Happy 4th of July-my brother, 1SBM/Posted at his request

[BumRushDaShow]

16. HUGE K&R

And one of his most famous.

Even today, there are citizens who don't understand the mixed feelings that a whole segment of this nation's population has regarding this country's liberation and creation of a new government, because that liberation only applied to certain people and not the rest. Basically, my ancestors were chattel and none of the rules applied, even if freed or born free. Several years after Douglass gave that speech, the Supreme Court rendered that infamous decision in the Dred Scott case -

New-York Daily Times

<...>

Washington, Friday, March 6 (1857) - The opinion of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott Case was delivered by Chief Justice Taney. It was a full and elaborate statement of the views of the Court. They have decided the following important points:

First - Negroes, whether slaves or free, that is, men of the African race, are not citizens of the United States by the Constitution.

Second - The Ordinance of 1787 had no independent constitutional force or legal effect subsequently to the adoption of the Constitution, and could not operate of itself to confer freedom or citizenship within the Northwest Territory on negroes not citizens by the Constitution.

Third - The provisions of the Act of 1820, commonly called the Missouri Compromise, in so far as it undertook to exclude negro slavery from, and communicate freedom and citizenship to, negroes in the northern part of the Louisiana cession, was a Legislative act exceeding the powers of Congress, and void, and of no legal effect to that end.

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0306.html#article