RE CHANGE OR DRIFT DRED SCOTT

Monday, October 3, 2016

RE CHANGE OR DRIFT DRED SCOTT

This decision was certainly a statement that change regarding the status of negroes was one requiring constitutional change.  

 

There will be plenty of people who would disagree with thatand argue that the constitution all along had contemplated free negroes.

 

That does not seem to me the correct analysis.  Sorry but not sorry. 

How that constitutional change could have been accomplished is a difficult question.

My own supposition is that it would have required a constitutional convention, in which negroes would not have participated, but as a result of which they would have had their constitutional status changed. What exactly that change would have been is also hard to say. 

The Emancipation Proclamation was not a valid constitutional change.

After the Civil War, constitutional changes were made, but they were, frankly, unconstitutional.