mayflower: A History of the Negro in America 1619-1964, rev. ed. (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1964), chap. 4, p 86.

    These issues were cited by Rev. John Rankin, Letters (1823), pp 34-35 (chastity), and p 33 (nudity); by Rev. Silas McKeen, Scriptural Argument (1848), p 8 (morals, chastity); and by Rep. Horace Mann, Slavery and the Slave-Trade . . . (Washington, D.C., 1849), p 12.

    A related issue in supporting debauchery and libertinism, the clergy role, was cited by Rev. Stephen Foster, Brotherhood of Thieves (1843), pp 71-73; and Rev. Parker Pillsbury, Forlorn Hope (1847), pp 74.

    Slavers, tobacco planters, promoted modern public ecdysiast live pornography, strip-shows. Strip-show aspects were observed by Thomas Paine, see Howard Fast, Citizen Tom Paine (Cleveland and New York: World Pub Co, 1943), pp 21-23, 41-42 and 47.

    “Paine went to a slave sale, not because he wanted to buy or had the money to buy . . . to know what it was like to see human beings bought and sold. The auction was held in a big old barn, with the doors locked, and there were a dozen merchants present. It was a sale of breeding wenches, which meant that only women would be put on the auction block, that they would be either virgin or pregnant, and that the bidding would be very brisk. Not only that, but from what Paine had heard it would partake of other aspects than mere buying and selling. . . .

    “In the half hour before the bidding started, the merchants sat around, perched comfortably on bales of hay, smoking, taking snuff, talking a commercial brand of filth, yet at the same time nervous and shy as adolescents in a bawdy house. For a while, Paine couldn't understand, and then it came to him that they would show the Negroes naked. His throat constricted; he was hot and cold and ashamed and eager, and for the first time in months he despised himself. . . .

    “The auction started. Miles Hennisy, one of the greatest slave callers of his day, came out of the little pen behind the barn where the Negroes were herded, prodding a sixteen- year-old girl in front of him with his silver-headed stick. Hennisy . . . was a legend, who sailed to Africa with his own slave ships, who had sold a black emperor, four black kings, and at least a hundred royal fledglings, who prided himself on the fact that when he sold a pregnant Negress, she was pregnant by him. He was a devil and a murderer—and the darling of Tidewater society; he had a long, handsome brown face and tiny blue eyes, and he spoke seven west-coast dialects.

    “He smiled now, and poked the girl up onto the wooden platform. She was wrapped in a blanket, with only her woolly, frightened head protruding; sweat and terror gave her strange round face a sheen like black marble.

    “Hennisy said, "This, gentlemen, my good friends, is sixteen years old, soft as a lamb, strong as an ox, virgin and beautiful to look on, and old Solomon himself would have given a jewel of his crown to possess her. Her blood is royal, and as for her mind, already she speaks enough of the King's tongue to make herself understood. Her breasts are like two Concord grapes, her behind like the succulent hams of a suckling pig. I start the bidding at fifty pounds to give her away; and, gentlemen, make it a hundred and call out stout and strong; gentlemen, take her home, or to bed, or into the hayloft; make it sixty, gentlemen, make it seventy-five, make it eighty. The blanket goes off at eighty!"

    “Eighty pounds!" someone called.

    “Hennisy ripped off the blanket; she was a little girl, frightened and shivering. She cowered back as Hennisy called, "Virgin, gentlemen, virgin, come up and see for yourselves!"

    “Paine stumbled through the snow. He had wanted to kill a man, and he had been afraid; he had roamed the streets of Philadelphia for three hours; his feet were soaking wet and cold. As darkness approached, he went into a tavern and sat down in front of the fire, and for half the night he sat there without speaking or moving.” [Citizen Tom Paine, pp 22-23].

    After this shocking, mind-numbing experience, Paine wrote “African Slavery In America,” supra. Said Howard Fast, "All his hatred for slavery poured onto the paper, all his pent-up fury," p 47.

    “The slaves . . . were paraded in front of the white shoppers . . . women were often stripped. . . 'The customers would feel our bodies,' recalled a former slave.”—Davis, The Civil War: Brother: The War Begins, supra, p 50. The lazy, stupid, ignorant scum known as slavers thus could become wealthy.

    Auction

    Example of "Feeling" Slave
  • 1. Brandish whip
  • 2. Remove her clothes
  • 3. Eye her face
  • 4. Open her mouth
  • 5. Inspect teeth and gums
  • 6. Eye neck
  • 7. Eye breasts
  • 8. Tweak nipples
  • 9. Run hands across bosom
  • 10. Eye abdomen
  • 11. Eye triangle
  • 12. Eye legs
  • 13. Eye ankles
  • 14. Rotate her around
  • 15. Eye neck
  • 16. Eye back
  • 17. Pinch buttocks
  • 18. Eye thighs
  • 19. Eye legs
  • 20. Eye calves
  • 21. Eye feet
  • 22. Rotate her around
  • 23. Have her again facing
  • 24. Put hand on her knee
  • 25. Curve hand around her knee
  • 26. Inch hand slowly up her inner leg
  • 27. Continue inching up thigh
  • 28. Plunge two fingers inside opening
  • 29. Twist fingers around
  • 30. Withdraw fingers
  • 31. Decision process.
        Reference: Janet Wallach, Seraglio       (N.Y.: Doubleday, 2003), pp 13-14.

    • "Miscegenation, most typically between white men and black women, and the consequent mixed offspring of such unions, was one of the most bizarre aspects of American slavery. The sexual exploitation by white masters of their female slaves was a conspicuous part of Southern life."—Page Smith, Ph.D., A People's History of the Young Republic, Vol 3, The Shaping of America (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co, 1980), p 447. See also William I. Bowditch, "White Slavery In The United States" (New York, N.Y.: American Anti-Slavery Society, 1855).

    Southern slavers were immersed in "vice . . . immorality . . . corrupt inclinations . . . lascivious conversation . . . almost everything wicked and obscene . . . lewdness."—Rev. John Rankin, Letters, supra, p 62.

    "'There is not a likely-looking black girl in the state,' a planter told Frederick Law Olstead, 'that is not the concubine of a white man. There is not an old plantation in which the grandchildren of the owner are not whipped in the field by the overseers.'"—Lerone Bennett, Jr., Before the Mayflower: supra, chap. 10, p 251.

    Wherefore abolitionists correctly said that "The Slave States are Sodoms, and almost every village family is a brothel," citing "a million and a half of slave women, some of them without even the tinge of African blood . . . prey to the unbridled lusts of their masters." See, e.g., "Speech of James A. Thome, of Kentucky, Delivered at the Annual Meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society, May 6, 1834," cited in Henry B. Stanton, Debate at the Lane Seminary (Boston: Garrison & Knapp, 1834), pp 8-9.

    The South's warped attitude vs black women continues to present. See for example, the article, "Duke case reopens wounds for black women: Many are fed up with stereotype of hyper-sexual African American female" (MSNBC / Associated Press, 26 April 2006). The article concerns a rape case by white students at a Southern college, Duke Unversity (named for tobacco pusher "Buck" Duke). Then the article goes on to cite examples of the rampant bad attitude. As you learn here, this bad attitude is a carry-over from the slavery era.

    Rep. Owen Lovejoy's speech, "The Barbarism of Slavery" (U.S. House of Representatives, 36th Cong, 1st Sess., Vol 29, Pt 4, p 1563 and Appendix, pages 202-207, 5 April 1860) cited slavery immorality. "Lovejoy's condemnation of slavery as the sum of all crimes, including sexual ones, had provoked an immediate confrontation that was far tenser than the one that had followed [Senator Charles] Sumner's 'Crime against Kansas' speech," says Michael D. Pierson, Free Hearts and Free Homes: Gender and American Antislavery Politics (Chapel Hill: Univ of N. Carolina Press, 2003), p 175. (See Book Review)

    See also "The Tragic Mulatto Myth," by David Pilgrim, Ph.D., Professor of Sociology, Ferris State University (November, 2000).

    Tobacco planters were family-destroyers, rapists and robbers, stealing workers' pay then, refusing to pay their accrued back pay and damages (a.k.a. "reparations"), and murdering workers and abolitionists who blew the whistle on their crimes by committing freedom of speech to get the "no slavery" principles enforced.

    Wherefore, "If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong,"—Abraham Lincoln.

    Even a U.S. Senator, Charles Sumner, in reprisal against his record of pro-freedom speech and activism, specifically, his "The Crime Against Kansas: The Apologies for the Crime; The True Remedy" (19-20 May 1856), was assaulted on the Senate floor by a pro-slavery advocate, Rep. Preston Brooks of South Carolina.


    The Assault in the Senate Where Sumner Had Been At Desk Writing

    Sumner was injured so severely as to disable him for duty for over three years (May 1856 - December 1859) until he recovered. In the book by Sidney Andrews, The South Since The War (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1866), especially pp 1-11 and 21-28, he identifies Southerners' continuing murderous attitudes, deeming murder a right, underlying their attitude toward others, unchanged by the War's result.

    America is overwhelmingly a nation of immigrants. Decent immigrants had skills. But those who became slavers, disproportionately tobacco planters, were different. Back in England, they had often been
    "persons of no occupation,—mostly of idle and dissolute [lazy] habits . . . who [came] through curiosity or the hope of gain . . . 'profligate and disorderly persons, who had been sent off to escape a worse destiny at home.'" Goodell, supra (1852), p 19, citing Willson, American History, supra (1846), pp 162 and 166. See also Edward Rogers, supra (1855), pp 59 and 78; and Rev. Parker Pillsbury, Forlorn Church (Boston: A. Forbes, 1847), p 21 (the latter citing their irreligiousness belying their "Bible-Belt" aura).

    For Southerners, tobacco was the "the line of least resistance." "African Negroes . . . frequently . . . simply seized [kidnapped] by raiding expeditions," would do the actual work!—Basler, Short History of the American Civil War, supra, pp 6-7.

    16. Genocide
    Most (2/3 - 3/4) slaves were killed, 35-45 million or so.
    "Robert R. Kuczynski, the world-known authority on migration statistics, estimated that a minimum of 15 million slaves landed alive. Because of the brutal treatment on transport and the conditions of crossing, the total number of people of which the African continent was depleted amounted . . . to several times more.
    "Carter G. Woodson [Ph.D., 1875-1950], in 'Negro in Our History,' estimated the total at 50 million, while W. E. B. DuBois, Ph.D., in 'The Negro,' gives the figure of  60 million."—Peter M. Bergman, The Chronological History of the Negro in America [New York: Harper & Row, 1969], p 2. [Legal term: Universal Malice.]
    Concern, however inadequately expressed, about the holocaust-level casualties is reported as long ago as 1700.—Samuel Sewall, The Selling of Joseph: A Memorial (Boston: Green and Allen, 1700), p 7.
    See also Harriet Beecher Stowe, Key (Boston: John P. Jewett & Co, 1853), p 241; John Wesley, cited by Rev. Parker Pillsbury, Anti-Slavery Apostles (1883), p 366; and Dorothy Schneider and Carl J. Schneider, An Eyewitness History of Slavery in America From Colonial Times to the Civil War (New York: Checkmark Books, 2000, 2001), p 38 (citing “the total number of slaving trips to the New World between 1527 and 1866 at 27,233. Almost 12 million slaves were embarked from Africa, and about one and a half million died on the Middle Passage.")
    Slaves were treated like animals. Hunters "go on safari," kill animals. That's the primary function of slavery, hunting, "on safari." The few slaves who survived the hunting process, those were the ones used on the plantations and as house slaves.
    Such large numbers of deaths were “expected,” foreseeable, “natural and probable consequences” of conditions, not “accidental,” and were thus “intentional” and “premeditated.”
    Note the world's record for genocide, of Indians, about 100-150,000,000. For background, click here.

    Slavers, tobacco planters, were, one might say, the scum of society when they came to America. Too lazy and stupid to work, they'd buy kidnap victims (aka slaves) from pirates. Ignoring common and constitutional law, slavers, tobacco planters, remained as they'd often been--habitual criminals, three-time+ losers. Slavery was illegal, yet they did it anyway, destroying families.

    If slavers had had the mentality and morals to work for a living, they'd likely have earned about $125.00 a year. But they'd rather be family-destroyers, rather use a whip, buy a slave woman, work her for $250.00 profit, rape her, and the mulatto and/or quadroon daughters, and sell them for $2,500. Sell one octoroon to a brothel, and forced prostitution, the slaver just made himself $2,500, 20 years pay! Invest that $2,500 at 5%, get $125 a year, he'd be making as much as real work! No wonder they committed mass rape, produced 588,000 mulatto women. It was fun and lucrative. This explains why, though few Southerners "owned" slaves, so many favored it, and fought for it in the Civil War (War of the Rebellion).

    For U.S. clergy role in aiding and abetting, thus causing, these evils, see, e.g., the exposé by Rev. Stephen S. Foster, Brotherhood of Thieves (1843).

    17. Anti-Black Libels

    Slavers were not satisfied with raping and robbing enslaved blacks. They committed slander and libel against free blacks as well. In the African Repository (a collection of pre-Civil War racist writings by persons including prominent people seeking to expel blacks), slaver perverts referred to free blacks in terms such as these.

    "Free blacks are a greater nuisance than even slaves themselves."—Af. Rep., II, 189. "This class of persons is a curse and a contagion wherever they reside."—Af. Rep. III, 203. "A class the most corrupt, depraved, and abandoned."—Senator Henry Clay, quoted in Af. Rep. III, 12. "An anomalous race of beings, the most depraved upon earth."—Af. Rep. VII, 230. And, "free Negroes are, as a class, indolent, vicious, and dishonest."—Goodell, supra, p 347.

    The bigots' purpose in disseminating such libels was for "fostering prejudice against" blacks, to justify brutalizing them. Goodell, p 347. Prejudice and insanity have a common characteristic; both involve views not adhering to fact.

    18. Southern Officials Ignored The Law and Constitution

    The Constitutions of every state and the U.S. were emphatic in their Declaration of Independence style wording. What happened? Southern legislators simply ignored the common law, Declaration of Independence, Constitutions, Bills of Rights—people's right to not be enslaved.

    Some Southern legislators were described as “a set of drunkards, gamblers, and whoremongers,” words by abolitionist Daniel Worth cited by Prof. Clement Eaton, The Freedom-of-Thought Struggle in the Old South (Duke Univ Press, 1940, and New York: Harper & Row, 1964), p 140. And “some of the members of [one southern legislature] needed only long ears and a tail to classify them openly as asses,” says Prof. Eaton, supra, p 84.

    “It is difficult today to comprehend the psychosis of the southern mind. . . .” says Eaton, supra, p 384. A 1784 South Carolinian, Thomas T. Tucker (cited by Edward C. Rogers, Slavery Illegality (1855), p 85), had earlier made this same point, “such is the fatal influence of slavery on the human mind, that it almost wholly effaces from it even the boasted characteristic of rationality.” See also Lewis Tappan, Address (1843), p 13, citing slavery as “a moral pestilence which they [Southerners] insanely regard as a blessing and not a curse.”

    Those for slavery “had simply no moral sense,” said Kentucky clergyman Rev. Robert J. Breckinridge, p 9. Slavers' behavior was the “acmé of piratical turpitude,” says Lewis Tappan, Address (1843), p 19.

    Rev. Beriah Green noted likewise in 1839: “They [slavers] have lost the use of reason. They are not to be argued with. They belong to the mad-house.”—Rev. Beriah Green, The Chattel Principle (1839), p 13. Rev. George B. Cheever, D.D., On the Subject of the Iniquity of the Extension of Slavery (1856),
  • p 16, concluded "that a man must be an idiot or a madman who undertakes to deny it [wrongfulness of slavery]" and
  • p 36, behaving "as if seized with a fit of national lunacy."

    • William Lloyd Garrison therefore “prophesied” that “as there is no sin without a sinner,” the South, filled “with thoroughly demonized spirits,” would commit atrocities. See Wendell and Francis Garrison (sons), William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879 (NY: The Century Co, 1885), Vol IV, p 25.

    For 35 years, 1830-1865, William Lloyd Garrison published a newspaper, The Liberator, with a view to ending slavery. President Abraham Lincoln credited him with setting the freedom process in motion. "The logic and moral power of Garrison and the Anti-slavery people . . . And the army [not the U.S. 'religious right' clergy and churches] have done it all," freed the slaves. See Truman Nelson (History Writer), Documents of Upheaval: Selections from William Lloyd Garrison's THE LIBERATOR, 1831-1865 (NY: Hill and Wang, 1966), xvii.

    Slavery was illegal and unconstitutional, but it was done anyway, especially by tobacco planters, as § 14 above elaborates. Chemical slavery (e.g., cigarettes) is illegal too, e.g., pursuant to Michigan MCL § 750.27, MSA § 28.216, but tobacco pushers bring them anyway. Tobacco pushers have a pattern of law-breaking and family-destroying going back centuries.

    Nowadays we put psychotic smokers in insane asylums, e.g., in Jacobs v Mich Mental Health Dept, 88 Mich App 503; 276 NW2d 627 (1979) and Rum River Lumber Co v State, 282 NW2d 882 (Minn, 1979). But as such psychotics were not then incarcerated, they were in charge of government. Once in charge, they insanely went so far as to censor and ban abolitionist whistle blowing on their crimes. Abolitionists were using the U.S. mail to deliver whistle blowing anti-slavery writings. So the psychotics in charge in the South censored the mail and imposed a "dike of silence."

    Moral Yankees (e.g., John Quincy Adams (Amistad case lawyer), Rev. William T. Allen, Dr. Gamaliel Bailey (Ohio activist), Andrew Bankson (instrumental in 1818 Illinois slavery ban), Rev. David Barrow (Ky Abolition Society), James Gillespie Birney (Free Soil President candidate 1844, prosecuted for aiding fugitive slave in Ohio v Birney, 8 Ohio 230 [1837]) Rev. Gideon Blackburn, Rev. George Bourne (author), Rev. William H. Brisbane, John Brown,

    Alexander Campbell, Joshua Carman, Peter Cartwright, Salmon P. Chase (attorney for fugitive slaves), Rev. George B. Cheever (author of God Against Slavery and Fire and Hammer, etc.), Levi Coffin (Underground Railroad), Edward Coles (Ill. Gov), Prudence Crandall (teacher punished for teaching black children to read), Rev. Samuel Crothers, Rev. Obed Denham (excluded slavers)

    James H. Dickey, William Dickey, Rev. Samuel Doak, Frederick Douglass, William Dunlop, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Rev. Charles Grandison Finney (evangelist), C. C. Follen, William Lloyd Garrison, Seth M. Gates,

    Rep. Joshua Giddings, Rev. James Gilliland, William Goodell (Liberty Party President candidate 1852), Beriah Green, Angelina (Weld) Grimké (author), Samuel Grist (reparationist) Elizabeth C. Heyrick (author), Rev. William Hickman (expelled slavers), Joshua Leavitt, Rev. James Lemen (excluded slavers),

    Elijah P. Lovejoy (publisher murdered for his writings), James Russell Lowell, Benjamin Lundy (publisher), Risdom Moore, Thomas Morris, Lucretia Mott, Rev. David Nelson, Theodore Parker (book author), Wendell Phillips (activist lecturer), Rev. Parker Pillsbury,

    Edmund Quincy, John Rankin, Rev. David Rice (Ky. Antislavery Society), Marius Robinson, Benjamin Rush, Carl Schurz, Rev. Orange Scott, Rev. George Smith, Gerrit Smith, Lysander Spooner (legal writer),

    Henry B. Stanton, Rep. Thaddeus Stevens (Document List), P. Storrs, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Senator Charles Sumner (a long-term activist, and author of Barbarism of Slavery), John Sutton, Arthur Tappan, Lewis Tappan, Rev. Carter Tarrant, Rev. James Thome,

    Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman (Discussion), Augustus Wattles, Rev. Theodore Dwight Weld (compiler of slavery exposé), John Greenleaf Whittier (author of poems exposing clergy hypocrisy, memorializing John Brown, etc.), Rep. David Wilmot (1846 proposal to ban slavery in areas obtained from Mexico), Hiram Wilson, Samuel M. Worcester, Elizur Wright, Henry C. Wright, and others, abolitionists (with constitutional, natural law, or moral, religious, or Biblical objections to slavery, thus repulsed by the herein-cited slaver conduct), helped pave the way for the 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln.


    Abolitionist Reunion - 1893
    Danvers, Massachusetts Historical Society

    19. Low Quality Southern Whites As Voters

    Educated people know things that uneducated people do not. For example, educated people know of the "common law," and the rights and duties it created. They know the legal doctrine "that any element of illegality essential to a scheme or combination makes the whole illegal." Newton Co v Erickson, 70 Misc 291, 298; 126 NYS 949, 954 (6 Jan 1911). Wherefore as slavery began with so many illegal aspects, not just one, it was clearly wholly illegal. So why didn't Southern voters act on this basic fact?

    Answer: The South was backward in education and libaries.—Charles Sumner, Barbarism of Slavery, pp 151-155. "Southern voters were often lazy, uneducated illiterates who opposed education, and voted for whomever paid them the highest bribes. It was a handicap in seeking office to be an educated person." Eaton, supra, pp 79-82. "Certain characteristics of Southern oratory arose from the need of appealing to the large class of illiterate voters."And "many of these illiterates or semi-literates were stupid and comically ignorant." Eaton, pp 81-83.

    Here are two examples of the type effects this 'rule-by-the-uneducated' produced:

  • It produced rule by the tobacco lobby; "tobacco planters . . . ruled not only the South but, under the presidential [candidates they got elected], the nation itself." See Rollin G. Osterweis, Romanticism and Nationalism in the Old South (New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press, 1949), pp 132-3. Osterweis underestimates them; they and their accessories dominate Congress, State Legislatures, Governorships, and local and judicial offices as well.

  • In the voting on whether or not to secede after Lincoln's election, 854 delegates to Southern State Conventions were chosen by the state legislatures. The vote to secede was 697-157, i.e., an overwhelming disrespect for the rule of law.

    Here is an example of how this operates, using a current common law issue. There is a common law "right to fresh and pure air." This common law right means that spewing toxic substances into the air via tobacco smoking is not allowed. However, the common law is not enforced.

    Enforcement involves going beyond the passive right, to active action, often called "force."

    If people rob you, they were not supposed to do it. But to stop them takes "force." If people smoke, they were not supposed to do it, but to stop them, takes "force." If people enslave others, they were not supposed to, but to stop them, requires "force."

    Action institutionalizing such "force," typically exercised via the police process, is commonly called "banning" the already common-law-precluded activity.

    Thus in England and its possessions, and the U.S., where slavery was occurring, though violating the "common law," the actions of the 1830's (English territory) and the U.S. (1861-1865) banning slavery, were specific written-law actions that in essence simply enforced the already existing "common law."

      A modern example is George Wallace. When he ran for Governor of Alabama in 1958 on an educated person type platform, against a racist, he lost. So he changed position, to appeal to the lowlife vote, and thereupon won! See "George Wallace: Settin' the Woods on Fire," a PBS Program, 23-24 April 2000, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/wallace/index.html.

    20. No Right to Pass Slave Laws / No Right to Secede
    Amateurs often say, 'look, Southern politicians passed the slave code and secession laws on paper. Weren't those papers therefore "law"'? Answer: No.
    The Constitution, as per Art. VI § 2, is the supreme law of the land. "All laws which are repugnant to the Constitution are null and void." Marbury v Madison, 5 US (2 Cranch) 137, 174, 176; 2 LE 60 (1803).

    "An unconstitutional act is not law; it confers no rights; it imposes no duties; affords no protection; creates no office. It is in legal contemplation, as inoperative as though it had never been passed." Norton v Shelby County, Tennessee, 118 US 425, 442; 6 S Ct 1121; 30 L Ed 178 (1886).

    "The very purpose of a Bill of Rights [and the Constitution's supremacy clause, Article VI § 2] was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One's right to life, liberty and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no election." West Virginia State Board of Education v Barnette, 319 US 624, 638; 63 S Ct 1178; 87 L Ed 1628 (1943); Romer v Evans, 517 US 620; 116 S Ct 1620; 134 L Ed 2d 855 (1996).

    The whole idea of the "Bill of Rights" and supremacy clause of Article VI § 2,.is to forbid politicians to even vote on such measures as slave codes and secession. Even the mere making of the proposal was thus null and void.

    21. Censorship In The Old South
    Southerners' ignorance was due to reasons including the overwhelming censorship in the South. The South had an "uncompromising attitude that had produced in the South a complete suppression of freedom of speech and freedom of the press so far as slavery was concerned."

    Southern censorship banned, for example, Hinton Rowan Helper's The Impending Crisis of the South: How to Meet It (New York: Burdick Bros, 1857). That book was "an economic argument attacking slavery as responsible for the backwardness and poverty of the poor whites and small farmers in the South. Helper was forced to leave his North Carolina home in spite of his denial of abolitionism and his personal lack of sympathy for the Negro. His book created a sensation in the North but was effectively banned in the South, where by 1857 even to read expressions of opposition to slavery had come to be regarded by many as an act of treason to the established order."—Roy P. Basler, A Short History of the American Civil War (New York: Basic Books, Inc, 1967), p 15.

    This type ignorance can still be seen among numbers of Southerners. Such still do not know the truth about slavery, abolitionism, or even the reasons for abolitionisim.

    An economic impact analysis like Hinton Helper's (citing bad economic effects of slavery on the South) had been shown by Rev. John Fee, Antislavery Manual (1851), pp 161-162.

    • Poor whites of the South were called "lazaroni," and uneducated, Alvan Stewart, supra (1845), pp 39 and 46. Numbers of moral Southerners had moved out, leaving some areas of the South depopulated, Stewart, pp 49-50; and Lincoln, Peoria Speech (1854).

    22. Slavers--A Clear and Present Danger

    Tennessee in 1897 saw the "clear and present danger" that tobacco pushers pose. Tennessee had been in the Confederacy, knew how dangerous, depraved, and immoral they were. Unlike other Confederates willing to be martyrs and use tobacco to kill Yankees, many in Tennessee did not wish to be martyrs. So its legislature banned cigarettes. The ban was upheld in Austin v State, 101 Tenn 563; 48 SW 305; 70 Am St Rep 703 (1898) aff'd 179 US 343 (1900).

    In 1909, Michigan did likewise. Back then, many people still alive knew that Confederates—the source of tobacco—had fought for the right to assault, batter, and torture (to enable them to rob, rape and terrorize resistance, e.g., by any who'd try to defend his wife). That illegal practice of torture was deemed a "right" in the Old South. It was a fundamental practice underlying slavery, and had been repeatedly upheld in southern courts, e.g., Com v Turner, 26 Va 678 (1827); State v Mann, 13 NC 263 (1829); Neal v Farmer, 9 Ga 555 (1851); and Com v Souther, 48 Va 673 (1851).

    Slavery was illegal, so, to slavers, post-War KKK-members, tobacco planters, using torture (e.g., "woman-whipping," a common term then, unlike now) was just one more crime. [Examples: Rankin's, Stowe's, and Weld's].


    WhipWoman

    "Woman-whipping" was for black women. Accusing a white man (Birch) of whipping a white woman (his wife), with the innuendo of him preferring his black slave woman, resulted in a slander lawsuit, Birch v Benton, 26 Mo 153 (Jan Term 1858).
    For background on woman-whipping, and “poetic justice,” see the article by Leonne M. Hudson, Ph.D., “Poetic justice: the whipping of William H. Clopton,” Negro History Bulletin, Jan-Dec, 2001.
    Technique included use of surprise, with woman stripped and expecting blows on back, stunned by "whip-wrapping"—swinging it at angle to curl fast, unexpectedly, around onto her exposed front, violating her, causing pain, embarrassment, humiliation, even blood to flow, sometimes milk to flow from torn mammary glands.
    Robert E. Lee was accused of this. See R. E. Lee: A Biography, by Douglas Southall Freeman (New York and London: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1934), Vol I, chapter 22, pp 390-392. Those pages reprint letters to the editor of the New York Tribune (24 June 1859). The letters accusing Lee of woman-whipping had been written 19 and 21 June 1859. While Freeman alleges that Lee denied the charge, significantly, Lee did NOT sue for libel.

    Secessionist conspirators terrorized and illegally ousted loyal Sam Houston as Governor of Texas. See Prof. Albert Castel (History, W Mich Univ), "Sam Houston's Last Fight," 17 Am Heritage: The Magazine of History (#1) 87 (Dec 1965). Houston "knew that some anti-secessionists had already been murdered, and he was concerned for his family's safety," see Bruce L. Brager, "Texas Governor Sam Houston hoped to use his hero status to keep the state from leaving the Union," 12 America's Civil War 50-55 (March 1999).

    Secessionists had murdered and lynched U.S. loyal citizens, e.g., in Texas (see, e.g., Peggy Robbins, "Hanging Days in Texas," 12 America's Civil War 50-55 (May 1999).

    Killing more Americans by adding coumarin (from trilisa odoratissima for rat poison) would be just one more crime. 1897 Tennesseans did not wish to be torture-poisoned and murdered, so they banned cigarettes that year, see Pletten, "Alternative Models for Controlling Smoking Among Adolescents," 87 Am J Public Health 869-870 (May 1997).

    23. Cigarettes As Modern Slavery

            Cigarettes' toxic chemicals impair impulse and ethical controls. They are the delivery device for the gateway (starter) drug on which children are typically first hooked (average age 12). Alcohol follows, average age 12.6; then toxic chemicals impair impulse and ethical controls. They are the delivery device for the gateway (starter) drug on which children are typically first hooked (average age 12). Marijuana follows, average age 14. See Fleming, et al., "The Role of Cigarettes in The Initiation And Progression Of Early Substance Use," 14 Addictive Behaviors 261-272 (1989); and Dept of Health and Human Services, Preventing Tobacco Use Among Young People: A Report of the Surgeon General (1994). P 10 says, "Illegal sales of tobacco products are common."

            Why is such crime "common"? Due to politician immorality obstructing, undermining, and opposing police enforcement of the pertinent laws, for example, Michigan's MCL § 750.27, MSA § 28.216. So the foreseeable result of the non-enforcement of the ban on cigarettes' toxic chemicals occurs; they impair impulse and ethical controls. Alcohol is one effect. "Smoking prevalence among active alcoholics approaches 90%." See Hayes, et al., "Alcoholism and Nicotine Dependence Treatment," 15 J Addictive Diseases 135 (1996).

             Once the process of impairing ethical and impulse controls occurs, tobacco's 90% role in crime results. Most crime is committed by smokers, just as most lung cancer, suicide, etc., not to say that all smokers get/do such. "Maternal prenatal smoking predicts persistent criminal outcome in male offspring." See Brennan, et al., 56 Arch Gen Psychiatry 215-219 (March 1999). The tobacco-crime link has been cited many times by prison officials and judges since the Auburn Report (1854).

    "Nowhere is the practice of smoking more imbedded than in the nation's prisons and jails, where the proportion of smokers to non-smokers is many times higher than that of society in general." Doughty v Board, 731 F Supp 423, 424 (D Col, 1989). "Nationwide, the [ratio] of smokers [to non-smokers] in prisons is 90 percent." McKinney v Anderson, 924 F2d 1500, 1507 n 21 (CA 9, 1991), affirmed and remanded, 509 US 25; 113 S Ct 2475; 125 L Ed 2d 22 (1993).

             As the tobacco-crime link was known before the Civil War (the War of the Rebellion), post-war Confederates used (and continue to use) that knowledge against America. They were inordinately interested in the crime process. See, e.g., Andrew L. Shapiro, "Challenging Criminal Disenfranchisement Under the Voting Rights Act: A New Strategy," 103 Yale Law Journal 537-566 (Nov 1993). Using tobacco as a chemical warfare weapon against America disrupts society, not only just due to the crime impact, but also in diverting vast amounts of manpower and societal resources into an ever growing "criminal justice" system (more police, prosecutors, judges, defense attorneys, court reporters, court staff, etc.) and into vast jail and prison-building projects (diverting construction workers and resources) and staffing them (vast numbers of guards).

             This societal disruption is part of the continuing Confederate War on America. This carries out the last code between Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee: "come retribution." As abolitionist Wendell Phillips noted by May 1866, the Confederates' "rebellion has not ceased; it has only changed its weapons," see, e.g., Prof. Oscar Sherwin, Prophet of Liberty: The Life and Times of Wendell Phillips (New York: Bookman Associates, 1958), p 540. See the "Good Old Rebel" song.

    "The Civil War has never ended."—Paul Guihard (1962), quoted by Lerone Bennett, Jr., Before the Mayflower: A History of the Negro in America 1619-1964, rev. ed. (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1964), chap. 11, p 325.

    As Confederates particularly hate blacks, they target them with cigarette advertising to overwhelm the post-war abolitionists' warnings to the freedmen to not smoke, thus foreseeably their numbers are higher in prisons.

             Enforcement is also aimed at targeting blacks even unlawfully. Pre-Civil War prisons were essentially all-white. Cigarette advertising targeting blacks by modern Confederates has had the intended effect, re-enslavement via prison. Plus it is part of the larger picture: the societal disruption caused by constant prison building projects. Michigan alone has suffered to the extreme that our prisons have increased in number from three to over fifty.

    24. Corrupt Government Officials

    The false story that most readers have heard is that the Thirteenth Amendment was somehow needed to abolish slavery. It was not needed. The real issue was slavers' false claims about the original Constitution. Abolitionist Gerrit Smith said the Thirteenth Amendment: “I never liked [it]. It implies or, at least, seems to imply, that the [original] Constitution did not forbid the greatest of crimes—whereas by the canon of legal interpretation (,and no other was admissible,) it did [already] forbid it. I should [would] have preferred an Amendment, that simply disallows a Pro-Slavery interpretation of an already Anti-Slavery Constitution.”—Letter to Senator Charles Sumner (5 February 1866).

    To be blunt, the thirteenth Amendment was superfluous, redundant, duplicative, unnecessary! The pre-Thirteenth Amendment problem was that corrupt government officials (including judges such as Roger Taney), disregarded or falsified the meaning of the original Constitution.

            Abolitionist Senator and Secretary of State William H. Seward "analyzed the civil service of the national government and could descry [identify] not a single person . . . who was 'false to the slave holding interest' [i.e., respected the rights herein cited]." See Charles A. and Mary R. Beard, The Rise of American Civilization, II (NY: The Macmillan Co, 1927), p 8. "Our Civil Service was becoming a system of political prostitution. Roguery and plunder . . . had steadily crept into the management of public affairs." See Prof. Kenneth M. Stampp, The Era of Reconstruction (NY: Random House, 1965), p 191.

    So in desperation, anti-slavery activists were forced to place a superfluous, redundant, duplicative, unnecessary Amendment into the Constitution to ban what was already multiply banned, as the record such as above data at this site so voluminously shows!

             The civil service had been prostituted to the slavery lobby. Now in the modern era, it is prostituted to the chemical slavery lobby—the tobacco lobby, the gateway drug. So under the thumb of racists, Confederates-in-government (Congress, legislatures, etc.), police officers fear to enforce abolitionist-heritage laws which ban this vestige-of-slavery product, laws such as MCL § 750.27, MSA § 28.216. This high level governmental corruption aids and abets targeting children, particularly minorities, to hook them into cigarettes and thus initiate them into the drug lifestyle. Such corrupt officials aided and abetted by corrupt judges, violate people's rights, and sabotage the war on drugs. This goes so far as to the issue of shipping drugs via CIA/Pentagon channels to blacks. See analyses including but not limited to those by writers such as

            Klonoff, Elizabeth A., et al., "An Experimental Analysis of Sociocultural Variables in Sales of Cigarettes to Minors," 87 Am J Pub Health 823-826 (May 1997). (It shows that sales to minors are more to black children than to Latino children than to white children). Klonoff's data is corroborated by, e.g., Meg Gallogly, "Tobacco Company Marketing to African-Americans" (5 January 2006); and by tobacco pushers' own evidence such as R.J. Reynolds' "Salem Black Initiative Program Brand Team Ideation Session (3 August 1989), a marketing report on pusher brainstorming, exploring ways to increase sales of Salem cigarettes to African Americans, confirming planned behavior by tobacco pushers targeting minority youth as intentional.)

             Kwitny, Jonathan, The Crimes of Patriots: A True Tale of Dope, Dirty Money, and the CIA (New York: W. W. Norton, 1987) (this Wall Street Journal investigative reporter—and biographer of Pope John Paul II—gives examples of government officials smuggling drugs into the U.S.)

            Levine, Michael, The Big White Lie (New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 1993) (from a Drug Enforcement Agency [1965-1989] perspective, he labels the war on drugs an "illusion" due to officials undermining it so much)

             Lieberman, Jethro K., How The Government Breaks the Law (New York: Stein and Day, 1972) (he has many examples of legislator, police, and judicial lawlessness)

            Lockwood, Brocton and Harlan H. Mendenhall, Operation Greylord: Brocton Lockwood's Story (Carbondale: Southern Illinois Univ Press, 1989) (analysis of bribery of judges)

            McCoy, Prof. Alfred W., The Politics of Heroin (New York: Harper and Row, 1972) (though he overlooks the tobacco aspect, he cites some of the government role in promoting drug abuse).

            New York City Commission to Investigate Alleged Police Corruption, Knapp Commission Report on Police Corruption (1972) (analyzes how police have been pressured or corrupted to not enforce laws, just as pre-Civil War, they were not allowed to enforce Northern states' anti-kidnaping laws)

            The 1998 Surgeon General Report Tobacco Use Among U.S. Racial/Ethnic Minority Groups "sends an urgent alarm" that "shows tobacco's increasing grip on racial and ethnic minorities."

            Tuohy, James and Rob Warden, Greylord: Justice, Chicago Style (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1989) (they cite judges' willingness to make money off the crime problem, and willingness to take bribes from defendants, 90% of whom are typically smokers).

    "Slavery Officially Unconstitutional in Mississippi" (18 February 2013) (Mississippi did not ratify the Thirteenth Amendment until 1995, nor notify the US government of having done so until 2013!) further corroborating the fact the thirteenth Amendment was not needed to abolish slavery. As shown here, slavery was already unconstitutional.)

    25. Confederates-in-Government

            Re slavery then and now, physical slavery then, chemical slavery now (tobacco as gateway drug), the illegality is clear. Then, the Confederates-in-government, and tobacco planters, supported slavery and forced the police to refuse to protect blacks from enslavement. Now, modern Confederates in government support mass drugging of Yankees en masse, causing mass disease and death worse than the worst chemical warfare attacks of World War I. The tobacco-crime link mass enslaves both whites and blacks once they have been hooked on the gateway drug, foreseeably leading many to the drug life style, and resultant imprisoning them en masse.

            Due to Confederates in high places in government, many police officers fear to enforce the laws that protect society from the gateway drug, tobacco, fear for example to enforce the Michigan law, MCL § 750.27, MSA § 28.216, against cigarettes. Likewise, there is little or no enforcement of federal law 18 USC § 2341, § 2342, § 2343, § 2344, § 2345, and § 2346, which provides five years in prison for "Trafficking in Contraband Cigarettes." As the 1762 Shanley case, supra, shows, damages (modern term, reparations) are applicable for enslavement. Confederates-in-government oppose reparations both the the original slaves (blacks) and to the modern slaves (smokers) and oppose jury awards. Not much has changed, has it?

    26. Solutions

            To stop the current chemical slavery, it is essential to oust Confederates-in-attitude from the government, and to hire courageous police who oppose the gateway drug and will defy the Confederates-in-government, and enforce the pertinent laws to control it.

             Our 1909 Michigan ancestors felt that America had suffered long enough from the immoral and illegal behavior of centuries of tobacco planters and their accessories. That is why they began action against their killer product cigarettes; they banned them by law . Please join with us to help get the safe-cigarettes law enforced, thus set an example for the nation. Please write to Michigan's

             (a) Governor Jennifer Granholm asking her to assign the State Police to enforce the law; and

             (b) Attorney General Michael Cox asking him to take "cease and desist" action to enforce it.

    27. Pre-Civil War Tobacco Planter Censorship

    Tobacco planters had large role in slavery. In that capacity came about substantial experience committing censorship. They censored anti-slavery utterances before the Civil War! This censorship is recorded by
  • Prof. Dwight L. Dumond (Prof., History, Univ of Mich), Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America (NY: W. W. Norton & Co, 1961)

  • Prof. Clement Eaton, The Freedom-of-Thought Struggle in the Old South (Duke Univ Press, 1940, and New York: Harper & Row, 1964)

  • Rev. Beriah Green, What Northern Men Can Do (1836), p 11

  • James Birney, Bulwarks of American Slavery, 3rd ed. (Newburyport: Charles Whipple Pub, 1842), p 46

  • Lewis Tappan, Address (1843), pp 38-41, with background on murders at pp 22-35

  • Harriet Beecher Stowe, Key (Boston: John P. Jewett & Co, 1853), pp 228 (murdering an anti-slavery printing press importer, and 258-259 (falsifying the 1840 census)

  • Charles Sumner, Barbarism of Slavery (1860), pp 184-192, with background on rampant lawlessness at pp 180-184.
    • Two centuries of tobacco planter censorship experience! They know how to do it! And since murder is no longer an option!, sue the media when it does not 'suck up' enough!

    You cannot hope to bribe or twist,
    thank God! the British journalist.
    But, seeing what the man will do
    unbribed, there's no occasion to.
    --Humbert Wolfe (1930)
        (1886-1940)

    Rev. George B. Cheever, God Against Slavery (1857), p 180, had predicted continuance of such censorship. See also their experience obtaining pre-emption laws. And see the classic pre-emption law, the Fugitive Slave Act.

    28. For Further Reading

    Adams, A. D., Neglected Period of Anti-Slavery in America, 1808-1831 (Boston, 1908)

    Adams, Henry G. (1811-1881), Frederick W. Chesson (1833-1888), and Wilson Armistead (1819-1868), God's Image in Ebony: Being A Series of Biographical Sketches, Facts, Anecdotes, Etc., Demonstrative of the Mental Powers and Intellectual Capacities of the Negro Race; with a Brief Sketch of the Anti-Slavery Movement in America, and a Concluding Chapter of Additional Evidence (London: Partridge and Oakey, 1854)

    de Albornoz, Bartolomé, Prof of Law, University of Mexico, Anti-Slavery (1573) (exposing slavery illegality, see background)

    Alpert, Jonathan L., "The Law of Slavery," 55 Am Bar Ass'n Journal 544 (June 1969)

    Herbert Aptheker (1915-2003), Abolitionism: A Revolutionary Movement (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1989)

    Austin, Gareth, Labour, Land and Capital: From Slavery to Free Labour in Asante, 1807-1956 (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2005) (Review by Economic History Services, 21 Aug 2006)

    Prof. Baptist, Edward E., Ph.D., The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism: The Migration That Made African America, the United States, and the World (New York: Basic Books, September 2014) (analysis: "provides meticulous, extensive and comprehensive evidence that capitalism and the wealth it created was absolutely dependent on the forced labor of Africans and African-Americans, downplaying culturalist arguments for Western prosperity, of the kind rehearsed by historians such as Niall Ferguson")

    Barnes, Gilbert H. (1889-), The Antislavery Impulse, 1830-1844 (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1933 and 1941)

    Barnes, Gilbert H. and Dwight L. Dumond, eds., Am Historical Ass'n, Letters of Theodore Dwight Weld, Angelina Grimké Weld, And Sarah Grimké (NY: D. Appleton-Century Co, 1934)

    Baxter, Richard (Puritan), Christian Directory (1664) (slave traders are "common enemies of mankind" engaged in "one of the worst kinds of thievery in the world")

    Beltrán, Prof. Gonzalo Aguirre, The Black Population in Mexico (1946) (Background: "The early African presence in the Americas is normally associated with the slave trade in the United States, the Caribbean, Brazil, Central America, Colombia and Peru. Not generally taught in history textbooks is that Mexico was also a key port of entry for slave ships and consequently had a large African population. In fact, during the colonial era, there were more Africans than Europeans in Mexico. . . .")

    Bird, Francis W. (1809-1894), Review of Gov. [Nathaniel] Banks' Veto of the Revised [Law] Code On Account of Its Authorizing the Enrolment of Colored Citizens in the [State] Militia, (Boston: John P. Jewett & Co, 1860)

    Blumrosen, Alfred W. and Ruth G., Slave Nation: How Slavery United The Colonies And Sparked The American Revolution (Naperville, Ill.: Sourcebooks, 2005) (citing the Somerset precedent, etc.)

    Bourne, George, Rev. (1780-1845), Picture of Slavery in the United States of America, Being A Practical Illustration of Voluntaryism and Republicanism (Glasgow: W. R. M'Phim, 1834)

    Bourne, George, Rev., Slavery Illustrated in Its Effects Upon Women and Domestic Society (Boston: I. Knapp Pub, 1837)

    Bowditch, William I., Esq. (1819-1909), The Constitutionality of Slavery (Boston: Coolidge & Wiley, 1848)

    Bowditch, William I., Slavery and the Constitution (Boston: R.F. Wallcut, 1849)

    Bowditch, William I., White Slavery in the United States (New York, N.Y.: American Anti-Slavery Society, 1855)

    Brown, John, "Last Speech" (November 1859)

    Cairnes, Prof. John Elliott (1823-1875), The Revolution in America: A Lecture, 2nd ed (Dublin: Hodges, Smith and Co., 1862)

    Cairnes, Prof. John Elliott, "The Slave Power: Its Character, Career, and Probable Designs: Being an Attempt to Explain the Real Issues Involved in the American Contest," 96 North American Review (#199) 467-495 (April, 1863)

    Cairnes, Prof. John Elliott, The Slave Power: Its Character, Career, and Probable Designs: Being an Attempt to Explain the Real Issues Involved in the American Contest (New York: Carleton Pub, 1862; reprinted, New York: A. M. Kelley Pub, 1968)

    Catterall, Helen T., ed., Judicial Cases concerning American Slavery and the Negro, 5 vols (New York: Octagon, 1968)

    Channing, William E., D.D. (1780-1842), The Duty of the Free States or Remarks Suggested by the Case of the Creole (Boston: William Crosby & Co, 1842) (slaves fled by ship, the Creole, to British territory in November 1841, and were freed)

    Chase, Salmon P. (1808-1873), Legal Brief on Slavery Unconstitutionality in Ohio v Birney, 8 Ohio 230, 231-238 (1837)

    Child, David Lee (1794-1874), The Taking of Naboth's Vineyard, or History of the Texas Conspiracy, and An Examination of the Reasons Given by the Hon. J. C. Calhoun, Hon. R. J. Walker, and Others, For the Dismemberment and Robbery of the Republic of Mexico (New York: S. W. Benedict & Co., 1845) [See context.]

    Clark-Pujara, Prof. Christy, Ph.D. (Univ of Wisc), Slavery, Emancipation and Black Freedom in Rhode Island, 1652-1842 (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Iowa, Iowa City) (2009)

    Clarkson, Thomas (1760-1846), The History of the Rise, Progress, and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave-Trade by the British Parliament (New York: J.S. Taylor, 1836; and London: J.W. Parker, 1839)

    Cover, Robert, Justice Accused: Antislavery and the Judicial Process (New Haven: Yale Univ Press: 1975) (especially "Chapter Nine: Formal Assumptions of the Antislavery Forces")

    Curtis, Law Prof. Michael Kent, "The Curious History of Attempts to Suppress Anti-Slavery Speech, Press, and Petition in 1835-1837," 89 Northwestern Univ Law Rev (#3) 785-870 (Spring 1995)

    Davis, Prof. David Brion (History, Cornell), "The Emergence of Immediatism in British and American Antislavery Thought," 49 Mississippi Valley Historical Rev 209-230 (Sep 1962)

    Davis, Prof. David Brion, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture (1966)

    Davis, Prof. David Brion, "Free At Last: The Enduring Legacy of the South's Civil War Victory," New York Times (26 August 2001)

    Davis, Prof. David Brion, Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World (Oxford University Press, 2006) (Review by Prof. Robin Blackburn, The Nation, 13 November 2006)

    Declaration of Independence (Philadelphia: 1776)

    Degler, Carl N., The Other South: Southern Dissenters in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1974)

    Douglass, Frederick (1817-1895), Unconstitutionality of Slavery (London: William Tweedie, Pub, 1860)

    Douglas, Senator Stephen O. (1813-1861), Analysis on Repealing Local Laws So As To Obstruct Enforcement Capability (1858) (concept now used by tobaccoists to obstruct the "right to fresh and pure air")

    Duberman, Martin, "The Abolitionists and Psychology," The Journal of Negro History (July 1962) (covers and critiques the Southern or anti-abolitionist view of abolitionists as perverse, deluded, mentally disordered, or social misfits—a negative attitude and hostility toward abolitionists continuing for a century)

    Duberman, Martin, Antislavery Vanguard: New Essays on the Abolitionists (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1965)

    DuBois, W. E. B., Ph.D. (1868-1963), John Brown (Philadelphia: George W. Jacobs & Co., 1909; reprinted New York: International Publishers, 1972 [Modern Library Classics])

    Dumond, Dwight Lowell (History, Univ of Mich), Southern Editorials on Secession (Gloucester, Mass: P. Smith Pub, 1931, 1964)

    Dumond, Dwight L. ed., Am Historical Ass'n, Letters of James Gillespie Birney, 1831- 1857 (New York, London, D. Appleton-Century Co, Inc, 1938)

    Dumond, Prof. Dwight Lowell, Antislavery Origins of the Civil War in the United States (Ann Arbor: Univ of Michigan Press, 1939, 1958, 1959, 1969)

    Dumond, Prof. Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America (NY: W. W. Norton & Co, 1961) (Excerpt)

    Dumond, Dwight L., A Bibliography of Antislavery in America (Ann Arbor, Univ of Michigan Press, 1961, 1989 and Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1981)

    Dyer, Thomas G. (Prof, Univ of Georgia), Secret Yankees: The Union Circle in Confederate Atlanta (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins Univ Press, 1999)

    Eaton, Clement, Prof., The Freedom of Thought Struggle in the Old South, Duke Univ Press, 1940, revised, Harper & Row, 1964)

    Douglas R. Egerton, The Wars of Reconstruction: The Brief, Violent History of America's Most Progressive Era (Bloomsbury Press, 21 Jan 2014) (Review)

    Farber, Daniel, Lincoln's Constitution (Chicago: Univ of Chicago Press, 2003) (See review by Prof. Donald K. Pickens, History, Univ of of North Texas)

    Farrow, Anne, Joel Lang, and Jenifer Frank, Complicity: How the North Promoted, Prolonged, and Profited from Slavery (New York: Ballantine Books, 2005)

    Fiddes, Edward, "Lord Mansfield and the Somersett Case," 50 Law Quarterly Rev (#200) 499-511 (London, Oct 1934)

    Filler, Louis, Crusade Against Slavery (New York: Harper & Row, 1960)

    Finkelman, Paul, The Law of Freedom and Bondage: A Casebook (New York: Oceana, 1986)

    Finkelman, Paul, Slavery and the Law (New York: Madison House, 1997)

    Finkelman, Paul, Slavery in the Courtroom: An Annotated Bibliography of American Cases (Washington, D.C. The Library of Congress, 1985)

    Finkelman, Paul, ed., African-Americans and the Law (New York: Madison House, 1997)

    Franklin, Prof. John Hope, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of Negro Americans (New York: Alred A. Knopf, Inc., 1947, 1956, 1967, 1974, 1980)

    Franklin, Prof. John Hope, and Loren Schweninger, Runaway Slaves: Rebels on the Plantation (New York and Oxford: Oxford Univ Press, 1999)

    "Freedom's Journal" (the first African-American owned and operated newspaper in the U.S.; online via the Wisconsin Historical Society; and see the Winter 2002 issue.)

    Prof. Gary W. Gallagher and Alan T. Nolan, eds., The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History (1 Nov 2000) (debunks the 'Lost Cause' myths Jubal Early and other former Confederates fabricated in the 1870's) (review; links)

    Genovese, Prof. Eugene D., From Rebellion to Revolution: Afro-American Slave Revolts in The Making of The New World (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1979)

    Ginzburg, Ralph, 100 Years of Lynchings (New York: Lancer Books, 1962, reprinted 2002)

    Gleeson, Chief Justice Murray, Speech Explaining The Judicial Process Citing The Somerset Anti-Slavery Decision As An Example (Australia, 16 March 1999)

    Goodell, William (1792-1867), Views of American Constitutional Law In Its Bearing Upon American Slavery (Utica, N.Y.: Jackson & Chapman, 1844)

    Goodell, William, Slavery and Anti-Slavery (New York: William Harned, 1852) (Book Review)

    Goodell, William, The American Slave Code in Theory and Practice, 4th ed (1853) (UM PDF Version)

    Prof. Grandin, Greg, Ph.D., The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World (Metropolitan Books, 14 January 2014) (analysis "to establish the dependent relationship of slavery to the capitalist revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in all of the Americas, north and south, and presumes to use Herman Melville as embodying the moral complexities of that relationship") (Review: “slavery was the 'flywheel' that drove the global development of everything from trade and insurance to technology, religion and medicine.”)

    Green, Libereta Lerich, The Beacon Tree: A Tale of the Underground Railroad (Mt. Clemens, Mich., Macomb County Historical Society, 1976) (More; Ms. Green is a descendant of Utica, MI, abolitionist Peter Lerich who operated the Utica-area safe-house by the Beacon Tree)

    Green, Libereta, "The Beacon Tree," 1 Detroit Historical Monthly 59-64 (1923) (a Detroit Historical Society issuance)

    As slaves were banned by law from reading and writing, the Underground Railroad used various message-sending methods including via lighthouses, trees, beacons, and quilted codes. For background, see, e.g.,

  • www.beavton.k12.or.us/greenway/leahy/ugrr/
  • www.nationalgeographic.com/xpeditions/lessons/17/g35/quilts.html
  • www.antiquequiltdating.com/ugrr.html
  • home.columbus.rr.com/bradshaw/UNDERRR/quilt/underground_railroad_quilt.htm

    For opposing sites, see, e.g.,

  • www.hartcottagequilts.com/railroad.htm
  • www.historyofquilts.com/underground-railroad.html
  • ths.gardenweb.com/forums/load/quilt/msg112241446156.html
  • www2.lhric.org/pocantico/tubman/quiltdebate.htm

    • Grimké, Archibald Henry, B.A., M.A., LL.B. (1849-1930), Life of William Lloyd Garrison, the Abolitionist (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1891)

    Grimké, Archibald Henry, B.A., M.A., LL.B., The Life of Charles Sumner, the Scholar in Politics (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1892)

    Grimké, Archibald Henry, B.A., M.A., LL.B., Right on the Scaffold: The Martyrs of 1822 (Washington, D.C. : The Academy, 1901)

    Grimké, Archibald Henry, Why Disfranchisement is Bad (Philadelphia: E.A. Wright, 1904)

    Grimké, Archibald Henry, LL.B. (1849-1930), The Ballotless Victim of One-Party Governments (Washington, D.C. The Academy, 1913)

    Grimké, Archibald Henry, B.A., M.A., LL.B., The Ultimate Criminal (Washington, D.C.: The Academy, 1915)

    Grimké, Archibald Henry, B.A., M.A., LL.B., The Shame of America: The Negro's Case Against the Republic (Washington, D.C.: The Academy, 1924)

    Guelzo, Allen C., "Slavery and Original Intent: Was the Constitution Rotten at the Core?" (Books & Culture, May/June 2002)

    Hart, Albert Bushnell, Slavery and Abolition, 1831-1841 (The American Nation: A History XVI) (New York: 1906) (Father and grandfather were abolitionists)

    Heyrick, Elizabeth, C. (1769-1851) Immediate, Not Gradual Abolition (London: F. Westley Pub, 1824)

    Hildreth, Richard (1807-1865), The White Slave; Another Picture of Slave Life in the American States (London: E. Appleyard, 1836 reprinted Boston: Tappan and Whittemore, 1852) [Cited by H. B. Stowe]

    Hildreth, Richard, The Slave: or Memoirs of Archy Moore, Vol. II (Boston: John H. Eastburn, 1836)

    Hildreth, Richard, Brief Remarks on Miss Catharine E. Beecher's Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism (Boston: Isaac Knapp, 1837)

    Hildreth, Richard, What Can I Do For the Abolition of Slavery? (Boston: New England Anti-Slavery Tract Association, 1840)

    Hildreth, Richard, Despotism in America, or, An Inquiry into the Nature and Results of the Slave-holding System in the United States (Boston: Whipple and Damrell, 1840; reprinted B. Marsh, 1849; J.P. Jewett and Co, 1854 and 1974; New York: A. M. Kelley, 1854 and 1970; New York: Negro Universities Press, 1968; and Miami, Fla.: Mnemosyne Pub. Inc., 1969)

    Hildreth, Richard, The "Ruin" of Jamaica (New York: American Anti-Slavery Society, 1855)

    Hill, Samuel S. Jr., Southern Churches in Crisis (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966) (impact from the modern civil rights era)

    Hochschild, Adam, Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire’s Slaves (New York: Houghton Mifflin Co, December 2004) (history of the British abolition movement as a grass-roots movement on moral basis to end slavery) (Interview with Author, 10 Jan 2005)

    Holton, Prof. Woody (Univ. of Richmond), Forced Founders: Indians, Debtors, Slaves, and the Making of the American Revolution in Virginia (Univ. of No. Carolina Press, 1999)

    Hopkins, Samuel, D.D., A Dialogue Concerning the Slavery of the Africans (Newport, R.I.: 1776) (slavery is "without the express sanction of civil government")

    Hopper, Isaac T. (1771-1852), Narrative of the Life of Thomas Cooper (New York: I. T. Hopper, 1832) (Hopper founded the Underground Railroad in 1787; is cited by Edw. Rogers as an example)

    Horton, James O. and Lois E., Slavery and the Making of America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005)

    Howard, Warren S., American Slaves and the Federal Law, 1837-1862 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963)

    Ide, Karolyn, "1862 One Hundred and Twenty-five Years Ago," 38 American Heritage Magazine (#6) (Sept/Oct 1987) (citing legal background for the Emancipation Proclamation, including Whiting's War Powers book)

    James, C. L. R., The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution (1963, 2nd ed 1989) (on successful slave revolution in Haiti, 1791-1803, led by Toussaint L'Ouverture, defeating successive invasions by France, Spain, and England. This revolution set a model for Third World liberation movements from Africa to Cuba.) (Extract; Review 1; Review 2; Review 3). For more on Haiti from a pro-freedom anti-slavery viewpoint, see, e.g., Paul Farmer, M.D., Ph.D., The Uses of Haiti (Common Courage Press, 1994 and 2006) (on Haiti history including U.S. imperialism vs Haiti,   Excerpts)

    James, Howard F., The Unconstitutionality of American Slavery, in the United States: Embracing the Proceedings of the U.S. and State Conventions on This Subject (New York: Howard, 1849)

    Jay, William [1789-1858], A View of the Action of the Federal Government in Behalf of Slavery (New York: J. S. Taylor, 1839) [Cited by Goodell]

    Jay, William, A Review of the Causes and Consequences of the Mexican War (Boston: B. B. Mussey, 1849) [Cited by Goodell]

    Keefer, Justus, Slavery: Its Sin, Moral Effects, and Certain Death (Baltimore: J. Keefer, 1864) (UM PDF Version)

    Kennedy, Randy, "Journals of 2 Former Slaves Draw Vivid Portraits" (New York Times, 14 June 2004)

    Kolchin, Prof. Peter, American Slavery 1619-1877 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1993) (Review)

    Levine, Bruce, Confederate Emancipation: Southern Plans to Free and Arm Slaves During the Civil War (Oxford Univ. Press, 2006) (Destroys the myth of 'black Confederates') (Review by David W. Blight, Washington Post, Sunday, 5 March 2006, p BW07)

    Lincoln, Abraham (1809-1865), "Speech at Peoria, Illinois, In Reply to Senator Douglas" (16 Oct 1854)

    Lincoln, Abraham, Address at Cooper Institute 27 Feb 1860, in Roy P. Basler, et al, eds, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 9 vols (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Univ Press, 1953), Vol III, pp 522-550. (Alternate Source of the Cooper Union Speech) (The Abraham Lincoln Association Full Text of The Collected Works. And see colorized pictures)

    Lincoln, Abraham, Emancipation Proclamation (Document, 1862)

    Locke, Mary S., Anti-Slavery in America, from the Introduction of African Slaves to the Prohibition of the Slave Trade (New York: 1901, repr Johnson, 1968)

    Lovejoy, Rep. Owen, "The Barbarism of Slavery" (U.S. House of Representatives, 36th Cong, 1st Sess., Vol 29, Pt 4, p 1563 and Appendix, pages 202-207, 5 April 1860) (PDF)

    Lundy, Benjamin, The War in Texas: A Review of the Facts and Circumstances Showing that This Contest is A Crusade against Mexico, Set on Foot and Supported by Slaveholders, Land-Speculators, Etc. In Order to Re-Establish, Extend, and Perpetuate The System of Slavery and the Slave Trade (Philadelphia: Merrihew and Gunn, 1837)

    Lusane, Prof. Clarence, Ph.D., Black History in the White House (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2011).

    Macy, Jesse (1842-1919), The Anti-Slavery Crusade: A Chronicle of the Gathering Storm (The Chronicles of America Series, V. 28) (New Haven: Yale Univ Press, 1919) (Download)

    Madison, James (1751-1836), Papers (Note especially the Constitutional Convention, 15 Sep 1797, mandating slavery be "under the laws thereof" of the States - A Condition Never Met As Sen. Mason, supra, Admitted; and the 19 June 1787 Reference That Slavery Is Contrary to Republican Government)

    Mann, Rep. Horace, Slavery and the Slave-Trade in the District of Columbia (Washington, D.C., 23 Feb 1849)

    Martin,Valerie, Property (New York: Doubleday, 2003) (exposes the myth of the chivalrous South, and covers "the fantastic and constant perversity of the oppressor [here, slavers] to feel victimized by the oppressed") (See Book Review by Gail Caldwell, Boston Globe [2 March 2003] )

    Martineau, Harriet (1802-1876), The Martyr Age of the United States (Boston: Weeks, Jordan, & Co, 1829)

    Mason, Prof. Matthew, Slavery and Politics in the Early American Republic (Chapel Hill: Univ. of No. Carolina Press, 2006) (Review).

    McCarthy, Timothy Patrick, and John Stauffer, eds., Prophets of Protest: Reconsidering the History of American Abolitionism (New York: The New Press, 2006) (Review)

    Mellen, George W. F., An Argument on the Unconstitutionality of Slavery, Embracing An Abstract of the National and State Conventions On This Subject (Boston: Saxton & Peirce, 1841)

    Mills, Michael P., "Slave Law in Mississippi from 1817-1861: Constitutions, Codes and Cases," 71 Mississippi Law J (#1) 153-239 (Fall 2001) (note pp 176-179, for the "high point of antebellum Mississippi judicial sentiments supporting universal freedom," in the 1818-1821 era, from which there was decline thereafter)

    Moore, Frank (ed.) (1828-1904), The Rebellion Record: A Diary of American Events, 11 vol (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1868 reprinted 1969 and New York: Arno Press, 1977)

    Nash, Prof. Gary B. The Forgotten Fifth: African Americans in the Age of Revolution (Harvard, 2004) (Review)

    NCOBRA, "Slavery Was Unconstitutional," Black Reparations Times, pp 32-33

    Nell, William Cooper, The Colored Patriots of the American Revolution (Boston: Robert F. Wallcut, 1855) (Introduction by Harriet Beecher Stowe)

    Newman, Prof. Francis William, M.R.A.S, Anglo-Saxon Abolition of Negro Slavery (London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., 1889) (Re "the legal aspect of the slave trade and of slavery. The one and the other were from the beginning utterly illegal . . . neither the slave trade nor slavery had any legal sanction," p 3.)

    Nicolay, John G. and John Hay, eds., Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Francis D. Tandy Co, 1894 and 1905) ("Speech at Peoria, 16 Oct 1854," in Vol II, pp 190-262)

    Northrup, Solomon, Twelve Years A Slave (Auburn, NY: Derby & Miller, 1853; reprinted New York: Dover, 1970 and 2000) (narrative of a free Northern black having been kidnapped, documents falsified to pretend he's a slave, and held in slavery from 1841-1853; and see movies, Solomon Northup's Odyssey (PBS, 1984), and 12 Years a Slave (2013) (on his being kidnapped in 1841 and not freed until 1853, and the atrocities documented in that 12 year period).

    Nye, Prof Russell B. (1915-1993) (English, Mich St Univ), "The Slave Power Conspiracy, 1830-1860," 10 Science and Society 262-274 (Summer 1946)

    Nye, Prof Russell B., Fettered Freedom: Civil Liberties and the Slavery Controversy 1830-1860 (East Lansing: Michigan State College Press, 1949)

    Oakes, James, The Ruling Race: A History of American Slaveholders (New York: Random House, 1982)

    Parker, Rev. Theodore (1810-1860), A Sermon of Slavery, delivered Jan. 31, 1841, repeated June 4, 1843 (Boston: Thurston and Torry, 1843)

    Parker, Rev. Theodore (1810-860), A Letter to the People of the United States Touching the Matter of Slavery (Boston, J. Munroe and Co., 1848)

    Parker, Rev. Theodore, Sermon of Conscience (1850) (urging defiance of the Fugitive Slave Act as unbiblical)

    Parker, Rev. Theodore, The New Crime against Humanity: A Sermon, Preached at the Music Hall, in Boston, on Sunday, June 4, 1854 (Boston, B.B. Mussey, 1854)

    Parker, Rev. Theodore, The Law of God and the Statutes of Men: A Sermon, Preached at the Music hall, in Boston, on Sunday, June 18, 1854 (Boston, B.B. Mussey & Co., 1854)

    Parker, Rev. Theodore, A Sermon of the Dangers Which Threaten the Rights of Man in America: Preached at the Music Hall, on Sunday, July 2, 1854 (Boston: B.B. Mussey & Co., 1854)

    Parker, Theodore, The Dangers from Slavery (Boston: Directors of the Old South Work, Old South Meeting House, 1854)

    Parker, Rev. Theodore, The Trial of Theodore Parker, for the Misdemeanor of a Speech in Faneuil Hall Against Kidnapping (Holmes Beach, FL.: Gaunt, 1855, reprinted, NUP, 1970)

    Parker, Theodore, The Great Battle between Slavery and Freedom Considered in Two Speeches Delivered before the American Anti-Slavery Society, at New York, May 7, 1856 (Boston, B.H. Greene, 1856)

    Parker, Theodore, The Relation of Slavery to a Republican Form of Government: A Speech Delivered at the New England Anti-slavery Convention, Wednesday Morning, May 26, 1858 (Boston: William L. Kent, 1858)

    Parker, Theodore, The Effect of Slavery on the American People (Boston: W.L. Kent & Co., 1858)

    Parker, Rev. Theodore, John Brown's Expedition Reviewed in a Letter from Rev. Theodore Parker at Rome to Francis Jackson, Boston (Boston: The Fraternity, 1860) (defense of John Brown's rescue actions and the right of slaves to kill slavers)

    Peabody, Sue, and Keila Grinberg, Slavery, Freedom, and the Law in the Atlantic World: A Brief History with Documents (The Bedford Series in History and Culture: St. Martin's Press, 20 March 2007) ("During the era of revolution, independence, and emancipation in the north Atlantic, 'slavery' and 'freedom' were fluid and contested concepts. Individuals and groups turned to courts of law to define and enforce the status of indigenous Americans, forcibly imported Africans, and colonizing Europeans -- and their progeny. Legal institutions of the state manufactured and mediated a new, dynamic concept of freedom, inventing categories of race and codifying white privilege. In this collection of documents from the French, British, Spanish, and Portuguese empires, Peabody and Grinberg introduce the voices of slaves, slave-holders, jurists, legislators, and others who struggled to critique, overturn, justify, or simply describe the social order in which they found themselves. Discussion questions, illustrations, a glossary, and a bibliography allow students to analyze these rich documents and discern their lasting influences.")

    Pease, William H., Ph.D. [1924-], and Jane H. Pease, Ph.D., The Antislavery Argument (New York: Bobbs-Merrrill Co., 1965) (contains "representative selections [of] the many dimensions and varieties of antislavery thought")

    Pepper, William F., An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King (New York and London: Verso, 2003)

    Perry, Lewis, and Michael Fellman, eds., Antislavery Reconsidered: New Perspectives on the Abolitionists (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1979)

    Phillips, William Addison (1824-1893), The Conquest of Kansas by Missouri and Her Allies: A History of the Troubles in Kansas, From the Passage of the Organic Act Until the Close of July, 1856 (Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Co, 1856) (PDF)

    Phillips, William Addison, "Three Interviews With Old John Brown," 44 Atlantic Monthly (#266) 738-744 (Dec 1879)

    Pierson, Michael D., Free Hearts and Free Homes: Gender and American Antislavery Politics (Chapel Hill: Univ of N. Carolina Press, 2003) (See Book Review)

    Pletten, Leroy J., "Answering Thomas Sowell Column on Slavery" (13 Feb 2005)

    Pybus, Prof. Cassandra, Epic Journeys of Freedom: Runaway Slaves of the American Revolution and Their Global Quest for Liberty (Boston: Beacon Press, Oct 2004) (Review)

    Quarles, Benjamin (1904-1996), The Negro in the American Revolution (Chapel Hill: Univ of N Carolina Press, 1961)

    Radical Political Abolitionists, Proceedings of the Convention of Radical Political Abolitionists, held at Syracuse, N.Y., June 26th, 27th, and 28th, 1855: Slavery is an Outlaw, and Forbidden by the Constitution, Which Provides for its Abolition (New York: Central Abolition Board, 4 April 1855) (Lewis Tappan, William Goodell, Gerrit Smith, S. S. Jocelyn, W. E. Whiting, James McCune Smith, George Whipple, Frederick Douglass) (PDF)

    Rankin, John, Rev. (1793-1886), Letters on American Slavery, Addressed to Mr. Thomas Rankin, Merchant at Middlebrook, Augusta County, Virginia (Boston: Garrison & Knapp, 1823, 1833, 1837, 1839 and NUP, 1970)

    Randall, Alice, The Wind Done Gone (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001) (parody of Gone With The Wind; lawsuit resulted)

    Rantoul, Rep. Robert, Jr. (1805-1852), The Fugitive Slave Law. Speech of Hon. Robert Rantoul, Jr., of Beverly, Mass., Delivered before the Grand Mass Convention of the Democratic Voters of the Second Congressional District of Massachusetts, Thursday, April 3, 1851 (1851) (Document)

    Raynal, Abbé Guillaume T. F. (1713-1796), Histoire Philosophique et Politique, des Établissemens & du Commerce des Européens Dans les Deux Indes (Amsterdam: 1770) reprinted and translated, A Philosophical and Political History of the Settlements and Trade of the Europeans in the East and West Indies (London: T. Cadell, 1776) (evidence of slavery as contrary to nature, introduced into America by pirates and adventurers who, due to greed, began this form of exploitation, and sugar cultivation)

    Reynolds, Prof. Amy, “How Pioneers of the Abolitionist Movement Conceptualized Free Speech” (Miami Univ of Ohio, 30 September 1999) (with bibliography)

    Reynolds, David S., John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights (Knopf, 2005) (Reviewed by Adam Gopnick, "John Brown's Body: A New Biography Restores Brown's Centrality to the Civil War," The New Yorker (25 April 2005), pp 90-95

    Richards, Leonard L., Gentlemen of Property and Standing: Anti-Abolition Mobs in Jacksonian America (New York: Oxford Univ Press, 1970)

    Rhodes, James Ford (1848-1927), History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850 (New York: Macmillan and Co, 1900 and 1906) (Excerpt)

    Rogers, Edward C., Letters on Slavery Addressed to the Pro-slavery Men of America, Showing Its Illegality in All Ages and Nations: Its Destructive War Upon Society and Government, Morals and Religion (Boston: Bela Marsh, 1855)

    Rossi, Alice, ed., Slavery and the Law (New York: Madison House, 1997)

    Sawyer, George, Southern Institutes; or, an Inquiry into the Origin and Early Prevalence of Slavery and the Slave Trade: With an Analysis of the Laws, History, and Government of the Institution and the Principle Nations, Ancient and Modern from the Earliest Ages Down to the Present Time (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1858, reprinted, NUP, 1969)

    Schama, Simon, Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves, and the American Revolution (London: BBC, 2005; and New York: Ecco, 2006) (history of thousands of slaves who fought for Britain in the American Revolution)

    Schnell, Kempes, "Anti-Slavery Influence on the Status of Slaves in a Free State," 50 J Negro History (# 4) 257-273 (Oct. 1965)

    Sellman, James Clyde, Abolitionism in the United States or Antislavery Movement in the United States (Africana.com, c. 1999-2003)

    Shaw, Benjamin, Illegality of Slavery (Boston: 1846)

    "Sharp, Granville" (1735-1813, English Sponsor of the Somersett Case), Encyclopædia Britannica, Vol 20, p 475 (1963)

    Sherwood, Marika, After Abolition (IB Tauris, 2007) (Although Britain passed Acts of Parliament abolishing the Trade in enslaved Africans in 1807, traders, insurers, bankers, ship builders, et al found ways to circumvent the Act. The Act was never implemented/monitored in Britain. The 1833 Act abolished slavery only in Canada, Cape Town and the Caribbean; India was specifically excluded and the rest of the growing empire was not even mentioned. Slavery in various forms continued in the British Empire well into the 20th century.)

    "Slavery," Encyclopædia Britannica, Vol 20, pp 773-787 (U.S. §, p 783) (1963)

    Slavery & Abolition: A Journal of Slave and Post-Slave Studies (on the demographic, socio-economic, historical and psychological aspects of human bondage; the dismantling of the slave systems; and the legacy of slavery)

    "Slavery Was Unconstitutional," Black Reparations Times, Vol. I, Issue 1, p 33 (25 July 2003)

    "Slaves," Corpus Juris, Vol 58, pp 745-768 (New York: American Law Book Co, 1932)

    Smith, Prof. Elbert B., The Death of Slavery: The United States, 1837–65 (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1967)

    Smith, Gerrit, Letter to Hon. Henry Clay (New York: American Anti-Slavery Society, 1839)

    Smith, Theodore Clarke, Ph.D., The Liberty and Free Soil Parties in the Northwest (Harvard Historical Studies, VI: Ph.D. dissertation) (New York: Longmans, Green and Co, 1897) (Review)

    Sorin, Gerald, Abolitionism: A New Perspective (New York: Praeger, 1972) (has background on abolitionist idealism and "religious conviction" "impelled by the vision of a better society")

    Sowande, Fela, "A Brief Biography: Martin R. Delany" (2000 and 2001) (on the highest ranking black officer in the Civil War)

    Spartacus' History of U.S. Lynchings

    Spector, Robert, "The Quock Walker Cases (1781-83): The Abolition of Slavery and Negro Citizenship in Early Massachusetts, 53 Journal of Negro History 12-32 (1968) (PBS Information)

    Spooner, Lysander (1808-1887), A Defence for Fugitive Slaves, Against the Acts of Congress of February 12, 1793, and September 18, 1850 (Boston: B. Marsh Pub, 1850)

    Spooner, Lysander, The Unconstitutionality of Slavery (Boston: Bela Marsh, 1845) (a more thorough legal analysis than even Goodell's above cited)

    Stewart, Alvan (1790-1849), A Legal Argument Before the Supreme Court of the State of New Jersey: At the May Term, 1845, at Trenton, for the Deliverance of Four Thousand Persons from Bondage (New York: Finch & Weed, 1845)

    Stewart, Alvan, Writings and Speeches of Alvan Stewart on Slavery, Luther R. Marsh, ed. (New York: A. B. Burdick, Pub, 1860)

    Stewart, Prof. James Brewer, Holy Warriors: The Abolitionists and American Slavery (New York: Hill and Wang, 1976 and 1996) (Book Review, May 1999)

    Still, William (1821-1902), The Underground Railroad: A Record of Facts, Authentic Narratives, Letters (1872)

    Storey, Moorfield, Charles Sumner (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co, 1900)

    Stout, Harry S., Professor of American Religious History, Yale University, Upon the Altar of the Nation: A Moral History of the Civil War (New York: Viking, 2006) (Review)

    Stroud, George M. (1795-1875), Sketch of the Laws of Slavery (Philadelphia: Kimber and Sharpless, 1827)

    Sumner, Charles (1811-1874), “Freedom National, Slavery Sectional,” Congressional Globe, 32d Cong, 1st Sess, App, 26 Aug 1852, pp 1102-1114

    Sumner, Charles, “The Landmark of Freedom,” Congressional Globe, 33d Cong, 2d Sess, 21 Feb 1854

    Sumner, Charles, “The Crime Against Kansas,” Congressional Globe, 34th Cong, 2d Sess, 19-20 May 1856; reprinted in Works of Charles Sumner, vol IV (Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1870-1873), pages 125-249

    Sumner, Charles, “The Barbarism of Slavery,” Congressional Globe, 36th Cong, 1st Sess, 4 June 1860, pp 2590-2603 (Copy at Library of Congress)

    The Omaha Project, Pro- and Antislavery Arguments and Conflicts (1840-1851): Teaching Modules

    Thistlethwaite, Frank, Vice-Chancellor, Univ of East Anglia, Norwich, England, The Anglo-American Connection in the Early Nineteenth Century (Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1959, and NY: Russell & Russell, 1971)

    Thomas, Clarence, “An Afro-American Perspective: Toward a “Plain Reading” of the Constitution—The Declaration of Independence in Constitutional Interpretation,” 30 Howard Law J (#4) 983-995 (1987)

    Thomas, Prof. John L. (History, Brown Univ), The Liberator: A Biography of William Lloyd Garrison (NY: Little, Brown & Co, 1963)

    Thomas, Prof. John L., ed., Slavery Attacked: The Abolitionist Crusade (Englewood Cliffs, NJ; Prentice Hall, 1965)

    Tiffany, Joel (1811-1893), A Treatise on the Unconstitutionality of American Slavery: Together with the Powers and Duties of the Federal Government in Relation to That Subject (Cleveland, Ohio: J. Calyer, 1849)

    "Timeline of the American Civil Rights Movement" (c. 5 August 2012)

    Toobin, Jeffrey, "Annals of Law: Our Broken Constitution" (The New Yorker, 9 December 2013), pp 64-73.

    Tucker, St. George (1752-1828), A Dissertation on Slavery: With a Proposal for the Gradual Abolition of It in the State of Virginia (Philadelphia: Matthew Carey Pub, 1795)

    Turner, Lorenzo Dow, Anti-slavery Sentiment in American Literature prior to 1865 (Port Washington, N.Y., Kennikat Press 1966)

    Vanderbilt University, Slavery Era Ecclesiastical Resource Writings Collection Preservation Project (2006) (in conjunction with other nations' historians, e.g., Brazil and Cuba)

    Walker, David, Walker's Appeal, in Four Parts, to the Colored Citizens of the World (Boston, 1829)

    Ward, Samuel Ringgold (b. 1817), Autobiography of a Fugitive Negro: His Anti-Slavery Labours in the United States, Canada, and England (London, J. Snow, 1855, reprinted, New York: Arno Press, 1968; Chicago: Johnson Pub Co, 1970; Nendeln: Kraus, 1970; Chapel Hill, N.C.: Academic Affairs Library, Univ of North Carolina, 1999)

    Weinberg, Prof. Louise, "Of Theory and Theodicy: The Problem of Immoral Law," 56 Maryland Law Rev 1316 (1997) (on conflicts between Northern and Southern state law)

    Whiting, William E., LL.D. (1813-1873), The War Powers of the President, and the Legislative Powers of Congress in Relation to Rebellion, Treason and Slavery (Boston: John L. Shorey, 1862) (citing the power to abolish slavery in war-time enemy territory, a reference book citing legal bases for the Emancipation Proclamation, a book read by Lincoln).

    Whiting, William E., LL.D., War Powers under the Constitution of the United States (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1864)

    Wiecek, William M., "Slavery and Abolition Before the United States Supreme Court, 1820-1860," 65 J American History (# 1) 34-59 (June 1978)

    Wilson, Henry (1812-1875), The History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power (Boston: J. R. Osgood and Co, 1873 reprinted New York: Negro Universities Press, 1969) (Excerpt) (Wilson had been an activist who rose to become U.S. Vice-President under President Ulysses Grant, so has a significant perspective)

    Wood, Betty, The Origins of American Slavery (New York: Hill and Wang, 1997)

    Woolman, John, Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes, Part I (1754), Part II (1762)

    Wormser, Prof. Richard, The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow (New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 2003) and PBS.

    Slavery-Related Books Reprinted at books.google.com

    Biography Source
    The American National Biography (New York: Oxford Univ Press, 1999) has a significant section on abolitionists. Examples include:
  • James G. Birney, Vol 2, pp 816-818 (noting that his son David became a Major General, Union Army);
  • William Goodell, Vol 9, pp 236-237 (noting his observing systemic aspects involving interrelationships among social issues and factors; and that after the War, he helped organize the Prohibition Party); and
  • Sen. Charles Sumner, Vol 21, pp 1377-1379.
    A complete list of abolitionists reported on, is in Vol 24, pp 683-684.

    • Related Web Sites
    By Others
    Library of Congress Booklist
    Anti-Slavery Book Reprints by Negro Universities Press
    Black History Overview
    Slavery & Abolition: A Journal
    of Slave and Post-Slave Studies
    US History - Colonial Cycle
    Jenna Brooks' "Black People" Links Site
    Slavery Illegal - A Sermon by Cyrus Prindle, 12 April
    1850 (Burlington: Tuttle & Stacy, 1850)
    Founding Fathers and Slavery
    MSU Anti-slavery Time Line
    Michigan Historical Museum Underground Railroad Data
    Utica Michigan "Beacon Tree"
    in Underground Railroad
    [By Shelby Historical Society]
    History 576, An Ohio State Class Syllabus
    Sewanee University Civil War Documents List
    The American Anti-Slavery Group
    The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life
    in the Americas: A Visual Record
    Impeachment of Andrew Johnson

    Discussion of Dred Scott Case
    Part 1
    		Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6

    Scott's Long Record of Litigating To Get Freedom
    Scott v Emerson, 13 Am St Trials 220-232 (Mo, 14 March 1846)
    (Scott lost case but won a new trial) cert den 2 Mo 413
    Scott v Emerson, 13 Am St Trials 233-241 (Mo, Jan 1850)
    (Scott won the jury verdict at the new trial)
    rev'd 15 Mo 577 (March 1852)
    (Missouri Supreme Court reversed his jury win)
    Scott v Sanford, 13 Am St Trials 242-255 (D Mo, 17 June 1854)
    (losing federal appeal to get jury verdict reinstated)
    aff'd 60 US 393; 15 L Ed 691 (6 March 1857)
    (losing appeal to Supreme Court)

    Other Related Litigation
    U.S. v Clement L. Vallandigham, 1 Am St Trials 699-716 (Cincinnati, 16 May 1863) writ of habeas corpus den 28 Fed Cas 874-925 (# 16,816); 5 West Law Monthly 37 (SD Ohio, 16 May 1863) cert den 68 US (1 Wall) 243; 17 L Ed 589 (15 Feb 1864) (pro-Confederate sedition and rebellion against the U.S.)

    Lincoln Assassination Conspiracy Trial, 8 Am St Trials 25-105 (DC, May 1865) (case overview)
    U.S. v David Herrold, 8 Am St Trials 106-133 (DC, May 1865)
    U.S. v George A. Atzerodt, 8 Am St Trials 134-167 (DC, May 1865)
    U.S. v Lewis Payne, 8 Am St Trials 168-215 (DC, May 1865)
    U.S. v Mary Surratt, 8 Am St Trials 216-309 (DC, May 1865)
    U.S. v Michael O'Laughlin, 8 Am St Trials 310-323 (DC, May 1865)
    U.S. v Samuel Arnold, 8 Am St Trials 324-378 (DC, May 1865)
    U.S. v Edward Spangler, 8 Am St Trials 379-422 (DC, May 1865)
    U.S. v Dr. Samuel Mudd, 8 Am St Trials 423-494 (DC, May 1865)
    Lincoln Assassination Conspiracy Trial, 8 Am St Trials 495-645 (DC, May 1865) (prosecution summation)
    Lincoln Assassination Conspiracy Trial, 8 Am St Trials 646-656 (DC, May 1865) (verdict)

    U.S. v Henry Wirz, 8 Am St Trials 657-874 (DC, 1865) (conspiracy and murder)

    U.S. v Ku Klux Klan Conspiracy, 9 Am St Trials 593-600 (SC, Nov 1871) (overview)
    U.S. v Childers, Murphy, Montgomery, & Porter, 9 Am St Trials 601-610 (SC, Dec 1871) (anti-KKK case)
    U.S. v Robert Mitchell, 9 Am St Trials 611-735 (SC, Dec 1871) (anti-KKK case)
    U.S. v John Mitchell & Thomas Whitesides, 9 Am St Trials 736-787 (SC, Dec 1871) (anti-KKK case)
    U.S. v Millar, 9 Am St Trials 788-804 (SC, Dec 1871) (anti-KKK case)
    U.S. v Ed Avery, 9 Am St Trials 805-838 (SC, Dec 1871) (anti-KKK case)
    U.S. v Sylvanus & Shearer, 9 Am St Trials 839-841 (SC, Dec 1871) (anti-KKK case)
    U.S. v Warlick, 9 Am St Trials 842-860 (SC, Dec 1871) (anti-KKK case)
    U.S. v McMaster, 9 Am St Trials 861-879 (SC, Dec 1871) (anti-KKK case, contempt of court)

    General histories of the pre-War era, the Civil War, and its immediate aftermath sometimes have glimpses into the slavery issue. But they almost invariably overlook the large and persuasive data on the abolitionists' position on the sinfulness and unconstitutionality of slavery.

    The pejorative term "radical" is typically used for people who felt that kidnaping and raping are wrong, whereas the word "moderate" is used for people who supported such actions in the current states, but merely didn't want kidnaping and rape expanded into the territories!

    Such general histories almost invariably overlook
    • (a) the abolitionist 'slavery-was-always-unconstitutional' writings, and

    • (b) the Unreconstructed South's post-war revenge via tobacco, continuing the war by other weapons, as some abolitionists warned.
    With the caveat that you should be aware of the above-stated weaknesses, the books below contain summaries or reprints of key portions of primary source material, with some useful editorial analyses, and are ones that I have used or am otherwise aware of, and am listing here for their otherwise often useful background on the era.

    David A. Alexander, Ph.D., My "Never Fail" Assignments-Black History (7 Nov 2002)

    Anderson, Nancy Scott, and Dwight Anderson, The Generals: Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988)

    Angle, Paul M., ed., The Lincoln Reader (New Brunswick: Rutgers Univ Press, 1947)

    Angle, Paul M., The Nation Divided, Vol 3 of The American Reader (Greenwich, CT: Fawcett Pubs, Inc, 1960)

    Basler, Roy P., A Short History of the American Civil War (New York: Basic Books, Inc, 1967) espec Chaps 1-2.

    Bemis, Samuel F., John Quincy Adams and the Union (Knopf, 1956)

    Blackmon, Douglas A., Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II (Doubleday, 25 March 2008) (Review 1,   2)

    Cash, Wilbur Joseph (1900-1941), The Mind of the South (New York: Vintage Books, 1941)

    Curtin, Philip D., The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex (Cambridge Univ Press, 1990)

    Cohn, Morris M., "The Dred Scott Case in the Light of Later Events," 46 Am Law Rev 548-557 (o/a 1902) (post-war article by Arkansas lawyer, an unreconstructed Southerner, arguing that the Dred Scott decision was correct, continuing to ignore the herein-cited precedents) (IAW Gruber)

    Cover, Robert M., Justice Accused: Antislavery and the Judicial Process (New Haven: Yale Univ Press, 1975)

    Curry, Richard O., Prof (U Conn), The Abolitionists: Reformers or Fanatics? (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1965)

    Davis, Kenneth C., Don't Know Much About the Civil War (New York: William Morrow and Co, 1996)

    Dickson, William, Letters on Slavery (London: J. Phillips, 1789, reprinted, NUP, 1970)

    Douglas, Davison M., Jim Crow Moves North: The Battle Over Northern School Design 1865-1954 (Cambridge Univ Press, 2005)

    Drake, Charles, Union and Anti-Slavery Speeches Delivered During the Rebellion (St. Louis: The Ladies’ Union Aid Society of St. Louis, 1864, reprinted, NUP, 1969)

    Edge, Frederick Milnes, Slavery Doomed: Or, the contest between free and slave labour in the United States (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1860, reprinted, NUP, 1969)

    Encyclopedia of U.S. Slavery History (Great Britain: Spartacus, 2002)

    Faust, Drew Gilpin, A Sacred Circle: The Dilemma of the Intellectual South, 1840-1860 (Philadelphia: Univ of Penn Press, 1986)

    Fehrenbacher, Don E., Ph.D. (1920-1998), The Slaveholding Republic: An Account of the United States Government's Relation to Slavery, ed. Ward M. McAfee (New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001)

    Fogel, Robert William, The Slavery Debates, 1952-1990: A Retrospective (Baton Rouge: Louisiana St Univ Press, 2003) (Review)

    Franklin, John H., Runaway Slaves: Rebels on the Plantation (New York: Oxford Univ Press, 1999)

    Franklin, John Hope, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of Negro Americans (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967)

    Frederickson, George M., William Lloyd Garrison, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc, 1968)

    Giddings, Joshua, Speeches in Congress (Washington: John P. Jewett and Co., 1853, reprinted, NUP, 1968)

    Goldston, Robert, The Coming of the Civil War (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co, 1972)

    Mark A. Graber, Dred Scott and the Problem of Constitutional Evil (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006) (not cited here for its accuracy! but as an example of the disinformation side, e.g., it defends the wrong Dred Scott decision as supposedly what the Constitution writers had in mind!! while criticizing Lincoln's constitutionalism. Readers here know better!)

    Heyrman, Christine Leigh, Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997)

    Hosmer, William, The Higher Law our relations to the Civil Government with particular Reference to Slavery and the Fugitive Slave Law (s.l. : Derby and Miller, 1852, reprinted, NUP, 1969)

    Johannsen, Robert W., The Union in Crisis, 1850-1877 (New York: Free Press, 1965)

    Bryant-Jones, Mildred, M.A., "The Relation of Thaddeus Stevens to Reconstruction 1865-1868 (Loyola University, Master's Thesis, Paper 75, August 1935)

    King, Martin Luter, Ph.D., "I've Been To The Mountain Top" (Memphis, Tennessee, 3 April 1968)

    Lader, Lawrence P. (1919-2006), The Bold Brahmins: New England's War against Slavery, 1831-1863 (New York: Dutton, 1961) (on New England's anti-slavery movement, excellent when reporting abolitionist actions, but assumes the 'slavery is constitutional' propaganda line)

    Lane, Charles, The Day Freedom Died: The Colfax Massacre, the Supreme Court, and the Betrayal of Reconstruction (Henry Holt & Company, 2008) (Review 1,   2,   3)

    Lucas, Prof. Stephen E., The Stylistic Artistry of the Declaration of Independence (1989) [from a more comprehensive study, "Justifying America: The Declaration of Independence as a Rhetorical Document," in Thomas W. Benson, ed., American Rhetoric: Context and Criticism (1989)]

    Magdol, Edward, Owen Lovejoy: Abolitionist in Congress (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1967) (his brother Elijah Lovejoy had been murdered 7 Nov 1837 for his anti-slavery activism) (List of Owen Lovejoy Writings 1838-1864)

    Miller, William Lee, Arguing About Slavery: The Great Battle in the United States Congress (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996)

    Mohr, James C., Radical Republicans in the North (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ Press, 1976)

    McMaster, John Bach, A History of the People of the United States During Lincoln's Administration (D. Appleton-Century Companies, 1927, reprinted as Our House Divided, Greenwich, CT: Fawcett Publications, Inc, 1961)

    Nevins, Allan (1890-1971), The Emergence of Lincoln (New York: Scribner, 1950, 1951; reprinted Scribner, 1969; Norwalk, Conn.: Easton Press, 1978, 1988)

    Newman, Ralph, and E. B. Long, The Civil War Digest (New York: Grosset & Dunlap Universal Library, 1956 and 1960)

    Nye, Russel B, Prof (Mich St Univ), William Lloyd Garrison and the Humanitarian Reformers (Boston: Little, Brown and Co, 1955)

    Owen, Robert Dale, The Wrongs of Slavery, The Right of Emancipation and The Future of the African Race in the United States (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1864; and Kraus Reprint Co., 1969)

    Rozwene, Edwin C., Prof (Amherst College), ed., The Causes of the American Civil War (Boston: D. C. Heath and Co. Problems in American Civilization Series, 1961)

    Ruchames, Louis, John Brown: The Making of a Revolutionary (New York: Grosset & Dunlap Universal Library, originally, A John Brown Reader, 1959 and 1969)

    Schneider, Dorothy & Carl J., Any Eyewitness History of Slavery in America (New York: Facts on File Checkmark Books, 2001)

    Smith, Page, The Nation Comes of Age, in A People's History of the Ante-Bellum Years, vol 4 (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co, 1981) (multiple pertinent chapters)

    Stampp, Kenneth M., Prof (Univ of Calif), And the War Came (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ Press, 1950 and 1970)

    Stampp, Kenneth M., The Era of Reconstruction: 1865-1877 (New York: Random House Vintage Books, 1965)

    Stampp, Kenneth M., The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South (New York: Random House Vintage Books, 1956)

    Stampp, Kenneth M., ed., The Causes of the Civil War (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice- Hall, Inc, 1959 and 1965)

    Thomas, Hugh, The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade: 1440-1870 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997)

    Thornton, John, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World (Cambridge Univ Press, 1998) (Amazon Summary; Quiz)

    U. M. S. L. Black Studies, Missouri Slavery

    Van Doren Stern, Philip, Prologue to Sumter (Indiana Univ Press and Greenwich, CT: Fawcett Publications, Inc, 1961)

    Andrew Wagner, "South trying to rewrite history" (Badger Herald, Madison, WI, 4 April 2008)

    Waldrep, Christopher, The Many Faces of Judge Lynch: Extralegal Violence and Punishment in America (New York: Palgrave, 2002 and 2004) (See Review by William D. Carrigan of Rowan Univ History Department)

    Wiecek, William M., The Sources of Antislavery Constitutionalism in America, 1760-1848 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977)

    Wilkins, Joe Bassette (1948-       ), Window on Freedom: The South's Response to the Emancipation of Slaves in the British West Indies, 1833-1861 (Univ of South Carolina, Ph.D. Thesis, 1977)

    Woolworth, Steven E., ed., Civil War Generals in Defeat (Lawrence: Univ Press of Kansas, 1999)

    Discussion Group On This Subject
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    Websites on Slavery Still Existing
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